Peer Ederer

The only emergency we have is that these priests of doom can spread their vitriol around without being punished.

Today at the World Meat Congress in Maastricht, key note speaker @ThanawatTiensin from FAO outlined the roadmap of success for Sustainable Livestock. He left no doubt that FAO wants to and will take a leadership role for providing global policy guidance to make Sustainable Livestock a part of the solution for the many challenges facing the global food system.

Today at the World Meat Congress in Maastricht I talked about the meat industry not winning its strategic must win battles, and therefore more effort is required to make the case to society on the superior nutritional, ecological, economic and ethical performance of livestock foods versus the alternatives. Industry can draw on the Dublin Declaration @dublin_declare co-initiated with @fleroy1974 and signed by 1165 scientists calling for scientific evidence to be the basis for policy.

Superb historical analysis

And today I am sitting in an air plane again, on the way to Brussels. My agenda for the next week: Cologne, Frankfurt, Cologne, Maastricht, Bologna and then back home on Friday evening. In Cologne I have various meetings at Anuga, a professional fair for foods. In Maastricht I am presenting at the World Meat Congress. In Bologna I am presenting at a company event on European beef markets. I will report my impressions. Now, take off is imminent.

Yesterday, on Friday, I taught a whole day seminar on global food system dynamics, the global shortage of proteins and the role of animals, at the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. It is in a Master degree program called „Preneurship in Regenerative Food Systems“. On the fringes I helped to design the program, and we are now in the second cohort. The program is deliberately designed to be highly interdisciplinary both in the course and the participants. There are students who are chefs, hotel operators or from fashion design. Many of them are working on their own startups. If they choose, a business plan can be their master thesis. There was great energy in the room to discuss these really important challenges, and an appreciation for the complexity of these topics. It is the reason why I teach, to stimulate critical thinking in the next generation.

The colors in Haag are Red White, not the despised Blue White of Bavaria. Haag used to be an independent dukedom until 1804. Until today the Haagians resent being part of Bavaria, as nothing good comes from there, such as the Wittelsbacher Kings, and in modern times the Greens. (Munich is 30 km away from here).

In the morning at 10 is the perfect time in Bavaria to start the day with cheese and a Mass Bier. Need to start my presentation soon enough in order to still have a sober audience for the topic of cows and climate.

Today I am presenting at the Haag Farmers Day (30km outside of Munich), to about one thousand dairy farmers about how and why their cows are NOT killing the climate. Taking off in 10 minutes.

Congratulations @ThanawatTiensin for shining the right light on Sustainable Livestock, to let the real science speak to policy under the famous roof of sky and ocean at FAO. An important milestone towards achieving the SDGs and having livestock be a solution. Looking forward to more of this on our journey. 👏👏👏

Arianna Guiliodori @arigiulio , SG of World Farmers Organisation @worldfarmersorg wraps up the final content session of the FAO Sustainable Livestock Conference which focused on finance. She emphasizes that more of the value in the food system needs to go to the farmers, especially the small holders, or else the required changes will be too slow to arrive. She calls for farmer-centric, science-based pragmatic solutions. Bravo Arianna!

Side event at FAO as an overview on the technical options to reduce climate impact of ruminant livestock, with reports from Spain, Australia, Kenya and Brazil. Climate impact reduction solutions are real options. Reducing the herd size is not a viable option because of too much other collateral damage with too little benefit.

Alexandre @AlexandreBerndt senior researcher at Brazilian Embrapa and an early pioneer of integrated livestock farming research, reports on his peer-reviewed scientific insights and practical tools for farmers for low climate impact farming, preserving biodiversity and economic profitability. I had the opportunity to visit these demonstration farms personally and be impressed by their synthesis of nutritional, ecological and economic performance.

Hsin Huang, SG of the International Meat Secretariat comments on the Fata Morgana of cell-based meats: „Bring it on in an open and fair competition, and provide scientific evidence for all the claims that are made of such slaughter free meat. So far, these are just claims, no evidence….

The WHO has revealed its colors once more: Francesco Branca, Director of Nutrition at WHO explains that eating up to 500 grams of red meat per week is safe, but eating 600 grams of it in an average population of upper middle income countries leads to 65.000 avoidable deaths. „That is unacceptable“, he says. Where, I ask, is there strong enough evidence that eating red meat above 500 grams per week is suddenly so toxic?

Frederic LeRoy @fleroy1974 co-Initiator of the Dublin Declaration of Scientists @dublin_declare is now speaking as a panelist during the Better Nutrition section of the Sustainable Livestock conference at FAO. He emphasizes that foods may have risks and benefits at the same time, and it is therefore necessary to look at the effects of foods comprehensively and strictly on the basis of high quality, high certainty evidence.

Shirley Tarawali, Chair of Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, reenforces the message that sustainable livestock solutions are always context-specific and need to be integrated into society, economics, and ecology. As we also write in the article we co-authored in April 23.academic.oup.com/af/article/…

Frank Mitloehner @GHGGuru explains that the methane report is not bedtime reading, but heavy technical standard setting, produced by 50-60 of the top scientists of the world on how biogenic methane impact can be measured, and avoid climate warming. „But if we do not now communicate these contents to decision makers, then the report will be useless.“

At the launch event for the landmark LEAP report on methane. The report is much needed on how to measure biogenic methane emissions properly and evaluate avoidance or mitigation.

Thanawat Tiensin, FAO Director for Animal Production is now speaking. Says that demand for animal protein will increase by 20% until 2050. That is a big understatement. Overall protein supply will need to double to satisfy nutritional requirements, and the only way to do this sustainably is with animals, not with plants. So we are looking more likely at a quadrupling of animal proteins in the next 30 years. Quantifying the challenge in the right dimension is critical to identifying the right solution spaces.