Celebrities call for subsidy shift away from livestock farming

Film and TV celebrities have made a joint call for subsidies to shift away from livestock farming to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Eighteen celebrities made the demand in a letter to MP Alok Sharma ahead of the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow, which runs from 31 October to 12 November.

Mr Sharma will act as president of the conference, and the letter, co-ordinated by the Humane Society International, urged him to publicly recognise livestock farming as one of the largest contributors to climate change.

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Letter signatories include Joaquin Phoenix, Billie Eilish, Daisy Ridley, Ricky Gervais, Joanna Lumley, Deborah Meaden and Chris Packham.

It stated that large-scale changes to animal farming systems were needed to meet agreed net-zero climate objectives and should be added to the COPO26 agenda.

These included:

• Shifting subsidies away from livestock farming
• Offering incentives to develop non-livestock alternatives
• Changing public sector procurement priorities.

They added: “With animal agriculture being such a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, it is impossible to meet goals set out in the Paris Agreement without making changes to our global food system.

“Even if all other major sources of emissions were reformed, we would still fall short.”

Union campaigns

UK farming unions and trade bodies are also raising the climate change message ahead of the COP26 talks.

The newly formed Agriculture & Land Use Alliance (ALA) will host a Countryside COP event.

The event will run from 11-15 October – a month ahead of the international talks – and aim to showcase and inspire net-zero activity in rural communities and agri-food supply chains.  

Activities will focus on fact-based farming statistics and demonstrate all that the industry has achieved towards net zero so far.

Efforts to raise the climate change message north of the border are also being taken by NFU Scotland (NFUS) with a social media campaign #FarmingForTheFuture. 

The union said it recognised farming must take significant steps to meet net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

But it stressed that farmers could be proud of domestic food production, which delivered multiple benefits.

The most obvious is high-quality food, but there are also jobs and environmental benefits from the farming work carried out in Scotland, the union said.

To help push a positive message about Scottish farming ahead of COP26, members have been urged to like and share NFUS messages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The same social media assets are also available on the NFUS website and have been emailed, along with a social media toolkit, to members.