London (CNSNews.com) - A leaked e-mail message has led to speculation that the British government plans to promote vegetarianism as part of a broader strategy to fight climate change.

In a message sent earlier this year to a vegetarian lobbying group, the Environment Agency -- a statutory body set up under a 1995 law -- said it was considering ways to deal with global warming, one of which was to encourage people to eat less meat.

The agency said that it was unlikely that most people would swear off meat entirely and that the issue would have to be introduced "gently" for fear of alienating the public.

The official who authored the e-mail message also wrote that the potential benefits to the climate of a vegan diet could be "very significant." A vegan diet is one that shuns all meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products.

"Future Environment Agency communications are unlikely to ever suggest adopting a fully vegan lifestyle, but certainly encouraging people to examine their consumption of animal protein could be a key message," the official wrote.

The e-mail was sent to the British chapter of a group called Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (Viva), in response to its queries about promoting vegetarianism. Viva then released the message to the media.

In recent years, vegetarian groups around the world have increasingly turned to the issue of climate change to promote their cause, warning that raising livestock produces large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane - "greenhouse gases" blamed for global warming.

Cattle are also reported to cause large-scale land degradation, to pollute water, and to contribute to acid rain through the ammonia they generate.

A report released by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization last November charged that raising livestock produced more "greenhouse gases" globally than the international transportation system.

A spokesman for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) - the British government department that oversees the Environment Agency - said Monday the government was not encouraging people to give up meat altogether.

"The government is not telling people to give up meat," he told Cybercast News Service."It isn't the role of government to enforce a dietary or lifestyle change on any individual. People need to make the decisions that are right for their own lifestyles."

The spokesman did say, however, that DEFRA was encouraging people to adopt diets that have a lower environmental impact.

This could involve eating food that hasn't been transported long distances by air or truck, he said, and reducing the amount of "animal protein" a person eats.

Viva spokesman Justin Kerswell said Monday that quitting eating meat was something each individual person could do to fight climate change.

British Vegetarian Society spokeswoman Su Taylor said that someone adopting a strictly vegan diet would help the environment tremendously, but that an ordinary vegetarian diet would help as well.

"Nobody's talking about this," she said. "If people are going to make choices about how they can help the environment, they need to have all the choices on the table."

But the National Farmers' Union (NFU) said that meat and diary products are essential for a balanced diet.

"To suggest that people eating less meat and dairy products will have a significant impact on the fight against global warming seems rather dubious," said NFU spokesman Anthony Gibson.

"Hopefully [government] ministers will have more sense than to suggest simplistic and quite possibly counterproductive responses to what is a highly complex equation," he said.

Gibson added that the organization was committed to finding ways to reduce methane emissions by livestock.

See Also:
'Low Carbon Diet' Aims to Take Bite Out of Global Warming (April 18, 2007)
Kyoto 'Flatulence Tax' Plan Causes Turbulence in New Zealand (June 23, 2003)

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