GREAT BRITAIN

GREAT BRITAIN

London Evening Standard: The Government is trying to make us eat less meat. A report in the Lancet today, based on a study partly funded by the Department of Health, recommends that the number of animals bred for meat should be reduced by 30 per cent. The Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, backs the report, on public health and environmental grounds.

But is it really that simple? Granted, ruminants, specifically cattle, emit methane. But the effect of meat on the environment depends to a great extent on where and how it is produced and how far it is transported.

Beef produced in South America on cattle ranches for which forests have been cleared, which is then transported to Europe, is environmentally damaging in several respects.

But British beef, if produced in an environmentally sensitive manner and transported as short a distance as possible, is less problematic.

Labels would help

It would help if meat, in supermarkets and in catering, were clearly labelled to show its country of origin. Farmers are custodians of the environment. And, according to the National Farmers Union, their carbon emissions account for only one per cent of the UK total.

By all means, let ministers encourage us to adopt a varied diet — though fish is scarce. But a blanket target to reduce the number of animals bred for meat is crude.

There are other means of reducing carbon emissions: today the Forestry Commission recommends that another four per cent of our land mass should be used to plant trees. That is an initiative we can all support.

JAPAN

The Japan Times, Tokyo: According to the United Nations, more than 1 billion people — one of every six persons on this planet — go hungry each day. In a world of unprecedented prosperity, that statistic is shameful. More appalling still, the number of undernourished individuals is growing despite rising levels of affluence and wealth. It is a moral imperative that we halt this alarming trend and work to eliminate the growing problem of hunger worldwide.

If morality is not sufficient motivation, then more hard-nosed practical considerations should suffice: Hunger undermines growth, creates instability and ultimately threatens the legitimacy of an international order that condemns one-sixth of its members to a daily struggle to survive.

Larger dangers

The dangers are not just to individuals alone. Hunger breeds unrest. The price of wheat, which supplies about 20 percent of food calories consumed worldwide, doubled in 15 months during 2007 and 2008.

Fears of shortages and instability have prompted governments to stockpile key staples, creating bottlenecks and exacerbating the situation in other states: In a globalized food chain, local decisions quickly ripple beyond national borders.

The most important step forward is creating new markets for the goods of poor and struggling nations. It is vital to return to the original purpose of the Doha Development Round — to help developing countries — and conclude a world trade agreement.

Developed nations must recognize that opening domestic agricultural markets is in their own best interest — even if that entails a short-term political cost. That is the sort of change that the new government in Tokyo should embrace — and will demonstrate the leadership that Japan should be offering the world.