Table of Contents

At COP27, Holding Meat and Dairy Accountable for Emissions

November 15, 2022

FFAC’s policy director shares an update COP27 and making factory farming part of the conversation on climate change.

The True Animal Protein Price (TAPP) Coalition urges countries and US states to account for the environmental and public health costs of meat and dairy by taxing these products. Since food production is responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, effectively tackling climate change will mean much of the reduction will need to come from the agricultural sector.

TAPP’s COP27 Climate Agreement on Food and Farming, in which signatories commit to a 30% reduction in food and farm related greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, officially launched on Monday, November 7, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where the Conference of the Parties (COP), the annual UN climate change conference, is entering its second week.

FFAC’s policy director, who serves as TAPP’s US director, has contacted the US states that signed the “We Are Still In” letter back in 2017, when President Trump announced his intention to pull the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change, and invited them to sign the Agreement.

These states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington. TAPP’s EU director is at COP27 urging delegates from European nations to sign the Agreement and commit to a 30% reduction in food and agriculture emissions through taxation of meat and dairy products.

TAPP’s mission is twofold: to ensure that the price consumers pay for animal-based food includes the heretofore externalized costs, including climate change, environmental degradation, and public health; and to make healthy and sustainable plant-based food affordable and accessible to all.