Up to 37 million tonnes of carbon emissions from animal food product consumption were not included in the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory last year, sustainability groups said yesterday, urging the government to establish a standardized carbon footprint labeling system to facilitate consumer choice.
Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Chen Gau-tzu (陳昭姿) convened a news conference along with sustainability group representatives, calling on the government to extend carbon labels to all food products sold in supermarkets and restaurants in line with global trends.
Changing dietary habits is indispensable to net zero transition, given that nearly one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions are generated from agriculture and animal husbandry, Chen said, citing data from the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“We are seeking for carbon emissions to become visible [to consumers] so that everyone in society would be empowered to take carbon reduction actions,” she said.
Sustainable Healthy Diets Research Institute director-general Chang You-chuan (張祐銓) urged the Ministry of Environment (MOENV) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) to integrate their variant carbon labels and emission factors for each category of food and agricultural products.
Current carbon labels are difficult for consumers to make comparisons, as they use various measurement units, such as per box, per piece, per gram or per tonne, to quantify carbon emissions regardless of product types, he said.
Meat Free Monday Taiwan secretary-general Chang Chia-pei (張家珮) said the agriculture sector’s actual carbon emissions were estimated to be much higher than the 2 percent listed in the inventory published last year, which only included emissions from domestic food production.
However, more than 80 percent of meat products and almost all animal feed were imported, but emissions from overseas feed production and meat product logistics, as well as local food processing and cold-chain logistics, were not taken into account, leading to a seriously underestimated amount of diet emissions, she said.
Calculated based on life-cycle assessments that consider emissions from production to waste, emissions from animal food product consumption by Taiwanese were 37 million tonnes last year, accounting for nearly 12 percent of total emissions in Taiwan, Chang Chia-pei said.
She also cited Carrefour France’s example of quantifying emissions as levels from A to E to help consumers choose environmentally friendly products, calling for establishment of a similar emissions labeling system by the government to align with international carbon disclosure standards.
Taiwan Water Resources Conservation Union chairwoman Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) called for interagency collaboration in developing a common methodology for quantifying carbon footprints and to put forward an initial plan within two months.
MOENV Climate Change Administration secretary-general Chang Wen-hsing (張文興) said that starting this year, the ministry has been promoting the grading mechanism for carbon footprint labeling to provide a more standardized labeling system for consumers, with business operators required to apply graded carbon labels to their products in compliance with climate regulations.
The MOA’s Department of Resources Sustainability said that the ministry has established emission factors for most agricultural, fishery and animal products according to the MOENV’s guidelines, and would cooperate with the environmental ministry in standardizing carbon labels.
It has also been developing a credible carbon footprint verification mechanism to support the labeling system, with the Agricultural Technology Research Institute as the verification service provider for last year, it said.
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