Today saw ARRCC's Meat Free Day campaign feature on ABC Radio National's, Bush Telegraph 'Food on Fridays' segment, with ARRCC committee member Jenni Downes representing the campaign.

On the show with Jenni were:

• Rob Radford, owner of Radfords Abattoir, winner of the Environment and Energy Management Award in the NAB Agri Awards
• Dr Manny Noakes, Research Scientist at CSIRO Food and Nutritional Sciences
• Cameron Wilson, Bush Telegraph presenter.

You can listen to the 25min segment by downloading the mp3 file,  streaming from the ABC website or downloading the free podcast through iTunes.

A number of interesting points were raised by Cameron, Rob and Manny that Jenni was not able to respond to directly on the show. Of particular note were:

• Cameron questioning Rob on the economic impacts of cutting out meat
  ARRCC agrees farmers and others in the meat production industry would be affected by widescale reduction in meat consumption - that's why one of our public policy positions on agriculture (7d) is that the Government should work with farmers and others to develop alternative forms of income generation on their land, and provide assistance and incentives to make the transition to these alternatives.
     
• Rob discussing the changes made by his business to reduce his environmental impact
  ARRCC is very impressed with the depth of changes that Rob has instigated in his business over the last few years. Making these changes widespread across all facets of the livestock and meat processing industries is crucial to reducing Australia's contribution to climate change and Rob should be commended for leading the way in this change.
     
• Dr Noakes suggesting that emissions from all junkfood would be about equal to emissions from beef production
  ARRCC was suprised to hear this claim by the CSIRO representative as we have not seen similar claims in mainstream climate change resources. Given that livestock farming makes up about 10% of Australia's emissions according to the Government, and that 1kg of beef produces approximately 35 kg of CO2 equivalents compared to 1.5kg or less for most plant-based products, ARRCC is following up the CSIRO to understand the research behind this claim.

>> Find out more about ARRCC's Meat Free Day campaign.