Attending the oldest and largest animal rights conference in Los Angeles July 19-23 (www.arconference.org) yielded more surprising information than I expected.

The conference also provided me the chance to meet with many grass roots animal rights

people advocating for humane treatment of animals, veganism and better animal protection legislation. These people are truly inspirational because many of them devote their lives to help non-human species who can't help themselves ... that's truly altruistic and compassionate. We really need more people like them in the world.

There were more than 100 sessions, and here are some of these altruistic speakers and their organizations' Web sites: Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns (www.upc-online.org); Howard Lyman, Voice for Viable Future (www.madcowboy.com/01_VVF.000.html); Anteneh Roba, Amsale Gessesse Foundation (www.amsalefoundation.org); Marianne Thieme, Parliament member, The Netherlands (www.partijvoordedieren.nl/content/view/129); Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (www.seashepherd.org); Shirley McGreal, International Primate Protection League (www.ippl.org); Christine Morrissey, East Bay Animal Advocates (www.eastbayanimaladvocates.org/wst_page4.html); Eliot Katz, In Defense of Animals (www.idausa.org); Virginia Handley, California's Political Action Committee for Animals (www.pawpac.org).

In addition to learning about updates to the campaigns above, the fact that Farm Animals have very few (if any) legal protections, and there is little legal precedent for current lawyers to use in prosecuting

animal abusers, some additional new surprising information was shared with all conference attendees: animal agriculture causes more greenhouse gases than transportation.

According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions than transport (www.biteglobalwarming.org).

In addition, Japanese scientists discovered that eating beef produces more greenhouse gases than driving. "Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane released from the animals'

digestive systems,” New Scientist magazine reported.

More than two thirds of the energy used goes towards producing and transporting cattle feed, said the study, which was led by Akifumi Ogino from the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan.

Su Taylor, the press officer for the Vegetarian Society, told New Scientist: "Everybody is trying to come up with different ways to reduce carbon footprints, but one of the easiest things you can do is

to stop eating meat.”

I've personally attended several scientific conferences in the last few months, including the February AAAS conference in San Francisco, but the seriousness of animal agriculture's impact on climate change was not strongly communicated. This is why I'm writing. so I can communicate this data to you.

Many of us have thought about reducing our meat consumption for various health or animal cruelty reasons. The climate change impact is another reason.

Let's all make a difference and reduce all of our meat consumption and spread the word to your friends and neighbors to do the same. Our country and our Earth depend on it.

References:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/19/nbeef119.xml

http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19526134.500&feedId=earth_rss20

www.arconference.org

www.biteglobalwarming.org

Mary Vincent is a senior program sanager at Sun Microsystems. She was in the US Peace Corps in Hungary. She contributes articles and commentary on animal rights issues to Lake County News.

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