A U.N. report takes aim at the world's livestock industry but particularly singles out beef production, calling for the taxing of beef products as a way to decrease demand, thus decreasing the greatest threat to the world's environment and biodiversity, it says.

The 400-page report from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, entitled “Livestock's Long Shadow,” also considers sheep, chickens, pigs and goats, but points the finger mostly at the world's 1.5 billion head of cattle. It says consumers, “because of their strong and growing influence in determining the characteristics of products, will likely be the main source of commercial and political pressure to push the livestock sector into more sustainable forms.”

Read the report online at: www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf.