Though it wasn’t given as much attention as other sectors in the run-up to Copenhagen, food production accounts for nearly a quarter of humanity’s ecological footprint. What’s more, nearly 40 per cent of ice-free land on the earth is given over to farming and almost 70 per cent of fish stocks are at the limit of or have passed the point of sustainability.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution: encouraging people to cut back on meat and dairy, for instance, usually results in public backlash and a successful movement of this kind would have ripples around the world, including making fertilizer less available for climate-friendly forms of farming. And it’s not always easy to know what’s sustainable; the American Chemical Society conducted a lifecycle assessment of salmon fishing and found that what farmed salmon are fed, how wild salmon are caught and whether stocks are frozen or fresh matter more than whether or not they’re wild or organic.

To help policy makers out (at least as far as meat-eating is concerned), WWF commissioned the Food Ethics Council to produce a report outlining how emissions relating to the consumption of livestock could be reduced and how government could change consumption behaviour. The report can be downloaded at: www.foodethicscouncil.org