Over 53,000 people signed the petition urging leaders of the top meat-eating countries and regions to implement change and shrink their country’s consumption of meat and dairy products.
Compassion in World Farming was founded in 1967 by a British dairy farmer who became 'horrified' at the development of intensive factory farming. There are around 86 billion animals farmed every year, with the majority being kept in intensive systems according to Compassion in World Farming.
As well as delivering the petition, in-person to No.10, it has also been sent to the leaders of America, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, the EU, South Korea, China, South Africa and Japan.
Sarah Moyes, senior campaigns manager at Compassion in World Farming, commented: “Our global leaders cannot continue to bury their heads in the sand. Livestock emissions play a significant role in the current climate emergency, yet this has been virtually overlooked by world leaders.
“We must drastically reduce our total global meat and dairy consumption, so we’ve addressed our petition to leaders of top meat-consuming countries or regions. It’s critical these world leaders act to bring forward a meat and dairy reduction and support a shift to nature-friendly, higher welfare farming, as a matter of urgency.
“Factory farming is significantly contributing to one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time and leaders of those countries where meat consumption is particularly high, must play their part to ensure we meet the Paris Agreement targets. We must turn up the heat on world leaders to keep the global temperature down.
"Despite last year’s COP26 recognising that drastic action is needed to avert a climate catastrophe, the fact that the livestock sector is responsible for 14.5% of global GHGs – more than all direct emissions from the transport sector – animal farming is still largely absent from the policy solutions for addressing this global problem."