Statement by Libby Peppiatt, CEO, The Vegan Society
The UK Government’s Climate Change Committee’s Progress in Reducing Emissions report, published on 24 June 2026 – the day the UK Met Office issued a red warning for extreme temperatures – confirms that: “The UK Government is not moving fast enough to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”
In particular, the Committee identifies a lack of progress on emissions from agriculture and the lack of any plan from the government to meet its recommendations on reducing the number of farmed animals and encouraging dietary change towards plants.
The government cannot continue to ignore the advice it is receiving from the body set up by statute to guide its decisions. This complacency is dangerous.
In 2024 the government announced its intention to develop a food strategy to promote health and to ensure our food system is not environmentally destructive. Eighteen months on, unlike its counterparts in Denmark and Portugal, the UK government is yet to make a significant commitment to a transition towards plant-rich diets, despite all the evidence and expert opinion supporting that transition and despite animal agriculture being responsible for 70% of total nitrous oxide emissions and 49% of all methane emissions in the UK.1
The policy solutions are practical, achievable and affordable. The Vegan Society is one of more than 60 organisations and experts to endorse the Ten-Point Plan for Plant-Rich Diets, which proposes measures the government can enact under its food strategy to increase production and consumption of vegetables, fruit, legumes, pulses and wholegrains in the UK.
Despite this, the much-anticipated Farming Roadmap, also published today, almost entirely ignores diet change and has no plan to support farmers to transition to growing healthy plant-based foods for UK consumers.
The churn in Defra food and farming ministers may have contributed to this failure but the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero should ensure this critical area doesn’t continue to be neglected. Most importantly, the next Prime Minister and Chancellor, whoever they may be, must embrace a change which improves health, national food security and environmental sustainability – change that all the evidence shows people want.
This Climate Change Committee report says clearly that the UK is still eating too much meat and dairy: “Reductions in livestock numbers are needed to go further in reducing emissions from agriculture…. To deliver this, people will need support to make alternative dietary choices to meat and dairy, and farmers will require support to diversify their businesses.”
In addition, the Committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget recommends increasing the amount of plant-based food in the average UK diet to achieve a 20% cut in dairy consumption by 2035 and a 35% cut in meat consumption by 2050.
The Vegan Society has been highlighting the dangers of meat and dairy consumption for more than 80 years. If immediate and meaningful action is not taken now to shift the UK from a diet that is so heavily based on meat and dairy to one that is plant-based, the heat is really going to be on for the next 80 years.
