MELBOURNE — “If the sound of beef sizzling on the grill brings tears to your eyes, you are a real beefatarian.” That’s the opening line of a TV ad produced by a European advertising campaign called Proud of European Beef. Just more advertising silliness? No, because the European Union is paying 80 per cent of the cost of it. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2013 report Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock states that beef contributes 41 per cent of the greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from the entire livestock sector, and also has the highest emissions intensity, that is, the highest GHG emissions per unit of protein, of any animal products. That is largely because ruminants belch and fart methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas. As a result, rearing beef cattle brings about, on average, six times the contribution to global warming as non-ruminant animals (for example, pigs) producing the same quantity of protein.