IN "Glitterati to fly the green flag" (November 20), Suthentira Govender reports that 60 chefs will be serving meals such as curry, lasagne, burgers, boerewors rolls and biltong snacks to the 15 000 delegates at the United Nations COP17 climate change conference.

Serving meat-based meals at COP17 is heavily ironic and entirely inappropriate, given that the same UN, in the 2006 report of its Food and Agriculture Organisation, "Livestock's Long Shadow: Livestock and Climate Change", concluded that "the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems ... livestock's contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale ..." Livestock production accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, including 9% of carbon dioxide and 37% of methane gas emissions worldwide. This is more than all cars, trucks, trains, boats and aircraft put together. Rather than stuffing themselves on burgers and boerewors rolls, the COP17 delegates would be setting a wonderful example and doing much to raise awareness of climate change and world poverty, if the meals served at the conference were all vegan, or at least vegetarian.