Gina Rinehart, the Holmes à Court family, billionaire retailer Brett Blundy and UK private equity titan Guy Hands should be made to reveal the scale of greenhouse gas emissions from their sprawling cattle empires, says the independent Climate Change Authority.

The cattle barons were included in a list of 10 major agriculture giants running herds in the order of 100,000 to 450,000 head, which the authority said may be generating enough annual emissions to meet the 100,000-per-tonne threshold for inclusion in Labor’s flagship industrial carbon reduction scheme known as the safeguard mechanism.