Sad Day For Us Meat Eaters...

 In an article by EARTH TALK- From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine they discuss a number of reasons that eating meat is extremely bad for the environment. I am an avid meat eater, and can't think of a life without it, but these claims are pretty strong. Although the article was obviously written by a vegetarian, I think our society should use them a stepping stone to alleviate these issues, instead of using the issue to try to get people to stop eating meat.

The 20 billion or so animals that are raised for livestock are draining resources, and polluting the environment. The first issue being that to raise one pound of beef, it takes 4.8 pounds of grain, which seems like a waste of grain if you compare them side by side. The article does not, however, discuss how much nutritional value there is in one pound of grain vs one pound of beef. Just like the cereal commercials, I'd like to know how many bowls of grain I'd need to equal one bowl of beef ;-)

Another negative effect of raising livestock for food comes from the vast amount of pollution that it causes. The main pollution comes from the animal waste, which the Environmental Protection Agency says pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. One interesting comparison they use is with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill which is still in the news today with a massive lawsuit. But no one knows about the 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina that spilled 25
million gallons of excrement into the water, killing 14 million fish
and closing 364,000 acres of shell fishing beds. 

The last part of the article discusses how livestock uses up a large amount of valuable water. They say that the beef production alone uses more water then all fruit and vegetable crops. Once again I'd like to know the nutritional value comparison, and whether they are taking into account rain water, and might that be a possible solution for animals? Catching rain water to water livestock seems like a simple and easy solution.

The article goes on to say that over a third of all raw materials
and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. This statistic does not seem that bad to me, since we are talking about producing meat to feed the entire country. Maybe we should look to ways to install solar and wind energy, or alternative raw materials to help bring this percentage down.

 

I am not a vegetarian, and do not plan on ever becoming a vegetarian. With this being said, I do think it is important to know what kind of impact my lifestyle has on the environment, and I hope to someday work at solving today's pollution and resource issues cause with raising livestock.