Why Cattle Production is Killing Our Planet

    "It’s fair to say that meat eating is critical to our history," Joseph Ferraro, an anthropologist at Baylor University says, "and without the consumption of meat, we would not have large brains, and wouldn’t be where we are today." Although studies show that it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain without eating meat and that this meat filled diet was a crucial element of human evolution, now it is fully possible for humans to maintain perfect health through a vegan diet. But just because we can stop eating meat and be totally nourished, why should we? Globally, 14.5% of all greenhouse gas pollution can be attributed to livestock production. However, cattle production alone dominates almost 65% of this statistic. Using calculations made from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, eating 0.61 pounds of the beef was found to have an equal impact on climate change as burning enough fuel to drive an average American car 70 miles.

There are three main ways cattle production is hurting our planet. First, over 37 percent of methane emissions result from factory farming. In addition to methane, the energy used for factory farming emits 90 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. Cattle production doesn’t just pollute the air, it’s also severely polluting our water. All factory farms are home to massive cesspools that store animal waste. These cesspools often leak into adjacent waterways. These leaks can cause “dead zones”, massive fish kills, and disease outbreaks. In addition to polluting water, factory farming has sucked up 70 percent of the world’s fresh water supplies. Finally, cattle production uses an incredible amount of fossil fuels. Between transportation, synthetic fertilizers/pesticides, and the amount of energy it takes to run these farms, factory farms uses about 5.5 gallons of fossils fuels per acre. Taking into consideration that the average American farm is over 400 acres, that's a lot of fossil fuels.

So how can we put an end to this? While becoming vegetarian or vegan are certainly options, it’s sometimes a difficult choice to make. I myself understand the savory feeling of biting into a delicious beef burger. Luckily, there are other options. It always helps to purchase only local and organic produce, or to better yet grow your own. For those who don’t feel quite ready to give up meat, an interesting article was recently written introducing the idea of a “test tube burger”. Dr. Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands released his findings after five years of research: a lab-grown “test tube” beef burger. Using a few cells taken from a cow scientists were able to create 10 tons of meat. Tasters of the burger reported that they detected no difference between the test tube burger and a normal beef burger. If anything, they announced that the test tube burger was more flavorful, and with less fat. Sergey Brin, founder of Google and the single donor who provided funding (nearly $1 million so far) for Post’s research, has said he sees potential in this test tube burger to save our planet. 

 The "Test Tube" Burger