This is not an essay about animal rights.
Yes, I like animals – even the less charismatic ones. Yes, I don’t eat meat because I see serious ethical issues in the way the industry operates, but there’s more to it than that. There are environmental travesties that are not being addressed because it is less expensive and more convenient to continue living with the status quo.
But in the face of the most immense environmental challenge in history, one that has already given us a glimpse of its wrath and has a great deal more in store, the status quo is no longer acceptable. We need to get off our lazy asses and do more.
Which is why we should all be vegetarians.
It’s really not as radical as it sounds. In less prosperous times, of course, eating meat two or three times a day was nothing more than a fantasy. But because mass meat consumption is so ingrained in our culture today, the repercussions are an afterthought – if they’re even a thought at all.
Industrial livestock production accounts for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than the transport sector – eight percent of world water use, and is likely the largest sectoral water pollution source, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
The term “livestock production” may sound odd, because, after all, should we really be “producing” livestock? The corporate images of happy cows and chickens going about their days on the farm certainly don’t suggest production; they suggest old school, family farming where resources are used wisely and livestock are raised responsibly. No, the public faces of these corporations feature no indication of the environmental degradation and breeches of ethics going on behind closed doors.
The numbers are staggering, but few people consider them.
For starters, America’s 100 million beef cattle consume 60 percent of American commodity corn, which is grown using pesticides and fertilizer whose massive nitrogen runoff disrupts marine ecosystems. Factory farms, officially called CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, have normalized the feeding of corn to cattle, making the production process, and consequently the finished product, extremely cheap.
However, it is costly in other ways: The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 20 percent of anthropogenic methane emissions from 2004 can be attributed to livestock’s digestion of cheap feed. Traditionally, cows and farms have a symbiotic relationship in which cows graze on grass, fertilize it with manure, and the sun grows the grass back again. These days, cows are fed corn (with the assistance of myriad drugs and antibiotics, the corn accelerates the growth process, bringing livestock to slaughter weight in a third of the time), and they don’t graze; instead they are confined in pens with hundreds of others. Antibiotics keep rampant disease from killing off the cattle (and pigs and chickens) but they also produce disease-resistant bacteria that we ingest.
Not only is forcing livestock to live in their own feces disgusting, it’s also dangerous. The bacteria in the manure, including E. coli, can move from feces, to cow hide, to hamburger. Once it needs to be cleared out, the manure is typically transported from the animal confinement facility to a nearby tank or lagoon where it decomposes and releases hazardous hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, carbon dioxide and methane.
And then there’s the oil. More factory farms means fewer family farms, which means more meat being transported over long distances. Plus, with the rate at which cattle are fed corn, about 25 pounds a day, it is estimated that each cow consumes the equivalent of 35 gallons of oil. Multiply that by 100 million cattle – well, you do the math.
So. What to do?
We like meat, but we don’t need meat.
If you can’t quit, that’s OK. You can still cut back, or at least pay attention to where you’re buying your meats; some are more sustainable than others.
But if we were all vegetarians, think of the difference it would make.
It’s something to consider.