Meat production hurts the environment?

Question

A friend of mine (as well as a letter to the editor I recently read) said that the meat industry hurts the environment. How is this so?

(I am not a vegetarian, but an explanation of this would be yet another reason for me to become one)

Thanks.

Answer 1

When asking about this or that hurting the environment, the easiest thing to look at are the flows across boundaries - the imports and exports. Feedlot style meat production uses the local environment very intensely. Large amounts of feed and water are imported to the production facility. The facility; in the course of producing food for humans, produces large amounts of animal wastes from that feed. Those wastes include greenhouse gasses and sewage in forms and concentrations that can overwhelm the local environment. The CO2, H2O, and minerals in growing plants come from the atmosphere and the soil, they return there whether humans, other animals, or decay organisms use the plants for food. Environmental damage occurs when the minerals get stripped off the land and exported to the oceans through city sewer systems or farm runoff. It impoverishes the land and causes dead zones in the ocean. Along the way, mishandling of industrial chemicals and antibiotics and excessive reliance on high fuel usage techniques adds to the damage.
To the extent that meat production adds an extra step in the human food production process, it adds to the environmental damage done. We need to learn to handle human food production worldwide on a sustainable basis. I'd really like to see us learn that task well enough that I could enjoy a turtle taco again.

Answer 2

Well all the grain that is used to feed the animals that are to be eaten can basically feed a whole lot of people. This is a waste of energy and resources..having to grow food for the cows, then having to slaughter them, etc...would be more energy efficient to just eat the grain, rather than the cows. Also, cows flatulence and burping causes pollution thought to cause global warming.

Answer 3

Its more efficient to eat the grain rather than feed it to animals and then eat the animal. Also there is a lot of energy wastage happening to transport the feed to animals , then retransport the meat. Preserve the meat etc.
Animals themselves produce lots of greenhouse gases.
Its just plain inefficient in terms of energy usage and oftentimes unhealthy too.

Answer 4

If all the land used to grow crops to feed cattle were used to grow crops that people would eat themselves, we could feed many more people per acre of land than we do now. It is very wasteful to grow crops to feed animals which we in turn eat. The more direct the energy route to us (sun > plant > us is about as direct as you can get) the higher the efficiency.

Answer 5

most of the beef eaten in the US is raised out of the country...farmers cut down acres and acres (i can't think of the estimated number off the top of my head) of rainforest daily to make room for beef cattle. the rainforest supplies a huge percentage of the world's oxygen level (and in turn, takes in a huge percentage of carbon dioxide) therefore, the more trees we lose, the worse the environmental degradation is...of course it is also true that all the land taken up to grow grain to feed cattle could feed most of the world's hungry...

Answer 6

Wrong Many people have cut some forest and raised some cattle. Don't apply your law on these poor peoples back,because we have already done it to our country. The methane that the cattle produce should produce a large lake of methane in our upper atmosphere. It has disappeared where did it go.

Answer 7

Hmmmmm cant quite figure out why that is, is your mate a veggie, myby he is BS you, i used to work in this industry and apart from a few smoky chimneys from the factory's i cant quite work out what else it could do to the enviorment, we all know that cows and sheep, pigs, chickens are all man made so we can eat them so i dont think that producting animals in bulk would do much to the enviroment either

Answer 8

Well, people in Brazil are using "slash and burn" argiculture and are cutting and burning the rainforest down to make room for cattle raising and is one of the main causes for deforestation.