Vegan websites claim that it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1Lb of beef?

Question

Ok, vegan websites all over the internet claim that it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. They do not cite any sources for the information.

I wonder if the have done the math? I have ; )

A angus heffer that yields 1000 pounds of beef would take 2.5 million gallons of water according to these websites.

Yeah, I know that sounds pretty unreal doesnt it!

Credible sources like the "University of Arkansas" say it only takes 450 gallons

But wait, there is more. The water that does go into the cow does not vanish, eventually it evaporates and falls as rain. If the water vanished, then the earth would have no water by now lol

Please do not think that I am bashing vegans. I would never do so.

I just find this figure totally unreal as if it is make believe. Many of the other facts on vegan websites about meat are also false.

Many even claim that "meat makes you fat", ect, ect

Do you think the website is being truthfull? There is the question

http://www.vegsource.com/articles/pimentel_water.htm

Opps, the University of Arkansas says it takes 450 gallons for a calf to reach 10 months which is the age of slaughter

No matter which way you slice it, there is no way that it takes millions of gallons of water to produce a single cow. Count the rain, count the dew, count the water used on the grains its fed, it still wont amount to millions of gallons

Answer 1

Once again, with blinders on, most have missed the point. The water that is used doesn't disappear for ever. It's replaced into the system. Indeed, the Earth would have no water going with their thinking.

Sometimes I wonder about some of these people.

Answer 2

You are missing some key information which is included in that 2,500 gallons (it's likely much more actually).

To produce meat, water is used in more ways than just the animal drinking. It is used in every step of production from growing the food for the animals, to washing all their urine and deification away down the drain. Water is used on a constant basis in the production of meat and it is used very frivolously (because the government basically gives the water away for next to nothing), at least in N. America. Why do you think that the Ogallala Aquifer has nearly been completely drain in recent years? Meat production. The USA is going dry due to meat production. The majority of crops in the USA are not for humans, but for animals. It's a very wasteful method of producing food, but it makes the richer richer and the poor poorer, and that's the way big business likes it.

Answer 3

I'm not vegan because I want to save water so I don't really care.

That article wasn't written to convert you or anyone else, so why do you pick out that one?

The cattle drink water all day long and on top of that, feedlot cattle are fed grain. What do you think is used to grow all of that grain? Water maybe?

Until they are killed, what are the cattle doing? Eating, eating, eating , eating, eating, pissing, sh*tting and farting.

The protein in that beef comes from somewhere, doesn't it?

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Why does it matter if the water disappears or not. The water still has to go through its cycle before we have access to it again. Water has never left the Earth, that hasn't changed the fact that we've had so many droughts and water shortages.

Let's also ignore all of the water pollution that occurs due to the abundance of waste that is created by all of the animals that are used and raised in agribusiness.

Answer 4

I think the studies they are referring to (and you could find many sources if you're really interested) have measured the likely amount of water used to grow feed over the lifetime of the cow to keep it alive all of its life. That is, to make a point that it is more water conservative to eat more grain etc than it is to eat more livestock. That's a simple fact which is widely known by anyone in agriculture. Perhaps the Uni of Arkansas study has only measured the water used for the cow's direct consumption.

Answer 5

the low end estimates (450 gallons) are done by incomplete studies, if you read Peter Singer's ( a professor of bio ethics at princeton) book "the way we eat" it explains the problems and the missing information in this study much better than i could. by the way, aside from water, they also take up about 2 barrels of oil per cow...

Answer 6

well, the grain fed to the cow had to consume water, too (remember you could have easily eaten the grain). Plus both the meat and the grain require water during processing.

I had heard, though, it was ~ 800 gal of water per/pound of beef.

Even worse, you are indirectly consuming hydrocarbons hundreds of times the caloric values of each beef calorie you eat. This is due to grain production (requiring fuel, irrigation, agri-chemicals -fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides), plus then the cows require major energy inputs to maintain, as well.

So yes, meat production requires a high demand for water, hydrocarbons, space as well as emits pathogens into groundwater and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. There is something to be said for simply reducing your demand...

Answer 7

Water required to produce one pound of U.S.beef: 2,500 gallons
(according to Dr. George Borgstrom, Chairman of Food Science and Human Nutrition Dept of College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Michigan State University,"Impacts on Demand for and Quality of land and Water," Presentation to the 1981 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science)
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Water required to produce 1 pound of California beef: 2,464 gallons" (from "Water Inputs in California Food Production," Water Education Foundation, Sacramento, CA )

http://aic.ucdavis.edu/aboutus/marcia.html
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Water required for 1 kilogram of beef:100,000 litres

"while beef is at the upper end 2,500MJ//"

http://www.clw.csiro.au/publications/water_for_food.pdf

Answer 8

Exaggeration is widely used in order to 'shock' people into changing their thinking. It isn't only vegetarians/vegans that use this tactic. Anti-smoking campaigns use it a lot, too.

The problem with using that kind of tactic, though, is that intelligent people will generally look at incredible information and then check to see whether or not it is accurate. If it is incorrect or deceptive, it immediately throws all other information from that source into question.

Personally I prefer to receive accurate information and then make my own decision because regurgitating bad information can make you look like a complete idiot when you come across someone that knows what they are talking about.

I have no idea how much water a cow consumes, but I am similarly ignorant of the water consumption of a carrot.

Answer 9

And don't forget that runoff from animal industrial facilities also pollutes the groundwater.

Answer 10

Actually they are correct. Check out www.peta.com