If you are an omnivore with a conscience, you might have been feeling a little guilty of late. A couple of big data papers were released recently showing that beef production produced more emissions and used more resources than other livestock production systems. The study that received the most coverage looked at land, water and nitrogen impacts of cattle production. The authors note in the article (and clearly state in the title) that the data and results are only relevant to the US livestock industry. They only considered land, irrigation water and nitrogen fertilisers used for feed production (e.g. corn, soybean, grain etc.), mostly in the US Midwest and they do not include pastured beef in analyses. So with these results, we can only talk about industrially-farmed beef, dairy, pork and poultry in the United States (i.e. feedlots and factory farms), but few media reports acknowledged this.
Industrial livestock production is bad for livestock, farmers, the environment and the people that eat the produce – to a lot of people, that won’t be news. So it is great that studies like these can show how much industrial livestock also affects the bottom line and national accounts, as these are the things that might effect change where it needs to happen. In an ideal world, there would be no supermarket shelves stocked with faceless beef. So here are a few positive facts to make that ideal seem possible.
Ecology is not a dirty word 