The United States Department of Agriculture reports that livestock produce three times more waste than humans. For one pound of beef it requires forty-four pounds of livestock waste. All that waste pollutes, along with confined facilities, plowing, fertilizers, growth hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides. Animal agriculture uses fifty percent of antibiotics and thirty-seven percent of pesticide and in America. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that ninety-five percent of pesticide residue found in American diets comes from animal agriculture.…
It’s an easy visual, and cars are certainly a big part of the issue, but animal agriculture actually contributes more to greenhouse gases than the exhaust from all combined means of transportation. Methane is produced in staggering amounts through animal agriculture, 150 billion gallons a day from cows alone. Yeah, yeah cow farts, laugh all you like, but methane is far more destructive and has 86 percent more potential for global warming than carbon dioxide on a twenty year time frame. (Cowspiracy) The amount of waste from animal agriculture, is again, frightening; a single dairy cow produces roughly 120 pounds of manure each day. (Animal-Waste) The waste from factory farming ultimately runs off into rivers, and pollutes the groundwater, often causing eutrophication and creating dead zones (Learn-Vegan).…
Livestock Production and Global Warming Global Warming is the rising issue for all the creatures on the Earth, and Scientists have been discovering the reasons and solution for the global environmental issue for decades. The common reasons people know about global warming are the industries and transportations or even the earth’s natural processes. However, there is another main source of global warming, which is livestock production. In this synthesis paper, the environmental impact of livestock production, the possible solution of environmental issues caused by livestock production, and the impact of climate change on livestock production will be introduced. According to the book called Livestock the long shadow, livestock production…
This documentary listed scary statistics like cows use 1/3 of our natural water, and 45% of the land, they are the leading cause of rainforest deforestation, species extinction, and ocean dead zones. Cows use a huge amount of water, fracking uses 100 billion gallons of water while agriculture uses 34 trillion. This is a huge issue because methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide, this is bad because all the cows in the world produce 150 billion gallons of methane per day, this is taking its toll on the environment and not many people are aware of this which leads to no one doing anything about it. To put it into perspective there are 70 billion farm animals on the planet, and the 7 billion humans on earth use 5.2 million gallons of water, 2.1 billion pounds of food, while farm animals use 45 billion gallons of water and 135 pounds…
The environment takes the brunt of factory farming and is unable to absorb the negative effects. Intensive animal farming, more commonly known as factory farming, contributes greatly to the warming of the planet. Agriculture contributes to nine percent of all greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere (EPA, 2016). Compared to 26% of emissions coming from transportation, the gases emitted in the factory farming practices are still too high (EPA, 2016) Beef cattle are the highest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 37% of all greenhouse gases(Reynolds, 2013). Cattle produce a high amount of methane through the process in which they digest their food called rumination.…
In 2011, statistics from the CDC supports Schlosser statement by reporting that 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3, 000 die from foodborne illness yearly; 78 percent of ground beef contained pathogens that were spread primarily by fecal matter (cdc.gov). When the meat industry can sell tainted meat and millions…
2014.) Cowspiracy also touches on the fact that livestock is responsible for 65% of nitrous oxide emissions which has 296 times more impact on the environment than carbon dioxide. A recommended documentary for more information and facts about the negative impact of animal agriculture is Cowspiracy. Every single person can make a difference and lessen their carbon footprint. (Andersen…
These gases trap energy from the sun, which in turn provides warmth for the Earth. Nevertheless, if too much heat is trapped within the atmosphere, the world will in turn heat up, creating problems for humans, animals, and plants. According to Global Green Foundation’s Outreach Coordinator, Marisa Miller Wolfson, animal agriculture creates more than one hundred million tons of methane each year, and paired with the increasing demand for meat across the globe, the sheer amount of this gas will end with devastating results. The act of breathing committed by livestock and its feces created are the primary producers of the aforementioned gas. Whereas a single cow can exhale six hundred and thirty four quarts of methane per day, when multiplied by the billions, paired with the production of five hundred million tons of manure annually, it begins to show why this matter has to be taken seriously.…
It is now common knowledge that agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change worldwide, generating more methane gas than any other fossil fuel and carbon dioxide from cars combined. This ultimately makes it the leading cause for greenhouse emissions, causing the ozone layer to weaken leading to warming of the Earth. Cattle are producing about 150 billion gallons of methane every day through faeces, which is far more damaging to the planet than carbon dioxide. As demand for dairy is increasing, 98% of forests worldwide has already been cleared to create land for pastures. This is equivalent to a complete football field full of forest vegetation being destroyed every single second (Cowspiracy, 2014)!…
Virtually 100% of poultry, 90% of pigs and calves, and 60% of cattle receive antibacterial additives to their feed (Catalano). Genetic engineering and diet alterations can be very destructive, leading to an abundance of health issues, and in some cases even death. The amount of veal consumption in the United States has shown a decrease of around 2 pounds in the time frame from 1996 to 2014 (Kronsberg). This is a positive change, however, some may still be ignorant to the fact that veal comes from the meat of baby calves, who, unfortunately, seem to receive the worst treatment out of all farm animals. In order to ensure that the flesh of a calf stays white, their iron intake is decreased substantially.…