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Meat"Meat and poultry consumption has a large impact on common water pollution, water use, and most important, land use. About 800 million acres, or 40 percent of the U.S. land area, is used for grazing livestock, most of which is for household food consumption. An additional 60 million acres is used to grow grain for feeding livestock. Although cropland can support some wildlife, and range and pasture can support considerably more, our index of ecologically significant land use nonetheless indicates that household meat and poultry consumption alone is responsible for about a quarter of threats to natural ecosystems and wildlife." "Raising livestock for meat consumption has other impacts as well. Irrigating crops for feed production puts a major drain on water resources. (About 18 percent of total consumptive water use is attributable to feed for livestock.) Animal wastes are responsible for about 16 percent of common water quality problems traceable to household consumption. The sheer quantity of animal wastes generated is astounding--some 2 billion tons of wet manure a year, over ten times the amount of municipal solid waste generation. The danger posed by such wastes to aquatic habitats and drinking water was highlighted by the case of the failed North Carolina dike...that released an estimated 25 million gallons of hog waste into the surrounding environment." "Among the different kinds of livestock, beef cattle appear to pose the most serious problem, with chickens coming in second and pigs third. In 1995, 103 million cattle (including about 10 million milk cows), 60 million hogs and pigs, 10 million sheep and lambs, and about 7 billion chickens were being raised in the United States. [Statistical Abstract of the United States 1995, table 1140, 690, and table 1145, 692.] The cattle account for about 45 percent, chickens for 34 percent, and pigs for 12 percent of animal waste production. The remaining 9 percent comes from turkeys, sheep, goats, and other livestock. Cattle are also responsible for most livestock land use." "Although raising cows to produce milk involves similar kinds of activities as raising beef cattle, the overall impacts on the environment are much smaller. According to our analysis, dairy production accounts for 4 percent of common water pollution and 7 percent of water use, whereas meat production is responsible for 20 percent and 18 percent of these impacts." Michael Brower, Ph. D and Warren Leon, Ph. D. and the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists." Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999. pp. 59,61. |
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