What's Your Beef With Cattle, Paully?

Let's get the guilt or no guilt thing done. NO Guilt - Athena drug me 6.7 miles in 1:22 for 12:14 miles today.

We have a real need to find a sustainable way to feed the world. When I say sustainable I mean in a way that doesn't result in massive damage to the earth including but not limited to soil degradation, pollution, deforestation, desertification and with as little as possible green house gas emissions.

That being said, even the most organic free grazing system to raise beef fails the test. But we take it way past unsustainable - we have made beef production absolutely stupid.

An average feed lot cow will weigh 1050 pounds and will have eaten 2700 pounds of grain. That means we are using 157 million metric tons of cereal and vegetable protein to produce only 28 million metric tons of animal protein. That is a net loss of 129 million metric tons of protein!

70 - 80% of US grain production goes to feed livestock and 50% of the water consumed in the US goes to grow grain for cattle feed - HALF of the fresh water!

Each pound of beef requires 1 gallon of gasoline to produce.

So how much does it really cost for a pound of ground beef? It is almost impossible to do the math. Since the grain (corn) grown to feed the cattle is subsidized by our government we don't know what it actually costs to feed them. We also can't quantify the cost of the fresh water as that is also subsidized by the government. Estimates from people who tried to calculate the cost without subsidies ranged from $65 to $200 per pound.

Here is what we do know. Meat production is the single largest producer of greenhouse gasses producing 18% of the world's total. Transportation is who most of us want to blame for emissions but they are only responsible for 13% of the total.

We also know that it takes 25 gallons of fresh water to produce one pound of wheat but 2500 to produce one pound of beef. Since we are nearing a world fresh water shortage - in as little as 50 years - doesn't it make more sense to grow wheat than to grow beef?

Here is what mass production of meat causes:

1. Animal cruelty
2. Antibiotic resistant germs
3. Massive pollution of the soil, water, and air.
4. Soil degradation
5. Rain forest losses and the resulting desertification.

All so McDonald's (the largest buyer of meat in the world) and others can keep selling "food" with almost no nutritional value to the poorest in the world as cheaply as possible. It makes you wonder if McDonald's and others have their investments in Pharmaceuticals.

Be well and more soon....