(May 30, 2014 at 12:14 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Giving it the short shrift. Meat is a stable, dense place to store the excess energy created by our agricultural system and process it into a more "available" arrangement of nutrients for human beings (and other products).
I found an interesting article in the business section of the New York Times.
The staggering cost of rising world meat production
Quote:Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world's tropical rain forests.
Though some 800 million people now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This is the case in spite of the inherent inefficiencies: About two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.
The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States - much of which now serves the demand for meat - contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in U.S. rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. Americans each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the U.S. government's recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein.
Factory farming, which makes it possible for people to consume more protein than is healthy for us, has other adverse affects on human health.
Quote:Pesticides are used to control organisms which are considered harmful[83] and they save farmers money by preventing product losses to pests.[84] In the US, about a quarter of pesticides used are used in houses, yards, parks, golf courses, and swimming pools[85] and about 70% are used in agriculture.[84] However, pesticides can make their way into consumers' bodies which can cause health problems. One source of this is bioaccumulation in animals raised on factory farms.[85][86][87]
n the United States, the use of antibiotics in livestock is still prevalent. The FDA reports that 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in 2009 were administered to livestock animals, and that many of these antibiotics are identical or closely related to drugs used for treating illnesses in humans. Consequently, many of these drugs are losing their effectiveness on humans, and the total healthcare costs associated with drug-resistant bacterial infections in the United States are between $16.6 billion and $26 billion annually.[95]
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