Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet

[Doondoo]

As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming, the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants, not on lowly bovines.

Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. And as meat becomes a growing mainstay of human diet around the world, changing what we eat may prove as hard as changing what we drive.

It's not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that's the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water.

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems," Henning Steinfeld, senior author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in November.

Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation.




http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0220/p03s01-ussc.html

[Auggie]

1. Eat more vegetables

They're better for you anyhow

[Kolesar]

2. Meat is a luxury

This country could use some humility.

[TexasProgresive]

3. I know that this is falling on closed ears but

The net carbon emitted in the air is the same whether ruminants eat it and belch, fart,breath whatever or the plants decay or we eat them and belch, fart, breath. It is part of the natural cycle in what was a closed system prior to the industrial revolution that began the massive burning of fossil fuels which has destabilized the former closed system. To eliminate natural carbon sources it would be necessary to kill all the plants and all the animals including humans.

What is needed is to find a way to power ourselves without putting artificial carbon in the air. All that carbon that we burn was once atmospheric carbon that became trapped underground and made it possible for higher mammals to evolve.

[Doondoo]

4. You're missing a crucial point.

Captive livestock populations are exponentially larger than what the populations of those species would be if left alone to fend for themselves in the wild. In order to provide supply for human meat and milk consumption, we use breeding practices which swell animal populations to the point that they have a vastly increased the environmental impact. If not for human efforts to increase animal populations to fuel our increasingly higher demand for meat and milk, there would be nowhere NEAR so many cows, chickens and pigs on the planet as there are now.

[hobbit709]

5. Total amount of livestock now

is not greater than total amount of ruminants 200 years ago. Just different amounts for each species. Methane is methane-whether produced by domesticated cattle or wild bisons, antelopes, wildebeests or other large grazing animals.

[Doondoo]

6. Absolutely not true.

Livestock populations have increased exponentially just within the past century (see link).

http://books.google.com/books?id=J4XwzmEJjwsC&pg=RA1-PA264&lpg=RA1-PA264&dq=livestock+population+history&source=web&ots=TCdrIcRNve&sig=ter3kMihRWEA8DQfjDGoovtH1Qw

[hobbit709]

8. Nice chart

but doesn't prove or disprove either my or your point. Chart only shows population of domesticated animals not wild. Increase of CO2 in atmosphere is due mainly to fossil fuel burning-look up isotope ratios of C14, C13 and C12 in increased CO2 of atmosphere. The methane about to be released from ocean bottoms due to increased temperatures will make the amount released by cattle seem like a fart in a Cat 5 hurricane.

[Doondoo]

9. I have to call your assertion into question.

One has to wonder where you got worldwide population statistics for wild ruminants living 200 years ago. Frankly, unless you can come up with hard data that you can link, I ain't buyin' it.

What's your source?

[TexasProgresive]

10. I don't know where that data came from but the wild bison

of the North American plains were reported to take as much as 3 days to pass.

Carbon gases in the atmosphere is a serious problem but these scurrilous argument about ruminants causing the problem are self defeating. There is no way for them to add significantly to atmospheric carbon unless they scrap up a coal vein that catches fire from a lightening strike.

You are just giving fuel to the nay sayers.

[Doondoo]

11. The domesticated cattle of today's North America...........

.....would take far more than three days to pass.

[TexasProgresive]

13. That was one herd of many.

Can you get anymore simpleminded. You actually think all the bison were together in one group? Warm up that gray matter and put it to more use then keeping your skull from collasping.:spank: :sarcasm:

[Porcupine]

14. Here's a source:

Mixtures of Bison, antelope, deer, elk and horses along with prairie dogs, rabbits, waterfowl and game birds occupied the midwest before (non-spanish) Europeans came to the US. Those mixtures grazing on the soil allowed the buildup of the famously fertile prairie soils. Such soils were a carbon-sequestration engine of significant proportions.

Killing the herds and breaking the soil for grains is what produced dust bowl conditions in the midwest. Exposed, those rich carbon topsoils dried up and blew away adding to our atmospheres carbon loads.


http://www.warnercnr.colostate.edu/frws/research/cook/cook/cookeff/Efficiency.htm

COMMON-USE STUDIES
In the mountainous ranges of Utah, Cook found that sheep and cattle grazed in common used 20% more of the usable forage than did either species singly. In southern Colorado it was discovered that goats and cattle used mountain-brush range with only a 5% overlap in their diets. Therefore, since available forage was about one-half grass and one-half shrubs, common use by cattle and goats produced almost twice the stocking capacity compared to single use by either species. In the shortgrass plains of northern Colorado it was found that a variety of grazing animals including cattle, bison, sheep, and antelope preferred forbs. The optimal grazing allocation of forage based upon animal size, plant species consumed, and topographic features used was 67% cattle, 20% bison, 12% sheep, and 1% antelope.

http://www.montana.edu/~wwwcbs/nutrbib.html

# De Liberto, T.J. & P.J. Urness. 1994. Comparative digestive physiology of American bison and Hereford cattle. In: Proceedings of 1st International Bison Conference, LaCrosse, WI. July 1993.

ABSTRACT: We reviewed available literature on the nutrition of bison (Bison bison), and provided an overview of our experiments conducted during 1991-92 comparing the digestive physiology of bison and Hereford cattle (Bos taurus). Higher digestion coefficients of dry matter and fiber were found in bison than in cattle, when animals were given free-access to 4,5, and 6% crude protein (CP) rations. However, cattle were apparently capable of compensating for lower digestion coefficients by eating slightly larger quantities of feed. Rumen volatile fatty acids and ammonia nitrogen levels indicated that bison fermented ingesta to a greater extent than cattle, up to 12-hr after feeding. We found no interspecific differences in nitrogen retention on any of the experimental rations. However, serum urea nitrogen and salivary urea nitrogen data suggested more nitrogen was recycled to the rumen in bison than in cattle. We concluded bison digested low-protein, high-fiber feeds more efficiently than cattle, and this was achieved, in part, to a more efficient nitrogen recycling system in bison. (bolding mine)

In other words, bison get more critter out of the range and feed available.

[Shallah Kali]

15. So buffalo have more effecient digestion creating less methane. Also they dont' tear up the soil

they way cattle do. interesting.

[NickB79]

17. Buffalo vs. cattle in North America

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=July&x=20060726145109abretnuh0.9105188

"But the great herds, estimated at 40 million in 1800, had dwindled to a group of less than 600 by 1900."

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:sePGrsB2vZ8J:www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/uscc0207.pdf+cattle+numbers+United+States&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a

"All cattle and calves in the U. S. and Canada combined totaled 111.3 million head on January 1,
2007, down slightly from a year ago. All cows and heifers that have calved, at 48.1 million head,
was down 1 percent from a year ago.

All cattle and calves in Canada as of January 1, 2007, totaled 14.3 million head, down 3 percent
from the 14.8 million on January 1, 2006, and 5 percent below the 15.1 million two years ago. All
cows and heifers that have calved, at 6.0 million, was down 4 percent from the 6.3 million on
January 1, 2006, and 5 percent below the 6.4 million from two years ago. "

So, bison in North America numbered 40 million. Cattle currently number 120 million, 3 times what bison numbered.

[NickB79]

18. Also, we use fossil fuels to raise cattle

Diesel to grow the corn, diesel to transport cattle from farm to slaughterhouse, diesel to transport them from slaughterhouse to market. Natural gas to produce the fertilizers to grow the corn, and natural gas to heat the barns in severe winters. Massive amounts of CO2 are released just to fatten cattle up as fast as possible to make the best turn-over and profit.

[depakid]

7. It's not just the biological processes

it's also the widespread destruction of carbon sinks- rainforests, western range and pinion pine/juniper for cattle grazing- so that lazy folks can drive in to McDonalds for a greasy burger.

[unpossibles]

16. well, good point except that it's off a bit

the plants that the cows eat is part of the equation too. Actually, a huge part of the equation.

I don't think we need to stop eating meat - I am a vegetarian, but to each their own - but I do think a more reasonable consumption is... well, reasonable.

[outofbounds]

12. That brings to mind a thought

If drive th roughs were eliminated I wonder what effect that would have on co2 emissions? That sometimes can have an automobile idling for 5-10 minutes. Sometimes even longer. Not trying to derail the thread but that could be a large cut in co2. :shrug: