Feedlot Cattle Pros And Cons

986 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Conclusion of climate change and livestock

Some of the main misconceptions about feedlot cattle is that they are one of the leading causes of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are among the main causes of global warming and many don’t know a lot about cattle or global warming in general and are quick to find something to blame even with sufficient information to support it. We need the cattle industry for most of everyday needs not just meat and feedlots are the only efficient option to fill our needs. Although cattle produce methane, they aren’t a large contributor of greenhouse gasses. Feedlot cattle produce less greenhouse emissions than grass fed/organic cattle, and feedlots work to reduce methane emissions. Although cattle do prodce me ethane, it is not a large enough amount to have a significant affect on the planet. According to the EPA cattle only produce 1.5% of the methane in the atmosphere. That is not a very large percentage, especiaally when compared to the dangerous gasses released by other sources. Livestock as a whole only produce 2.8% methane and 3.1% of greenhouse gases in general. This is a huge difference of numbers compared to groups such as PETA or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, that claim that cattle are the cause of almost 60% of greenhouse gases. This organization also accuses agriculture of adding …show more content…

Cattle provide many goods and services that many people overlook. The effects of methane are not likely affected strongly by the gas released by cattle. There is a very small amount of methane produced by the excretion from cattle. Greenhouse gasses are produced much more by machines and other man made materials. There is no way to stop cows from producing this gas, and there is no sense in attempting to rid the world of these "dangerous gas producers" the world depends on many products provided by these animals. Methane is a very dangerous gas but is not produced in harmful amounts by

Show More
Related

  • The Carnivores Dilemma, by Nicolette Hahn Niman

    1020 Words  | 3 Pages

    Millions of animals are consumed everyday; humans are creating a mass animal holocaust, but is this animal holocaust changing the climate? In the essay “ The Carnivores Dilemma,” written by Nicolette Hahn Niman, a lawyer and livestock rancher, asserts that food production, most importantly beef production, is a global contributor to climate change. Nicolette Niman has reports by United Nations and the University of Chicago and the reports “condemn meat-eating,” and the reports also say that beef production is closely related to global warming. Niman highlights, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides are the leading greenhouses gases involved in increasing global warming. A vast majority of people across the world consumes meat and very little people are vegetarian, or the people that don’t eat meat, but are there connections between people and meat production industry when it comes to eating food and the effect it has on the climate? The greenhouse gases, methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxides are not only to blame, but we should be looking at people and industrialized farming for the leading cause of greenhouse gases in agriculture and the arm-twisting dilemma we have been lured into, which is meat production itself.

    Read More

  • The Keystone XL Pipeline and Public Response

    2961 Words  | 6 Pages

    Pattanayek, Mala and DeShields, Bridgette. “Characterizing Risks to Livestock From Petroleum Hydrocarbons” Blasland, Bouck and Lee, Inc. University of Oklahoma-Tulsa, 2003. Web. 10 December 2015.

    Read More

  • Beef's Argument Over Grain-Fed Cattle

    1665 Words  | 4 Pages

    In cattle feedlots, the conditions are very bad. Most of the time, the feeder calves are standing in mud that is two feet deep. In these moist conditions, bacteria thrive. The cattle can suffer from foot problems, like foot rot. foot rot is a disease of the hoof which the skin between the toes of the hooves rots away and decomposes. If left untreated, the foot will swell and will rot off. This is extremely painful for the animal(Hasheider 34). In these feed yards, the feed is dumped into concrete feed bunks three times a day, and that is all the cattle get to eat. They are not offered grass or any type of forage, the forage, also known as hay...

    Read More

  • The Effects Of Industrial Farming By Bill Mckibben And Blake Hurst

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    To help end these negative effects, McKibben ends his argument suggesting that herding our cows and letting them roam and graze could also help, “put much of the atmosphere’s oversupply of greenhouse gases back in the soil inside half a century” (page 202). Although this won’t make a radical change, it could help the environment. McKibben simply believes that

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Horse Slaughter

    1747 Words  | 4 Pages

    The use of horses for human consumption dates back to the earliest use of animals for human consumption. Horses are used for food in many counties but are also considered inhumane in other countries. In the United States specifically, horsemeat is not the norm for consumed meat. There seems to be a problem that has arisen. It is suspected that horses being slaughtered at horse slaughtering factories are not the most up to date, pain free for the horse, and human as people suspect them to be like beef kill floors. There are many pros and cons to horse slaughter that accompany the pressure groups on each side of horse slaughter. Another big controversy with horse slaughter is the argument of legalizing horse slaughter and what those details will entail in the law.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Speech: Cattle Revealing

    674 Words  | 2 Pages

    Every beef cattle produced is injected with steroids. With the injection of steroids it makes the cow grow at an alarming rate, and helps turn food into muscle at a quicker rate. But this is the obvious information. What are they putting into both dairy cattle and beef cattle that could cause harm to us? There is a harmful hormone called IGF. Now, this hormone is not directly put into the cattle. But, all cattle are given rBGH (to put simply it helps them produce more milk/meat). But, rBGH is directly linked to IGF, a hormone that mimics the effects of the growth of human hormones in dangerous ways. It is said that cattle containing rBGH produce 10 times to IGF than cattle without rBGH. “In a 2004 study, patients with above-average IGF levels had nearly a 50% higher risk of prostate cancer and a 65% higher risk of hormone-dependent premenopausal breast cancer than people with below-average levels.” says Carina Storrs of Health.com. Also, a lot of cattle are dosed with high amounts of antibiotics, like penicillin. It is said that a lot of the antibiotics that humans use become ineffective from being exposed to antibiotic resistant bacteria from eating beef! These are just a few of MANY drugs put into cattle. Do you see how consuming high amounts of beef could be harmful to

    Read More

  • The Benefits Of Meatless Mondays

    1104 Words  | 3 Pages

    This statement is a myth and can be backed up by Meat Mythcrushers. According to the video, Myth: Going Meatless One Day a Week Can Have a Significant Environmental Impact, “reducing meat consumption one day per week as recommended by the Meatless Monday campaign has a negligible impact on greenhouse gas emissions.” This means that of the 3.4 percent of the gas emissions that are from animal agriculture, beef only contribute 1.4 percent. Even if the whole world were to reduce their beef consumption for one week, their carbon footprint would be just a meager .2 percent (2013). This misconception comes from people believing that livestock production is causing large emissions of greenhouse gas emissions when it is more so the transportation and energy production causing the problem. Meat is both economically and nutritionally efficient. Today, livestock farms require less land, water and energy than was required in the past

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Horse Slaughter

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    The current situation today, is that horses and donkeys have exceeded the amount to keep an ecological balance; from 26,600 wildlife to 38,300 wildlife. The horse program enacted by the bill passed in 1971, costs the government approximately $49 million a year. It takes the majority of the budget to manage the already captured horses; taking into account the life of the horses, it has been concluded that the total cost would be closer to $1 billion (Dean Bolstad, Roundup of Wild Horses…). A Federal law, allows the Bureau of Land Management to kill “excess horses to maintain what it calls ‘a thriving natural ecological balance’” (Ginger Kathrens). However, due to retaliation of animal right groups, the BLM has not taken any measures to eliminate

    Read More

  • Movie Analysis Of The Movie: Cowspiracy

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cowspiracy was a very interesting movie. It included a lot of facts that surprised me and made me think about the things going on in the environment. One of the facts that surprised me was the fact that the meat and dairy industry produces more greenhouse gases than cars, boats, motor bikes, etc. In fact, Meat and animal agriculture industries are the leading industry for methane and carbon dioxide consumption. I was a litte confused when I heard this initially because I always assumed that cars were an obvious choice for the biggest pollutant. All of the facts about water really amazed me. Water really is a part of everything. The documentary stated that raising livestock consumes 34 trillion of water, eggs are almost 477 gallons of water, and cheese is almost 900 gallons of water. The facts that really settled in me were the

    Read More

  • Do Factory Farms Cause Climate Change?

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    Manure from lagoons emit methane and nitrous oxide which are worse than carbon dioxide (considered the primary greenhouse gas). Ruminant livestock, meaning an animal has a four-compartment stomach, are cause of methane production due to their digestive process. Some examples of a ruminant animal are sheep, goats, and cattle. It is a process called enteric fermentation which produces the methane that gets into the air (Hribar 2010). Although factory farms are believed to be a cause of climate change and greenhouse gases, researchers do not know if the size of the farm affects global warming and if eliminating factory farms would fix this problem (Gurian-Sherman 2008). Even though eliminating factory farms may not change global warming, it can eliminate most of the other negative effects factory farms have on the world and human

    Read More

  • To what extent is Meat Consumption responsible for Global Warming?

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... decomposing manure and other factors, including the energy needed to store and transport meat’’ were all responsible for that18% of greenhouse gas emissions in the estimations. The amount of gas emission from these factory farms has accelerated climate change faster than all of the ways in which we burn fossil fuels to create energy. Even with these high numbers, people are still continuing industrial agriculture and there aren’t enough concerns out there to show how serious this situation is. Meat is equivalent to cars, which both are deeply set in American culture. Not much protest was hold strongly against the production of meat because many environmental groups realize that people may get very upset if meat production was cut off. This is only because they aren’t well aware that meat is slowly killing our planet and should be taken care of before it’s too late.

    Read More

  • Environmental Impact of Meat Consumption and Production

    1236 Words  | 3 Pages

    In fact, the amount of resources that go into production of animals for consumption is somewhat startling. When factoring in transportation, grains for feeding, etc. and directly comparing them to the output of protein for consumption, a vegetarian diet seems much more appealing. David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist specializing in Agriculture and Life Science, stated beef production “requires a [fossil-fuel] energy output to protein output ratio of 54:1” and that 100,000 liters of water goes into just one kilogram of beef. Also, cows are notorious for producing large amounts of methane, totaling 500 liters per cow per day (Goffman 3). Methane traps heat in the environment, heating the surface of the earth causing problematic situations to occur all over the earth, including the ice caps melting and eliminating species. And when cattle, which are...

    Read More

  • The Environmental Effects Of Eating Meat

    1335 Words  | 3 Pages

    This is a much bigger deal than people think. In fact, according to an article by Peta, How Does Eating Meat Harm the Environment, it has such an effect on the environment that the Union of Concerned Scientist list meat eaters as the second biggest environmental hazard facing the earth. The number one affect being fossil fuels produced by cars. It was also found in a report published by the Worldwatch Institute that nearly 51 percent of all greenhouse gasses are produced from animal agriculture. This is a very staggering number when a lot of research is being done to make vehicles more environmentally friendly when we could make a huge impact just by changing the way we eat. It is even more astounding that it takes the same number of fossil fuels to produce one hamburger as it takes to dive one car 20 miles (Peta How Does Eating Meat Harm the Environment). The production of this meat is also a big cost. It takes more than 80 percent of the corn we grow and more than 95 percent of oat are feed to livestock. The world’s cattle alone are feed the equal amount that would be needed to feed 8.7 billion people. That’s more than the entire world population. If we cut back on our consumption of meat we could take corn and oats that we produce and feed the world. When producing meat many of our natural resources are used. We use water, fossil fuels and top soil, and we are

    Read More

  • Saving the Environment with Veganism

    908 Words  | 2 Pages

    A United Nations report states that land used for animal agriculture, both for grazing and production of crops fed to livestock, takes up an astounding 30% of land on Earth. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") To meet the industry’s demands, over 260 million acres of forest in the U.S. have been cleared to grow grain fed to farm animals. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") With that in mind, the meat industry also dumps disease-causing pathogens through animal waste that pollutes water and forces the need for waste lagoons to be constructed, which are susceptible to leaking and flooding. ("Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms”) Scientists say that about 14% of the world’s greenhouse gases are released by said agriculture industries, which is a growing concern for climate change and global warming. (Silverman) The meat industry uses one-third of all the fossil fuels consumed in the United States. (Moore) There is no question that farming animals has a negative effect on the environment and steps should be taken to mitigate air and water pollution risks and future deforestation. If animal agriculture was phased out, land used for animal grazing could be returned to forest land and some of it converted into fields for cultivating crops for humans. A global shift toward veganism, resulting in the elimination of the meat and animal agriculture industries, would protect the environment from various detrimental effects.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Eating Meat

    1598 Words  | 4 Pages

    When these agricultural resources are given to the animals involved in meat production, these resources are lost. Besides the loss of land, the process of animal production is contributing to pollution and other greenhouse gases that are doing irreplaceable damage to the environment and contribute to untold negative health

    Read More

More about Feedlot Cattle Pros And Cons

Open Document