The Effects Of Industrial Farming By Bill Mckibben And Blake Hurst

887 Words2 Pages

The Effects of Industrial Farming After reading McKibben and Hurst’s articles in the book Food Matters, both authors present arguments on “industrial farming”, and although Hurst provides a realistic sense on farming, McKibben’s suggestions should be what we think about. On the topic of environmental impacts due to “industrial farming”, Bill McKibben and Blake Hurst share completely different perspectives. McKibben believes that industrial farming has simply left an unexcusable bad impact on the environment, saying that it is unethical and that the meat we eat is potentially killing our environment and us as well. McKibben states that “we should simply stop eating factory-farmed meat, and the effects on climate change would be one of the many benefits.” (page 201). McKibben addresses that the techno fixes brought in industrial farming are simply not enough to help our environment. 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 …show more content…

On page 201, McKibben states that “Industrial livestock production is essentially indefensible-ethically, ecologically, and otherwise.” An example McKibben uses is the bad treatment of cows. Cows stand on feedlots and then are slaughtered, even though we have land for them to roam on. McKibben is certain it is wrong for animals to be treated this way, when back in the day, they were able to move around with reason. In addition to the “dilemma of killing something and then putting it in your mouth” (page 203). McKibben addresses that it doesn’t help the atmosphere at all, and therefore, factory farming can not be

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