8 Steps to Sustainable Meat and Milk
- 2015-09-14
- Popular Science
Meals featuring meats and dairy often come with a side order of guilt these days, because industrial-scale animal husbandry, better known as factory farming, can cause significant environmental destruction.
Globally, deforestation driven by clearing land for cattle alone accounts for close to one-fifth of global greenhouse gas pollution. The amount of poop, urine, and farts produced by hundreds or thousands of cows in CAFOs (concentrated animal feedlot operations) often leads to water pollution and air pollution, the latter largely methane, a powerful heat-trapping gas that contributes to destabilizing the climate. Livestock account “for 14.5% of human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions, exceeding that from transportation,” notes the report.
To add to the environmental insults, meat animals are fed about 1 billion metric tons a year of the same cereal grains that humans consume, increasing the pressure on supplies of food and fresh water.
But globally, more and more people are turning to farmed animals for dietary protein. Meat production is on track to more than double by 2050. In response, an international research team suggests eight ways to make ruminant agriculture—raising cows, goats, sheep, buffalo, camels, llamas, reindeer, and yaks for meat and dairy—environmentally sustainable.Published this week in the journal Nature, the strategies favor diverse approaches tailored to local conditions, rather than a universal approach that ignores local cultures, geographies, economies, and environmental realities.