Creating A Better World

According to Dr Andy Thorpe of Portsmouth University, a herd of 200 cows produces more greenhouse gas in a year than a family car produces to drive 3,000 miles.

Dr Thorpe added that while CO2 emissions have increased by 31 per cent in the past 250 years, methane has increased by 149 per cent over the same period.

Farm animals create methane emissions in 2 ways. Animals like cows, sheep and goats are ruminants, which means that they are grass-eaters.and during their normal digestion process they create methane. However, factory-farmed animals which are fed corn, chicken litter (feces, feathers and bedding) blood, ground up pigs and chickens and of course “downed” animals, produce much greater amounts of methane due to the fact that grain, meat and garbage is not their normal diet and they cannot digest it very well. Unlike grass-fed animals, factory farmed are sickly and require millions of pounds of antibiotics just to stay alive.

Another way that livestock produce methane is from their manure.  When cows, pigs and chickens are raised on factory-farms large quantities of manure are produced.  Livestock manure management is done by using large waste treatment systems and holding tanks. In these tanks the manure decomposes but because the tanks are closed there is no oxygen. When the manure decomposes without oxygen large quantities of methane are produced.  Pastured animals, on the other hand, do not create this problem because the manure decomposes naturally.

Factory-farmed livestock generates 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain, and 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

It’s not the animals themselves that are at fault, it’s the way and the amount of livestock that is raised that is the problem.  If we simply raise animals in a pasture in the sunshine eating their normal diet of grass, the greenhouse gasses are greatly reduced, plus the cows and people who eat them are far healthier.  However, most importantly, we need to CUT DOWN on our consumption of meat.

If each one of us cuts back on our animal consumption by only 10%, approximately one billion animals would be spared a lifetime of suffering each year.

Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 per cent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

GRASS-FED MEATS