Everything I read always seems to circle back to one thing: Cows. We eat too much corn because farmers feed corn to cows (which they can't digest and therefore consume over 70% of the US prescriptions sold in the US). The amount of beef that Americans consume is very unhealthy (mainly because we eat corn-fed beef which has much more fat).
Take a Starbucks coffee: more than half of the greenhouses gases used to produce the coffee is from the milk! Not from the coffee grinding process, not from shipping coffee from South America or from the shipping the finished product to Starbucks across the US. It's not even from the milling, manufacturing, and shipping of the paper cup. It's from the cow producing the milk.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, cows produce methane, a greenhouse gas that, pound for pound, is 25 times more damaging to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. 2 cows pollute as much as my Focus in one year.
Timberland has started putting carbon footprints on some of their shoes. What is the biggest culprit? Leather. Even though the shoes are manufactured and shipped from 3 different places in Asia and then shipped all over the US., transportation only made up 5% of their carbon footprint. It's the leather that contributes the most to their footprint. And we're back to the cows.
In tips to lessen your carbon footprint, many people suggest to eat less meat. I am always met with wild looks when this is suggested. Cows are amazing pollution producing machines. I will get into the inefficiencies of humans as carnivores later.
I think we need to stop our dependency on cows.
5 comments to The trouble with cows:
Call me stupid...but I don't get this.
Tara
1 cow 2 cow 3 cow 4 ...5 cow 6 cow 7 cow or!!!! Look Anna I just made up a song.... For your theory I get it however cows are living things should we kill them all??
Also corn fed cows have a shit load of cholesterol in them as well.... they are only meant to eat grass. so when cows eat corn they get ulcers and then have to be on even more antibiotics it is just a vicious cycle... so only eat grass fed organic cows....did you know cows in the south only eat grass... becaues land is cheap and grass never really dies down here. So again I see your point however I like to eat hamburgers so maybe the humans need to treat the cows "right" and then we would not be in this mess...as for the methane gas, maybe we could bottle it up and put it under peoples sheets for a practical joke and then when they go to bed they will be like oh my god what is that smell.
I am not saying we need to kill the cows. We just need to depend on them for less. Take your meat consumption down to 3 meals a week instead of everyday (our bodies can't handle all that meat anyways). We need to go back to the good ole days where people walked, sat on the front porch, and meat was a special meal.
can we still bottle up the methane and put it under peoples sheets.??? I can put it under Dan's sheets and be like SURPRISE INSIDE!!! Ha Ha
I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "cows causing all our pollution" thing, but I do definitely agree we use them too much. We eat a disgustingly larg amount of meat & too much leather, but we NEED the milk, right?
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