From: abulsari@abo.fi (Abhay Bulsari VT)
Subject: Environmental reasons, Part 4
Organization: Abo Akademi University
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 11:34:39 GMT

Continued from Part 3


%% South of the border %%

   The American appetite for meat has environmental  consequences that
extend beyond  our  national  frontiers.   The U.S.  imports  only 0.5
percent of its beef from Central America, but the effects of producing
that meat are startling.
   In Central America, beef exports to the U.S. have  played a part in
the tragedy  of forest destruction.  Costa Rica, for example, was once
almost completely cloaked in tropical forest, holding within its small
confines perhaps 5  percent  of all plant and animal species on earth.
By 1983, after two decades of explosive growth in the cattle industry,
just  17  percent  of the  original forest remained.   Throughout  the
period, Costa Rica was  exporting between one-third and  two-thirds of
its  beef,  mostly to  the  U.S.,  and it continues to export  smaller
quantities today.
   Producing a single Costa  Rican  hamburger involves the destruction
of 55 square feet of rain forest -- an  area about the size of a small
kitchen.  Such  a swath typically  contains one tree, 50  saplings and
seedlings  of  20  to 30  species,  thousands  of  insects  comprising
hundreds  of  species,  and  an  "almost  unimaginable  diversity  and
abundance  of   mosses,  fungi,  and   microorganisms,"  according  to
biologist  Christopher   Uhl  of  Pennsylvania  State  University  and
Geoffrey Parker of the New York Botanical Garden.
   Clearing that single patch of wet, lowland Costa Rican forest would
also  release as much as  165 pounds of the carbon it naturally stores
into the atmosphere in the form of the greenhouse  gas carbon dioxide,
according to Sandra Brown, professor of  forestry at the University of
Illinois.  That's as much carbon as the typical American car  releases
in a 20-day period.

%% Hog wash and hot air %%

   With such colossal quantities of food, water, and energy going into
the livestock industry,  other things are bound to come out.  The most
distinctive is animal  waste, which  after  it's  dried amounts to 158
million tons a year.  Most  of the waste comes from cattle in pastures
or  on the range, where waste  management simply means letting natural
decomposition  take   its  course.   But  about   one-fourth  is  from
stockyards, chicken  factories, and  other feeding facilities.  There,
disposing of the waste  is a  vexing task.  It must be moved,  stored,
and spread without allowing it into water supplies.
   Congress first instructed the  EPA to regulate animal wastes in the
Clean Water Act of  1972, but the effectiveness of  that regulation is
hotly contested.  The  agricultural  industry claims  almost no animal
wastes contaminate water, while  critics allege widespread  violations
and lax  enforcement.  The EPA has begun to  look into the matter, but
so  far has  little to show.  In the  one  place where the agency  has
solid  data,  the  Chesapeake  Bay  basin,  manure  from all livestock
contribute about one-tenth of nitrogen and phosphorus  water pollution
from all sources.  Nitrogen and phosphorus over-fertilize algae, which
grow rapidly and disturb the balance of aquatic ecosystems.
   Fertilizers and agricultural chemicals running off of feed-crop and
pasture fields also deserve an entry in animal products' environmental
ledger.  U.S.  corn fields alone consume about 40 percent  of nitrogen
fertilizer along with more  herbicides and insecticides than any other
crop.
   Lumping  together  animal  wastes  and feed fertilizers,  livestock
agriculture probably accounts  for 40 percent of the  nitrogen and  35
percent  of phosphorus  released  into  American  rivers,  lakes,  and
streams, according to  a computer  model devised by Resources for  the
Future, an environmental research center in Washington, D.C.
   The water  woes  of  animal  production run  deep too, extending to
underground water  tables.  As  it percolates through the soil, manure
or its chemical  constituents can  cause serious damage, especially in
the  form  of  health-threatening  nitrates.  The EPA has  found  that
roughly  one-fifth  of  the wells in  livestock  states  such as Iowa,
Kansas, and Nebraska have nitrate levels that exceed safety standards.
The EPA can't prove animal farming is the culprit yet,  but manure and
feed-crop fertilizers are leading suspects.
   As animal wastes and  feed-growing  chemicals  pollute  the  water,
animals  themselves pollute the air.  Cattle  and other ruminants such
as goats and  sheep  emit methane,  a  potent greenhouse gas,  as they
digest  grass and other fibrous  plants.  Each  head  of American beef
cattle belches out about  a  third of a pound of methane  per pound of
beef yielded.  Add the  carbon released  from  fuels  burned in animal
farming,  and every  pound  of  steak has the same  greenhouse-warming
effect as a 25-mile drive in a typical American car.
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg,sci.med.nutrition