Philip

A United Nations report has identified that the worlds growing herds of cattle are the biggest threat to the world as their emissions of CO2 account for 18% of the total emissions, apparently more than all man-made forms of transportation put together. (What about the 6 billion humans vs 1.5 billion cattle?) Apparently, burning fuel for feed as well as making grazing land accounts for 9% of the CO2 emissions, while cattle themselves produce over 1/3rd of all methane emissions and being part of livestock which produce 2/3rds of the world’s total of ammonia which creates acid rain.

Kind of interesting given I was discussing cattle today at lunchtime with Nick and whether Halal is really a more humane way to kill cattle, here’s a link describing it from Australian Halal Food. It’s hard to tell if abbatoirs are really that much more humane, they were documented fairly well in Fast Food Nation. I do note that Halal allows the cattle to be made comatose before the fateful strike, however the brain cannot be injured which rules out the standard technique of driving a bolt into the head of the cattle (which does injure the brain in quite a few cases). Some sort of gassing or drugging into unconsciousness would be preferable, I think.

In my rough opinion so far I’d say humans are to blame for apparently requiring a massive amount of cattle to support first (and second and third to a degree) world countries requirements for bovine products such as milk, cheese, meat, mince and other products. It’s almost 1 cattle per 4 humans at this rate, it could certainly be cut back. It’s a double edged sword - the more cattle you need, the more problems you produce in that they make CO2, yet we clear O2 producing forests to make land for them to graze on. They also have massive pollution problems as well as detailed above, and are detailed even further in Fast Food Nation.

Anyhow, read about it from The Independant here.