Climate change is inevitable. Between the usage of fossil fuels and the misuse of agriculture, professionals anticipate that the damage of climate change will be irreversible within seventeen months. Specifically, one of the leading causes of global warming is factory farming. Not only is industrial livestock production inhumane and deeply disturbing, but it affects methane contribution, resource usage and is intensely concerning to public health. Because of the damage that factory farming is doing to our environment, climate change is becoming more and more of a menacing thought. It’s time to put aside our differences and political beliefs regarding the animal-free lifestyle and crush factory farms around the world for good.
One cow will belch on a factory farm every forty seconds. Within each day, a single cow can produce upwards of 150 gallons of methane; A total of one hundred cows alone can produce up to 20% of the world’s methane in their lifespan. With the cow demand on the rise, the numbers don’t seem to be getting smaller. Furthermore, the UN predicts that cow demand will likely grow by more than 50% by 2050. But what is methane? Like many fossil fuels, methane is highly toxic and dangerous, after all, it’s twenty times more harmful than carbon dioxide.
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As cows eat, microorganisms in their stomachs develop and are released into the air through their bodily functions. Because of this, german scientists are currently working on a pill that will reduce the amount of global methane contribution by 4 to 6 percent. They’re also considering changing the cows’ diets to prevent the effects of climate change. But sadly scientists alone can’t change the number of methane cows produce. Although changing cows’ diets and inventing a new pill may help, we need to look to solid solutions. For example, breeding cows to produce less methane, planting thousands and thousands of trees, and even banning factory farms once and for all. To prevent further climate change, we need to ban together and start with decreasing the number of cow burps on commercial farms.
Not only are factory farms influencing global warming through cow burps, but they are using an unnecessary amount of resources to do so. Between animal feed, energy for the farms and transportation vehicles, water for the animals, land that the farms root themselves into, antibiotics for the animals, and cleaning products, resources that industrial livestock production “needs” is used at an unbelievable amount each year. It’s estimated that factory farms are gifted a whopping one trillion dollars for these resources that are being stolen from people who actually need them. Jess Miner explains how animal farming heeds massive amounts of water and food and therefore needs to be shut down. By shutting them down, we’ll generate more energy and more cows by using the same amount of food (resources) as before. “Agriculture will be made more efficient”, she says.
But numbers have a lot more to say than words, right? One-third of a pound of beef for a hamburger is estimated to cost 660 gallons of water alone. A whole pound takes 1,799 gallons of water, which is also the amount that 100 Americans use to shower. But water isn’t the only resource factory farming abuses. Industrial livestock production is responsible for 70% of the deforestation of Amazon land. These numbers need to plunge before it’s too late, after all, much of these resources are necessary for the continuation of our planet. Without these assets, our planet will fall down the slippery slope of pollution and therefore destruction. Many people don’t know of these facts, so the first step to a healthier climate is to educate people about factory farming. By doing this, people will almost definitely start calling out factory farms and after a while, these death farms will be put to an end once and for all.
Along with methane contribution and resource usage, factory farming poses many unacceptable public health concerns. For one, industrial livestock production is an unreliable food source for humans, considering these farms are in the hands of corporate companies that only care about the money in their pockets. Because of this, these farms are run on a low budget and therefore the product (meat and dairy products) are also cheap. Because of the second-rate quality of these foods, diseases are more than common. For example, bovine spongiform encephalitis, trichinosis, salmonella, and many more than most people can hardly pronounce.
The US alone produces 1 million tons of manure a day from factory farms. This such animal waste that these megafarms produce is stored in huge, open-aired lagoons which are disgustingly prone to leaks and spills. To make matters worse, the farms choose to expand these lagoons instead of removing them and discarding them properly. One of these spills happened in 2011 on a hog farm in Illinois where 200,000 gallons of manure spilled into a nearby creek. Not only did around 110,000 fish pass away from this catastrophe, but it is more than likely that this mess somehow made its way into the water that humans use to drink, shower, and more.
After all, this muck can easily make its way into our water supply and spread critical diseases to those in nearby neighborhoods and even cities. Families that live around factory farms have reported a higher tendency for disease, illness rates and have gone to say that they’ve noticed a decrease in their property value because of the megafarms that they live by. But what can we do to fix these obstacles that call themselves factory farms? Better health codes are obviously necessary for this specific issue of public health concern. From there we can move on to finding more efficient waste storage containers to keep the animal manure in. Maybe when we’re done with solving those problems, people will finally realize the dangers and oppression that tag alongside livestock megafarms.
There is an inevitable link between factory farming and climate change. It’s impossible for one to persuade others’ thoughts and choosings so, in the end, I leave you with this thought: for every year that a person is vegetarian, they will save one hundred lives. That’s one hundred animals that had mothers. They felt love. They felt fear. And they felt pain. Pain that factory farms induce upon these animals, knowing well that we don’t actually need them for food, but instead we choose to kill them for our own benefit. These animals are dying every day by the thousands so that these merciless tycoons can buy wealthy houses and cars and sit in the lap of luxury. So choose vegetarian. Choose vegan, even. Choose a healthy planet. Choose to end industrial livestock production.
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