When thinking about pollution, it’s common to automatically point fingers at the things we all learned in Biology, such as burning fossil fuels or manufacturing activities. What we don’t learn about however, is the cows. In actuality, cows are one of the main polluters in America. If you think about it more, it makes sense. Cows are responsible for our meat and our dairy which are usually in either cattle farms or poultry farms. Cows are fed an incredible amount of food, more than they would ever eat if they were free-land cows, in order for their bodies to grow into unnaturally fatty sizes. Where do you think cows are getting all their food? We irrigate exceedingly large amounts of land each year in order to grow corn which is turned into grain and eventually fed to our cows. It takes up an enormous rate of water to supply these fields of corn, but who’s going to stop when meat and poultry are the two highest requested American quality food we buy? As of now, we don’t have enough land to keep up with these demands, what happens when China decides they’d like to consume as much animal products as us? It’s not possible to continue this trend without some kind of turmoil. Water isn’t only being wasted to grow their food, cows also drink 30 to 50 gallons a day. Livestock is also a huge producer of greenhouse gas emissions, creating more emissions compared to cars, planes, and trains together. Manure from cows decomposing creates large quantities of methane being let out into the atmosphere. There are about 9 million cows in America, all doing the same exact thing, Creating pollution. Cows are the problem, no matter how many times you turn off lights and stop the faucet from dripping, that burger you eat will be the real thing you need to worry about. How do we fix this issue? Obviously not everyone in America is going to agree to become vegan, so out next step has to be vital improvements to our production systems in livestock. This movement is imperative not only to our country, but also the world. It’s time to look at the facts and try to make a difference before our we destroy our planet even more than we already have.
