We Can No Longer Ignore the Damage Factory Meat Production is Causing to Our Drinking Water

GR:  With meat demand rising, biodiversity sinking, and water resources disappearing, it’s time to quit eating meat.

“In London, back in 2013, the world’s first stem cell burger was tasted by its inventor and two volunteers in front of more than 200 journalists and guests. This burger was made from ‘cultured beef,’ which is grown in Petrie dishes using the stem cells of a cow. It was grown in three months and took a budget of $330,000. Lab-grown beef might seem like a pretty creepy, science fiction, futuristic-like project, but Dr. Mark Post of Maastricht University didn’t make his burger just for fun. He also didn’t do it to give the world’s vegans and vegetarians another option.

“Dr. Post was thinking about our inevitable future as a species. His cultured beef burger is meant to serve as a logical solution to the world’s addiction to factory-grown meat, which is about to reach its peak. The way we produce meat globally is unsustainable and posing a serious risk to our water, our air, our health and the possibility that humans will continue to remain a living species on this planet in the near future.

“Humans slaughter 3 billion animals worldwide for meat. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations expects global meat consumption to rise by about 73% by 2050 to accommodate the 9.1 billion people who will be attempting to live on planet Earth at that point. However, the chances that humans will even be a thing in 2050 are looking pretty grim, and a big reason for that is our large-scale factory farming industry.

“Agricultural pollution is the largest source of water pollution in the world. Animals who are raised for food, in a confined space, consume more feed, and therefore, create more waste. According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, confined livestock generate 450 million tons of manure each year — that’s three times the amount of waste that American humans generate.

“Because everything is covered in raw shit at a factory farm, more water is required to wash it away. One hundred and fifty gallons of water, in fact. Per cow. Per freaking day. That’s a serious amount of clean water, especially when you consider that one cow is being slaughtered every 30 seconds at many of these operations. And it usually takes them 6 months to reach a typical ‘market weight’ of 1,200 pounds. So that’s about 13,500 gallons of water per the life of an average doomed cow — and that’s just to clean the place.” –Emma Thieme

Source: We can no longer ignore the damage factory meat production is causing to our drinking water – Matador Network