What you eat is your business, but so is what you choose to recycle, and how much energy you decide to use.  When you sit down for a meal and enjoy a juicy burger or sizzling steak, you might not have considered what impact on the environment the environment your beef may have had.  Meat consumption in the United States is going down based on a per person average, but Americans still consume twice the USDA daily recommended amount of meat.  While I enjoy beef as much as the next person,  it is important to consider that it may not sustainable in the long run as the population continues to grow.  There are several threats that raising livestock poses to the environment. Foremost, is deforestation.

Think about it this way.  The Earth has been around for an estimated 4.6 billion years. If you scaled that to 45 years, humans have only been on Earth for 4 hours of that time, and the industrial revolution only began 1 minute ago out of 45 years.   Yet in that time we have managed to destroy over 50% of the world’s forests, and much of that has been to clear land for agriculture and cattle.

Another potential issue is that cattle produce greenhouse gasses!  You may not want to imagine it, but huge cattle farms where your food comes from are massive sources of pollution  as cows and other animals “pass gas”.   In just the last 250 years, the concentration of those gases in the atmosphere has increased as much as 150%, with cattle representing an estimated 18% of that pollution.

As the food productivity of land fails to keep up with the population growth in the United States and elsewhere, it’s important to consider the impact that your diet has on the environment.