Beef’s Footprint
How do our seemingly trivial, everyday actions impact the environment? This video focuses on how what we eat has environmental implications. When we eat beef specifically, we contribute to global warming. Cows emit carbon dioxide and methane, two greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere via digestion of cellulose. These undulates can not digest the cellulose which they consume as their primary source of nutrition. Therefore, gut-microbes reside in their stomachs and use the enzyme cellulase to break down the cellulose which cows consume, usually in the form of grass or corn. Two by-products of undulate digestion are carbon dioxide and methane, contributing to global warming. Incidentally, methane is much more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Raising cattle adds a significant amount of these compounds to the atmosphere. Beef has a much greater negative environmental impact than other meats such as chicken or pork, is one hundred times more detrimental to the environment than pasta, and roughly 214 times more harmful than eggs. Thus, cutting back on beef consumption can be a start to restoring sustainability of the environment.
6 Responses to Beef’s Footprint
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hahaha i was being a cunt
puffm098
December 17, 2012 at 4:35 am
Bro I hope this is a troll or you are seriously a fuckwit
alekebol
December 17, 2012 at 4:53 am
ummm buy eating plants (being a veggitarian) THEN UR DESTROYING THE PLANTS THAT CLEAN THE AIR AND THERE FORE MAKING THE PROBLEM WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!
also if we diddnt industrialize then we would be using leaves to wipe our arses!
puffm098
December 17, 2012 at 5:38 am
trees breathe carbon dioxide???? did you kno hemp makes 4 times the paper trees do. save the trees and quit talkin about your “footprint” encourage ppl to farm cuz regular ppl wont put funky shit on there produce. push for tuffer laws on pollution and itl b me and you who suffer not corporations and theyll have control over all the food. push for legalization of cannabis to save the lives of the footprint cleaners
coreytn
December 17, 2012 at 6:08 am
Modern industrial farms can afford to raise more cattle due to the use of inexpensive corn feed. These farms are able to support massive amounts of cattle, increasing methane emissions.
MishL129Lee
December 17, 2012 at 6:35 am
Beef footprint connection to industrialization?
ungulates not undulates
In your opinion, are there any recent trends (within, say, the last 10-20 years) that have exacerbated the problem of methane from cattle? After all, humans have been eating beef for thousands of years with no previous ill effects to the environment.
SamuelHammer
December 17, 2012 at 6:54 am