by David Chaves

Created on: June 19, 2008

Cow Farts Kill Babies

Don't reset your browser. I said that. I really did. Deal with it. Now are you ready for the next sentence? Meat is bad. OMG did I say that? I friggin love meat, how can I say that? Well, I've been reading, and I'm not too thrilled with the livestock industry after finding out some pretty horrendous things.

Now, first of all I ain't gonna pretend that I don't eat meat. I eat burgers like a good American. I eat chicken and pork too.. I do. So now you know. I admit it. But I am honestly scared. The livestock industry has been buying politicians for so long that it is by far one of the most unwatched industries, and, BTW, the largest contributor to global warming. Why? Cows fart dude. Straight up. Figure every cow farts a dozen or so times a day, times that by 1000's of cows and that's an ass load of methane. (get it?)

Not too mention all the poo.

Seriously though. The livestock rearing industry contributes to global warming annually more than twice as much as the next culprit. Transportation. That's right. We need Hybrid Cows now too! The main reason for this is that the livestock industry creates a great deal of Nitrous Oxide and Methane (from the farts) which are all stronger greenhouse gasses than carbon. Don't believe me? Ever stand in the middle of a bunch of cows? Breathe in? You get the point. On top of that livestock contribute 64% of the ammonia in our atmosphere which of course comes back down as acid rain. Sweet!

It would be really nice if the livestock industry was only helping global warming from the direct pollution but they are not. Consider this. Livestock rearing uses 30% of the earth's total surface area for grazing. Let that sink in. Picture almost 1/3 of America as grazing area. That's a lot of land. That's not even touching the amount of land needed to raise crops for feeding livestock. And when you add that to the fact that the land they graze on gets severely degraded after they graze that most of the time they become fallow. Leading to desertification in many places like Africa and the American West. 70% of rainforest destruction is so livestock can be reared. Add that together and the livestock industry has had and continues to have an extreme effect on Global warming.

How has this happened? The automotive industry is regulated more and more (as they should be) every year. Every industry now is under the magnifying glass. We have finally gotten to a point where industry is being held accountable for their pollution and

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