Following on from the California Proposition 8 victory, factory farming remains centre stage for the environmental damage it causes.
Today’s New York Times investigates methane emissions from cows and pigs and its impact on global warming.
The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes.
But unlike other industries, like cement making and power, which are facing enormous political and regulatory pressure to get greener, large-scale farming is just beginning to come under scrutiny as policy makers, farmers and scientists cast about for solutions.
But the paper warns
In large developing countries like China, India and Brazil, consumption of red meat has risen 33 percent in the last decade. It is expected to double globally between 2000 and 2050. While the global economic downturn may slow the globe’s appetite for meat momentarily, it is not likely to reverse a profound trend.
Toward the end of last month The New York Times also published a report on the pollution caused by Maryland’s intensively farmed poultry industry.
How to handle the 650 million pounds of chicken manure produced in the state each year has sparked a fierce debate between environmentalists and the state’s powerful poultry industry. State officials hope to bring Maryland in line with most other states next month by enacting new rules for where, how and how long chicken farmers can spread the manure on their fields or store it in outdoor piles.
“We don’t let hog or dairy farms spread their waste unregulated, and we wouldn’t let a town of 25,000 people dump human manure untreated on open lands,” said Gerald W. Winegrad, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland who is a former state senator. “So why should we allow a farm with 150,000 chickens do it?”
Meanwhile, Dr. Andy Thorpe, an economist at Portsmouth University in England found that a
single herd of 200 cows can produce annual emissions of methane roughly equivalent in energy terms to driving a family car 180,000 km.
Whereas carbon dioxide emissions have increased 31 per cent over the past 250 years, methane, which has a higher warming potential and a longer atmosphere lifetime than carbon dioxide has increased by 149 per cent over that time.
And back in California in response to a legal petition filed by The Humane Society of the United States,
the San Diego Regional Water Board recently issued a ruling that Armstrong Farms, a major egg factory farm in San Diego County, has repeatedly violated state environmental laws by discharging manure-tainted wastewater into California waters.
Factory farming is an industry that cannot sustain itself economically. We will see its demise in our lifetime.
