Concentrated Animal Farm Operation (CAFO)
Guardian UK
Everywhere there is talk of sustainable meat and how environmentally and ethically correct it is. Nowhere is this more discussed than by the retail fast food giants who are feeling the heat as more are learning about the meat industries mega contribution to climate change and resource depletion and degradation.
It’s widely agreed that beef has a sustainability problem. According to the latest assessment from the UN, livestock production accounts for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions.
This is more than all
global transport combined and farmed livestock is also responsible for a staggering 30% of global biodiversity loss
So far, blame has been placed on industrialized factory farmed feedlots, and that is as it should be because CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Farm Operations) are the major culprits of the worse abuses of the meat industry.
But, there is a reason CAFO's were created and that is that they can satisfy mega meat demand while being more efficient in water, energy and land use than traditional livestock farming methods.
Feedlots significantly reduce land and water resources required for raising beef, Capper points out. That’s because entirely grass-fed animals grow slower than corn- and soy-fed ones. Producing the current amount of beef with purely grass-fed operations would take an extra 131m acres of land per year and 468bn gallons of water, and it would increase the carbon footprint by the equivalent of adding 26.6m cars to the road, she said.
You can't blame people for wanting to see the problem through rose colored glasses. It is so much easier to think that all we have to do is make some little adjustments and bingo we won't have to make any significant change to our habits and lifestyles to deal with climate change. The reality is that we have to make more than minor tweaks to navigate to a sustainable future.
The industry alone isn’t to blame for current industry practices, Gunther notes. “We are not, as consumers, innocent here,” he says. “They’ve been producing this way because consumers have demanded this so-called cheap food.”