Livestock raised on grain produce large amounts of greenhouse gases. Credit: Image from CrossFitFire

When you hear of people being opposed to the beef industry, most imagine vegetarians who abstain from beef for reasons of animal rights. But there’s more to it than that. What’s often overlooked is that one of the worst vices of the beef industry is its contribution to global warming. The beef industry has a very large effect on the environment because cattle need a lot of land, eat a lot of food, and emit a lot of waste in order to produce comparatively little food for humans. This results in a lot of greenhouse gas entering our atmosphere.

Lisa Abend reported in TIME Magazine on the subject: “Between what bovines eat and what they excrete, cattle production emits a lot of greenhouse gas”. She notes that “The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released a 2006 report that attributed 18% of the world's man-made greenhouse-gas emissions to livestock — more, the report noted, than what's produced by transportation…” Abend added that cows are the largest contributors to global warming of all livestock, in that, “cows not only consume more energy-intensive feed than other livestock; they also produce more methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — than do other animals.”