Is livestock a threat to the environment?

A few nights ago, we watch “Cowspiracy” a documentary spelling doom about the animal farming business and directing its viewers towards becoming vegans.

Some of the claims made in that film were over the edge and hard to believe, so the next days, I began to check some of the facts contained in the documentary and came up with the following tidbits that still are scary enough to give us pause about that segment of the agribusiness.

According to a 2006 report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, it appears that the livestock sector is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions— more than the entire transportation sector!

When you get into what these emissions are made of, they account for 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions (a greenhouse gas 300 times more destructive than CO2), so when you add it all up, livestock and its byproducts account for a whopping 51 percent of global greenhouse emissions!

Then, there's deforestation, land over-use and huge water demands that come along with the growth of this industry. It's probably reasonable to say that when the earth population was half of what it is today, reliance on livestock for food was okay, but with a world population exploding along with a growing middle class, people will want to consume more meat and dairy products every year.

Global meat production is projected to double from 230 million tonnes in 2000 to 500 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to double from 580 to more than 1,000 million tonnes. Not a good sign for the environment and not a topic that stands front and center at the Paris Conference!