Written Sept. 10th, 2019

Effects Of Livestock on the Environment

Climate change is a very big concern nowadays. Climate change is said to be caused mainly by the greenhouse gas emissions, to be more specific, rising CO2 levels. Greenhouse gas emissions essentially trap the heat in our atmosphere causing an increase or change in climatic patterns. CO2 levels have increased by over 400% just from human activity alone. It is almost always said that out carbon footprint is caused by the gas of our cars or the type of washing machine we use. While those do produce a good amount of carbon, animal agriculture is a big contributor when it comes to our carbon footprint. It is often overlooked that the production of livestock is doing more harm than every form of transportation combined. 

In a website article titled “Cars or Livestock: Which can contribute more to climate change?”, Anne Mottet and Henning Steinfeld compares the contributions of transport and livestock in the emission of  greenhouse gasses. Anne Mottet is a “Livestock Development Officer with the FAO Food Agriculture Organization) of the United Nations in Rome. From her 15 years in her work, she has gained much experience in research, quantitative analysis, and in the consulting of the agriculture sector. Henning Steinfeld is the head of the livestock sector analysis which was also part of the Food Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Just like Anne Mottet, Hennings has 15 years of experience in his work in agriculture and livestock policies, and environmental issues. Both authors of this article, have a lot of credibility based on the type of work experience they have. Their work shows that they are not just showing us their opinion, but also have the information to back up their statements. In this article, they aren’t targeting a certain demographic, instead they made it so whoever is reading can find the importance in the article. The very first sentence of the article was, “What we choose to eat, how we move around and how these activities contribute to climate change…”. Note, that the authors used the word “we” instead of stating a certain age group, gender, race, etc. The authors made it so their audience can be anybody. The tone and language of the article is very informative. There were a lot of statistics given to the reader in order to compare cars and livestock. The authors emphasized the fact that livestock can have a great impact on climate change mitigation and can affect the security of our food (“ In that process, livestock can indeed make a large contribution to climate change mitigation…”). These were not issues you would bring up casually and relaxed. They needed to have a weighty tone to makes sure that their point is not taken lightly. The purpose of this article is to inform the reader that livestock does have an impact on our carbon footprint. Many have started to depend on livestock for stability in finance, but fail to see that livestock is harming them in the process. Anne and Hennings stated that it takes more resources to produce livestock because of the amount of land that is required, and feeding it takes to tend to the animals. Both land use and feed production combines, results in higher gas emissions. Furthermore, the authors mentions “Enteric Fermentation”, which is the digestive process of an animal, produces a large amount of methane. Methane has a “higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide”.  It is safe to say that the authors want the readers to become more aware of the contribution of livestock in climate change. They believe that animal agriculture has a bigger part in gas emission than people may think. 

Time Magazine published an article called “The Triple Whopper Environmental Impact of Global Meat Production” by Bryan Walsh. Bryan Walsh was a TIMES International Editor as their energy and environmental correspondent. He also worked as the Tokyo bureau chief and reported on health, environment and the arts. Bryan Walsh is very credible based on what he has done. He has discussed environmental issues many times in his previous writings. This shows that he knows what he is talking about in his article. In his article, right under the title, it says “Livestock production may have a bigger impact on the planet than anything else”. Right off the bat we know his viewpoint on the topic.In this article, he goes on to talk about just how much goes into animal agriculture and the resources it takes to even maintain it.  His audience, just like the article by Anne Mottet and Henning Steinfeld, has a very general audience. You can say Bryan Walsh wants his audience to be those concerned with livestock production, but really he kept it very general. You can see this in how he addresses the reader. He says “You may think you live on a planet” in the very beginning of the article. “You” can be anybody reading his article. I found the tone of this article very interesting. It went from having a very sarcastic tone to more of an informative one. In the beginning of the article, Bryan Walsh is basically saying you may think you live on a planet but really you live on a big farm where the resources all go into animal production. Bryan said that 30% of the ice free land is used to support chickens, pigs, and cattle. After setting up that mindset in the reader, that a lot of our resources are used to support the livestock, Bryan goes on to list some “comprehensive assessments” about the livestock industry around the world. This part is where it starts to get informative. Bryan Walsh lists statistics that prove just how much it takes to raise and produce livestock and what can come out from it. For example, Bryan mentions that globally livestock cna produce “586 million tons of milk. 124 million tons og poultry, 91 million tons of pork” and more a year. That is a LOT of food from livestock alone, but it also takes a lot to produce that much product. It takes about 1.3 billion tons of grain to feed the animals. Sometimes a cow is fed more than 1o times his normal feed (depending on the quality of the feed given to it). Not only did he list how much livestock produces and how much it takes to maintain, but he also lists how much livestock can contribute to the emissions of greenhouse gasses. Walsh states that 75% of the global emissions come from cattle and other “ruminants” and 56% of the global emissions come from poultry and pigs. Bryan Walsh predicts that if livestock continues to contribute the way it does, then eventually the world would need to make a change in meat consumption. He wants the reader to realize that yes, animal agriculture may not be affecting us much right now, but eventually we will see its effects on our environment and will need to make changes in our lifestyle. 

James Cameron and Suzy Amis Cameron published a newspaper on The Guardian called “Animal Agriculture is Choking the Earth and Making us Sick. We Must Act Now”. James Cameron is a filmmaker, deep-sea explorer, and environmentalist. Suzy Amis Cameron is the founder of Muse School in California and is also an environmentalist. Even though both have jobs in other fields, they both contribute in studying the environment and going over environmental issues. Their title already has a call to action. “We must act now” tells me that they want to persuade the reader to take action. Now, the question is who are they trying to persuade and what are they trying to persuade them to do. Their audience, while it can be a very general one, seems to be a little bit more specific. In the first paragraph of the article it says “we can ask out local leaders-from city mayors to school district boards to hospital management”. The authors are calling out to those who have access or can get access to influential individuals like the mayor. Why do they want to target those who can reach out to leaders and influencers? They want their audience to be those who can get a hold of them because if word gets out that someone influential is supporting the cause the more change there will be. Now, what is James and Suzy trying to persuade the readers to act upon? They want the reader to reach out to climate leaders and get them on board about the impact of food. Once they spread more awareness on just how livestock contributes to the world’s climate change, the bigger chances there are to make improvements in the way we live. James and Suzy stated that eating meat and partaking in dairy “increases our risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes…,cancer, and obesity” . Not only this, they also say that raising livestock for a variety of products alone causes 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This makes the the top generator of greenhouse gas emissions, having all transportation combined follow it as the second highest source of emission. To avoid further damage on the earth we live, the authors want the reader to try plant-based diets. They want children in school and workers in an office to have access to a plant based diet. This is because meat consumption is reduced by 50%, it is equivalent to taken 26 million cars off of the road. Greenhouse gas emissions would lessen tremendously. How do the authors persuade the reader to take action? The authors, throughout the article, had very hopeful tones. They give the reader hope that if  they take action, their quality of life would be better than it is now. They also used their own personal experiences. The authors mention their “family felt hopeless about climate change and helpless to make meaningless change”, but eventually they realized that the production of any product from an animal has had a big contribution to an environmental issue they felt burdened by and made the necessary changes. Their technique was “if my family can do it yours can too”. They made the issue about climate change feel relatable and sympathetic. They even, in certain parts of the article, say to the reader taking action would result in a more hopeful life or would result in situations that can only give us hope. 

A scholarly source titled “Livestock and climate change: impact of livestock on climate and mitigation strategies” by Giampiero Grossi, Pietro Goglio, Andrea Vitali, and Adrian G Williams, discusses more in depth the impact of livestock on climate change. Pietro Goglio and Adrian Williams are from the School of Water, Cranfield University, Cranfield, United Kingdom. Andre Vitali and Giampiero Grossi work at the Universita della Tuscia in the field of bioscience and agriculture. These individuals have worked together to present the impacts livestock has on climate change. Their article might be targeted towards other scholars, judging by the way the source is formatted. It seems as though they want others to critique the information they have formulated. They weren’t looking to persuade anyone to take a certain action but looked more to inform whoever was reading. The tone of the source was very straightforward, right to the point. They didn’t waste time in getting to what they wanted to say. Right away they introduced the two most important greenhouse gases that are associated with animal agriculture which are methane and nitrous oxide. Methane is usually produced through enteric fermentation or the digestive process of an animal and by the storage of their manure. Nitrous oxide is produced from the use of manure, such as in fertilizer. The language in this source is much more educational compared to the articles analyzed previously. The other articles had a much easier vocabulary to get around, whereas this source takes some time to understand what point they’re trying to make. This source was written and revised by scholars so it was bound to have some difficult vocabulary here and there. Words such as “gigatonnes” and “reticulorumen” were very foreign to me and required a google search or two. The vocabulary used in the source was very sophisticated. Their stance or viewpoint was that a majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from enteric fermentation and the maintenance of livestock. Combined they contribute up to 84% of the gas emissions compared to transportation which is only about 16% . The authors of this source not only presentes statistics in paragraph form but also used graphs and figures to show case information. This was very effective in keeping the reader engaged and interested. Usually, a reading that is constantly just paragraph after paragraph can get quite irritating. It was a smart move to include visuals in their work because now not only does the reader read the information being presented, they can now visualize it as well. Visualizations help  the reader to fully understand what is being presented to them. The authors also broke their source down into sections. Instead of having the reader assume that the text is now talking about a different area in the topic, they broke the source down into sections like “Enteric Fermentation” and “Manure Storage”. Breaking it down into sections was effective in the way that it keeps the reader informed on what they are about to read next. 

There are many contributors to climate change and we should not overlook any cause whether it be our car means of transportation, or the process of producing livestock. Livestock, with many studies to back it up, has contributed more to climate change than any other cause. The big problem is that production of animal products only continues to grow which will ultimately result in the downfall of our quality of life here on earth. If meat production goes on at the rate it’s going now, humans will eventually have to make the necessary changes to ensure we don’t do further damage. Something as simple as awareness can make all the difference. If more people were aware of the effect of animal agriculture had on climate change, the more action and support there’d be to make improvements in the earth’s condition.

Bibliography:

• Magazine Source:

@bryanrwalsh, Bryan Walsh. “The Triple Whopper Environmental Impact of Global Meat Production.” Time, Time, 16 Dec. 2013, http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/.

• Website Source:

Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Cars or Livestock: Which Contribute More to Climate Change?” News.trust.org, http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0.

• Scholarly Source:

Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Cars or Livestock: Which Contribute More to Climate Change?” News.trust.org, http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0.

• Newspaper Source:

Cameron, James, and Suzy Amis Cameron. “Animal Agriculture Is Choking the ​Earth and Making Us Sick. We Must Act Now | James Cameron and Suzy Amis Cameron.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Dec. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/04/animal-agriculture-choking-earth-making-sick-climate-food-environmental-impact-james-cameron-suzy-amis-cameron.