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Originally posted by anhinga
Brief, interesting study being done on the effects of meat-eating & the environment. The numbers prove a large difference in energy-consumption on such a small scale... I'll look for greater, short-term impacts -- anybody have some stats like that 'around' -- please post them & thanks for checking the thread!
The article also mentions some facts I, and the study, left out that will obviously up the difference in energy-usage.
The environmental footprint of producing just over two pounds of beef is greater than that of driving a car for three hours, according to a Japanese study reported on "New Scientist."
The researchers found that it took 169 megajoules of energy to produce 2.2 pounds of beef (the equivalent of 4 average-sized steaks or nearly 9 quarter-pound burgers). This is the same amount of energy that would be consumed by leaving a 100-watt bulb burning for 20 days.
One-third of this energy went into producing and transporting the animals' feed.
In addition to energy consumption and greenhouse emissions, animal agriculture produces a great amount of pollution and consumes substantially more water than plant agriculture. Some of this effect arises merely from the fact that eating animals is less efficient than eating plants -- a single animal must consume vast quantities of plants before it is slaughtered, which means that all the energy, water and other resources used to produce those plants are ultimately going to the production of a much smaller quantity of food.
www.newstarget.com...