Livestock
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My $80 Thanksgiving Turkey
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Brouhaha Over Meat’s Impact on Climate
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Livestock Responsible for 51% of Emissions, Says Worldwatch Institute
Agriculture's Nitrogen Fix
Published August 19, 2009 @ 01:43PM PT
Everybody involved in mainstream agriculture wants a piece of the glory for increased yields over the last half century, but the share of credit that's left over after irrigation and heterozygous, conventional hybrids goes mainly to a plant nutrient: nitrogen.
In 1918, Dr. Fritz Haber figured out a way to use natural gas and heat do something only bacteria had ever been able to manage, which was to turn inert atmospheric nitrogen into solid nitrogen compounds that are available to the terrestrial food chain. This process, whether performed in a lab or by a bacterium, is referred to as nitrogen fixation.
Atmospheric nitrogen, which exists mainly in the form of N2, is an extremely stable compound, non-reactive in almost all cases. N2 makes up around 70 percent of the atmosphere and acts as an effective fire retardant. If there were much more oxygen gas and much less nitrogen gas in the atmosphere, the entire atmosphere could ignite.
Terrestrial nitrogen, existing in many forms, is one of the most important nutrients available to living beings. It's the backbone of all RNA, DNA and protein. It's referred to in some cases as a limiting nutrient, one that puts a fixed limit to the growth potential of an ecosystem's biomass. It can also be referred to, in agriculture and horticulture as a macronutrient, something necessary in large amounts relative to other trace or micronutrients.
Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and the greatest of these is nitrogen. As they might say.
Though one can have too much of any good thing. For example, the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is likely the culprit in high levels of carcinogenic nitrates in conventionally grown food, as noted by Tom Philpott at Grist. As Philpott also points out, nitrates have also been linked to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Type II diabetes.
Monday Breakfast
Published August 10, 2009 @ 07:40AM PT
Raiding the internet fridge for your intellectual delectation ...
- There's a new documentary on Percy Schmeiser's battle with Monsanto, as noted by Charles Lemos, following the 2008 settlement where Monsanto agreed to pay cleanup costs for contaminating his fields.
- Jill Richardson was here in Philadelphia on her book tour last Thursday, the night I figured out something was really wrong with my foot, then she went to Lancaster, PA for the CSA goodness and then it was on to New York, NY.
- The Northeast's late blight hit Paula Crossfield's rooftop tomato garden, and she took the opportunity to talk about the unique financial problem the disease has posed for small farmers growing specialty crops.
- Sens. Boxer and Baucus are squaring off over who'll get to write the Senate version of the House climate bill, and agricultural, coal and oil interests are expected to have even more say over the results. Keith Good at the FarmPolicy blog leaves little hope in his DC squabble roundup that, in spite of the fact that the military is firmly convinced of the threat climate change poses to national security, that our legislators will actually shape up and give us the change we need.
- So, about meat and climate change ...
... But, what about the methane in all that cattle flatulence? Excess flatulence is also a function of an unnatural diet. If cattle flatulence on a natural grazing diet were a problem, heat would have been trapped a 1000 years ago when, for example, there were 70 million buffalo in North America not to mention innumerable deer, antelope, moose, elk, caribou, and so on all eating vegetation and in turn being eaten by native Americans, wolves, mountain lions, etc. Did the methane from their digestion and the nitrous oxide from their manure cause temperatures to rise then? Or could there be other contributing factors today resulting from industrial agriculture, factors that change natural processes, which are not being taken into account? It has long been known that when grasslands are chemically fertilized their productivity is increased but their plant diversity is diminished.
A recent study in the journal Rangelands (Vol. 31, #1, pp. 45 - 49) documents how that the diminished diversity from sowing only two or three grasses and legumes in modern pastures results in diminished availability of numerous secondary nutritional compounds, for example tannins from the minor pasture forbs, which are known to greatly reduce methane emissions. Could not the artificial fertilization of pastures greatly increase the NO2 from manure? Might not the increased phosphorus, nowhere near as abundant in natural systems, have modified digestibility? I am sure that future research will document other contributing factors of industrial agricultural practices on animal emissions. The fact is clear. It is not the livestock; it is the way they are raised. ...
Animal Confinement Waste
Published August 06, 2009 @ 07:50AM PT
Fun facts from the recent Environmental Impact of Industrial Farm Animal Production (pdf) report issued for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production:
... By any estimate, the total amount of farm animal waste produced annually in the United States is substantial. In its report for the year 2001, the usda estimated the output of manure from farm animals at 920,000 US short tons of dry matter per day (usda ars 2002). This translates to greater than 300 million metric tons of dry mass or more than 660 billion pounds per year. Of this mass, 86% (788,000 tons per day) was projected to stem from animals held in confinement. In contrast, the American Society of Agricultural Engineers provides a higher estimate of 540 million metric tons of dry weight excreta per annum (American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 2005). Lower estimates of 133 million tons of manure per year on a dry weight basis also have been reported recently in the peer-reviewed literature using information contained in usda online databases (Burkholder et al., 2007). Reporting the volume of excreta based on the lifespan of the food animal results again in a different set of data.
Regardless of the exact amount generated, farm animal waste exceeds human sanitary waste production by at least one order of magnitude (Burkholder et al., 2007). Yet in comparison to the lesser amount of human waste, the management and disposal of animal wastes are poorly regulated. This lack of protection may have been without consequence in traditional agriculture, because animal wastes produced by traditional animal husbandry methods in rural locations did not usually present risks to local communities that relied on ecosystem services for attenuating pathogens and absorbing or diluting nutrients. However, similar to large human settlements, improper management of feces from ifap facilities can and does overwhelm natural cleansing processes. ...
It isn't just waste, it's duplicative waste. We manufacture fertilizer (its use has gone up six fold since the 1950s, according to the report) and put it on the fields to grow feed for animals who produce fertilizer that then becomes unmanageable garbage. Oh, but not just a lot of garbage, biohazardous garbage. From elsewhere in the report:
Senate Cuts Animal ID Funding By Half
Published August 05, 2009 @ 02:05PM PT
Woohoo! I get to say nice things about the Senate!
I'm pleased to report that my usual causticity can be suspended for the duration of this post to applaud the Senate's unanimous consent vote to cut funding for the National Animal ID System. Go, Senate!
Jill Richardson at LaVidaLocavore has reposted the press release by R-CALF USA, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, and I think that the most salient point in the entire debate is encapsulated in this paragraph of their statement, here:
3) No food safety benefits. NAIS will not prevent food borne illnesses from e. coli or salmonella, because the contamination occurs at the slaughterhouse, while NAIS tracking ends at the time of slaughter. Thus, NAIS will neither prevent the contamination nor increase the government's ability to track contaminated meat back to its source. In addition, NAIS will hurt efforts to develop safer, decentralized local food systems. ...
If the program fails in its main, stated goal, if it is in fact structured such that failure is inevitable, what are we spending all this money for? As a liberal, progressive, believer in the possibility of government to do good, I have a deep and abiding interest in money given to the government not being wasted. When it's wasted, it creates an instant opportunity cost against something good and useful being done with that money.
Of the money that remains in the program, the Senate directives limit its use to rule-making activities, and on that front, I have a suggestion: lay the groundwork to institute premise ID, instead of animal ID.
I was talking a couple months ago with Margaret Krome, my former internship supervisor and policy program director at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, about how NAIS implementation has gone in Wisconsin. She said that at this point, they've just done premise registration, which sidesteps many of the concerns raised directly by Amish communities and does actually provide a public health benefit.
Krome explained that when there were animal disease outbreaks, the premise registry let public health officials target their notification efforts to the right people. This registration simply lets officials know that there are livestock on the property and what type. That's actually useful to know should there be an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease, scabies, or what have you. It also isn't burdensome to farmers, needing to be neither expensive nor time-consuming. See? Useful.
Anyway, cheers again to the Senate for showing such good sense. It seems in short supply these days.(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)
The Meat Market's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Published August 04, 2009 @ 08:38PM PT
Dear The Meat Industry,
When you complain on one hand that your business will be hurt by country of origin labeling laws, and on the other that it's unfair to criticize the US meat industry because of greenhouse gas emissions from meat production in other countries, it makes you sound like you need Ritalin.
In other news, cows need to eat grass, bozos.
Kissy the face,
n
(Photo credit: laenulfean on Flickr.)
A Big Food Safety Problem
Published July 30, 2009 @ 11:29AM PT
Sick cows are one of our biggest food safety problems:
... Acidosis is often associated with a shift from a foragebased diet to a high concentrate-based diet or excessive consumption of fermentable carbohydrates. Acidosis may occur in cattle on high-grain diets common with youth livestock projects, bull development programs, and cattle finishing programs. It can also occur in stocker calves when self-feeders and highstarch feeds such as corn are used.
Acidosis is the result of low rumen pH. The typical pH of the rumen on a forage-based diet is 6 to 7. As the amount of forage or roughage in the diet decreases and the amount of concentrate increases, the pH of the rumen falls between 5 and 6, depending on the forage to concentrate ratio of the diet. Low pH supports growth of lactic acid-producing bacteria. Lactic acid is very strong and reduces rumen pH even more. Acute (severe) acidosis occurs when ruminal pH drops below 5.2, while subacute (less severe) acidosis occurs at a ruminal pH of less than 5.6. Laminitis, liver abscesses, and polioencephalomalacia often accompany acidosis. ...
Cows with acidosis, who've been fed grain instead of forage, produce deadly E. coli that can survive our stomachs. Healthy cows with a nearly neutral rumen pH still have E. coli in their guts, but these varieties of the bacterium are easily handled by our bodies.
The food safety bill that may be resurrected this week, H.R. 2749, does not address this topic, even though it laudably expands federal food recall powers beyond the toothless "voluntary recall." It does impose regressive fees on the sort of small producers not generally responsible for large-scale food contamination.
Congressional leadership may also put it up for a vote under a closed rule, which means no amendments can be offered. Again, I point you to the Center for Rural Affairs analysis of the vote situation. I'd hope that the pressure Congress feels to do something doesn't lead, as it so often does, to doing something stupid.
Living the Animal Life
Published July 14, 2009 @ 10:17AM PT
There's a bill that's been introduced in Congress that would put sharp limits on Confined Animal Feeding Operations, and Obama supports it. I'm fairly amazed and impressed, which I was getting worried that I'd gotten to cynical to even be.
It won't pass. Even that's okay I suppose, considering how the discussion is off to such a good start.
The bill is Rep. Louise Slaughter's (D-NY) offering to ban non-medicinal, preemptive use of antibiotics in livestock.
In large part, as the article notes, these are used to promote growth. However, it's the barely mentioned "prevent illnesses" part that's of most concern. Eddie Gehman Kohn talks here about the way this practice is turning antibiotics into worthless candy by spurring the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, but that's still a side effect - though a powerful and frightening one. The main point of these drugs is to prevent animals that are raised in utterly vile conditions from simply keeling over dead before they can be slaughtered.
If you couldn't prevent the conditions of feedlot life itself from killing cattle, they'd have to be raised in lower concentrations, under cleaner conditions, and given a much healthier diet out of sheer necessity.
As it is now, most cattle are raised in lots packed deep with nothing but each other's waste. The health hazards of this are, one would think, obvious.
They're fed a grain diet, now that it's no longer allowed to feed these obligate herbivores ground up bones and scrap from other cattle, which is like feeding a human an all-Twinkie diet. They get permanent acidosis, roughly equivalent to a terrible case of chronic ulcers, and the bacteria from their guts are able to escape to infect the rest of their bodies. This commonly leaves their livers abcessed and scarred, not entirely unlike what would happen in a human with advanced cirrhosis of the liver.
Imagine humans kept wading in sh*t all day, force-fed to the point of severe obesity, suffering all the while from ulcers and cirrhosis. Those people's immune systems would be extremely compromised. They would need constant doses of antibiotics just to stay alive.
I don't make this comparison to say that animals should be treated like humans, but that they should be treated like animals.
They should be let out on real grass, on well-managed pasture where their numbers are just right to stimulate and fertilize the growth of a healthy prairie. They should be able to move around in the open air, where their immune systems will be supported by a proper diet and exercise, be part of an ecosystem that's very close to a naturally evolved grassland, have a quick death-by-predator (if we insist on being their only predators, we should do it right and be merciful) and the remains returned to the ground for the plants to eat.
This is what they're for. If we are to be sensible managers of the Earth's resources, getting this right is crucial to preserving what's going to be left over when the planet's freshwater and topsoil reserves can no longer handle the levels of grain production asked of them now. Getting this right is crucial to having livestock be a source of health instead of disease.
