“Between 2,500-5,000 gallons of water (~100-200 showers) is needed to produce one pound of beef. About 25 gallons of water is needed to produce one pound each of lettuce, tomatoes and wheat.” — University of California Agricultural Extension & Dr. Georg Borgstrom, Chairman of the Food Science and Human Nutrition Department of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University.
and, in a book written by David Pimental, agricultural science professor at Cornell University, Professor Pimentel explained of his calculations that:
“the data we had indicated that a beef animal consumed 100 kg of hay and 4 kg of grain per 1 kg of beef produced. Using the basic rule that it takes about 1,000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of hay and grain, thus about 100,000 liters were required to produce the 1 kg of beef.”
Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health (Island Press, Washington DC, 2001).
Regarding the ecological point I was trying to make originally:
“In the U.S., cattle emit about 5.5 million metric tons of methane per year into the atmosphere, accounting for 20% of U.S. methane emissions. After carbon dioxide, methane is the second most destabilizing gas to the planet’s climate.” EPA (Our own governmental agencies make this finding, now echoed by the UN study)
What I was saying (or trying to) is to not let the enviro-whackos pervert another issue for political reasons, but to make the case that conservatives can be on the right side (pun intended) of this, using facts and debate, not scorn.
And I will close my response and my posting on this thread on this subject with some final words by a celebrated (vegetarian) dullard about dietary choices:
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” –Albert Einstein