pswheresthe+beef

Sullivan Patrick Portfolio



Meat food products are an environmentally costly form of protein and the government is doing all it can to help this industry continue to produce inefficient food. Land subsidies by the government reduce the producer costs of meat food products and therefore reduce the cost to consumers. This results in the underpricing of this food source which is not sustainable. Beef production produces ammonia emissions which leads to the acidification of lakes and forest soils. Methane is also a by-product of the digestive processes of livestock. Methane has roughly 25 times the effect on global warming as CO2. 37% of the total methane generated by human activity comes from cows and sheep. Exergy is a way of measuring the amount of useful work an energy source can perform. As energy is converted from one form to another, it loses exergy. The supply chain is all the processes a product goes through from being raw materials to finished products in stores. Meat food products lose more exergy in their production because they go through more stages along the way. In two examples of pork and peas, the pork goes through an inefficient conversion of plant protein from the feed to the animal protein in the pig. Out of the total exergy put into producing peas, 75% of it was found in the final food product, while only 15% of the exergy put into pork production was found in the final food product. The total efficiency for exergy put into production and any useful product produced from pea production was 78% and pork was 40%. In 1985 Congress established the Beef Promotion and Research Act as a federal policy to promote beef products. Through the United States Department of Agriculture, cattle producers are charged 1 dollar for each head of cattle they sell. This money goes towards advertising, research, consumer information, and industry information. Half of this money gets used by state councils for consumer education, while the other half goes towards the Cattleman’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, which generates generic beef advertisements. From the start of this organization through 2001, it had spent $337 million on generic beef promotions within the domestic market. These generic messages imply that all meat is equally safe, healthy, and high quality. These advertisements fail to address individual characteristics of beef products that are healthier or are made through more environmentally safe methods. Organic farmers, Angus, and Hereford producers do not want to contribute to these advertisement campaigns because their superior product is not recognized through them. They claim that the advertisements also make it difficult to advertise that their beef products are superior to most other beef products. The generic advertisements also do not distinguish between domestic and imported beef. Dairy farmers are also charged every time they sell a head of cattle even though they do not benefit at all from the generic beef ads. Slaughterhouses and meat packers do benefit from these ads but do not pay for them. The government is forcing people to pay for advertisements that do not benefit them or may even hurt their product’s image. By generalizing all beef ads, there is no incentive to produce better quality beef or to be more efficient in production. Here are some other interesting facts about meat food products vs. vegetable food products: 9% of human-related CO2 emissions are caused by livestock production 1kg of CO2 is used to produce a typical fast food burger It takes 7 lbs of grain to produce 1 lb of beef The area of land necessary to produce 1 kg of each product is as follows; Beef 20.9 sq m Pork 8.9 sq m Eggs 3.5 sq m Vegetables 0.3 sq m Comparing the resources used in producing food for a typical UK diet with 30% of calories coming from animal products with the resources used in a typical vegan diet we get this data; Land required 0.195 ha – 0.65 ha, Water used annually 535,000 litres – 140,000 litres, CO2 produced annually 1,588 kg – 322 kg The government should be giving land subsidies to vegetable farmers instead of meat food product producers. This would give the public an incentive to buy less animal food products, which would decrease our environmental impact due to producing animal product foods. The government should also begin aiding vegetable producers by creating generic advertisements for vegetable products. In the Netherlands, farmers are fined if they don’t use approved practices for disposing of livestock wastes.

Apaiah, Radhika K., Anita R. Linnemann, and Hedzer J. Van Der Kooi. "Exergy Analysis: A Tool to Study the Sustainability of Food Supply Chains." //Food Research International// 39 (2006): 1-11. Print. Cain, Rita. "Uncle Sam Wants You - To Eat Beef?" //Drake Journal of Agricultural Law// 11.165 (2006). Print. Subak, Susan. "Global Environmental Costs of Beef Production." //Ecological Economics// 30 (1999): 79-91. Print. Facts about Beef Products

Fast Food's Secret Ingredient: Corn