53-65 Meat production and aquaculture

APES 2024

What is needed to raise food for livestock?

What is needed to raise food for livestock?

Land and water

Meat production is less efficient than

Agriculture (20x more land to produce the same amount of calories for animals v. plants)

Producing eggs and chicken meat requires the

Least amount of space and water

Producing beef requires the

most space and water

Less meat consumption can

reduce CO2, methane, and N2O emissions, Conserves water, Reduces use of antibiotics and growth hormones, Improves topsoil

Feedlots (factory farms)

alsocalled Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) Used as a way to quickly get livestock ready for slaughter Huge warehouses or pens deliver food to animals living at extremely high densities

U.S. farms house hundreds of thousands of

debeaked chickens in crowded cages

CAFOs

• Tend to be crowded

• Animals are fed grains or feed that is not as suitable as grass

• Generate a large amount of organic waste which can contaminate ground and surface water

• Less expensive so costs lower for consumers

Feedlots produce

huge amounts of manure and urine

Feedlots cause

• eutrophication

• Waterborne pathogens sicken people

• Crowded, dirty housing causes outbreaks in disease

• Heavy use of antibiotics, hormones, heavy metals

• Chemicals are transferred to people

• Microbes evolve resistance to antibiotics

• Air pollution: odors, ammonia (acid rain)

• More greenhouse gases (CO2 , methane, nitrous oxides) than automobile emissions

Manure Lagoons

Large open storage pits for animal waste (manure)
(Waste has ammonia, hormones, antibiotics, fecal coliform bacteria)

Heavy rain can flood lagoon and

contaminate nearby surface and groundwater with runoff

Manure lagoons can be

emptied and buried in landfills or turned into fertilizer

Free range grazing

Allows animals to graze on grass during their entire life cycle (Meat tends to be free from antibiotics and other chemicals used in feedlots)(organic waste is used as fertilizer)

Free range grazing cons

• Requires large areas of land

• Meat produced is more expensive

Overgrazing

Too many animals grazing one area removes all vegetation can lead to erosion of topsoil

Animals compact soil so it can hold less water and leads to more erosion can lead to

Desertification

Desertification

a loss of more than 10% productivity

Causes of desertification

• Erosion, soil compaction

• Deforestation and overgrazing

• Drought, salinization, water depletion

World fish populations are

plummeting due to tech and increased demand

Aquaculture

raising aquatic organisms in a controlled environment

How does aquaculture work?

• Species are raised in open-water pens
  or land-based ponds

• Takes less space than beef, pork or
  chicken

• A reliable protein source

Aquaculture cons

• High concentration of waste – E. coli and eutrophication

• Disease risk due to high density of organisms

• May introduce non native species to local ecosystem

• Fish are fed antibiotics which can contaminate water

Fisheries

populations of fish used in commercial fishing

Fisheries collapse

when overfishing causes 90% decline in a fishery

FIsheries cons

• The population may never recover due to less biodiversity, inability to find mates and/or inbreeding depression

• Less genetic diversity in fish and less species diversity in ocean

• Lost income for fishermen/women and lost tourism revenue

Overfishing from 1975 – 1985 led to

decrease in profits from 1985 – 2018 (Tragedy of the Commons situation)

Bottom Trawling

Dragging a large net along the ocean floor

Bycatch

unintended species such as dolphins, whales and
turtles caught in net

Dolphin Safe Tuna

is an effect of bycatch

Due to bottom trawling and bycatch Non target species are

killed and removes coral reef habitat