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Animal Agriculture: Effects On The Environment

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Impacts: Animal Agriculture Animal agriculture is something that this world depends on in order to continue human survival. Humans use animals for all sorts of different products around the world. But is it hurting the environment past revival? As many of us know, the use of animals on a factory level is very damaging to the environment. Fecal matter from these farms are often times leached into rivers and are also creating methane gas which helps contribute to global warming. What if something could be done to help reduce the impacts of animal agriculture? To expand, animal agriculture creates a lot more harmful effects on the environment than just the obvious. Cattle ranching does …show more content…

I believe that if our planet continues to worsen in health then the human race will have to eat more veggies and plant based foods in order to save energy and produce less greenhouse gasses. In order to become a more sustainable food system it is smarter to eat at lower trophic levels. Plants produce their own food from the sun, when cattle eat the grass they only get about 10% of that energy that the plants contain. When we eat cattle we only get about 10% of the energy that they produce. All in all, cows have to eat more grass in order to sustain themselves and live off of that energy. Which means humans would be more sustainable and have more energy readily available when eating mostly a plant based …show more content…

Things are looking up when it comes to the placement of stricter rules. According to The Food Institute Report, the Environmental Protection Agency is “requiring permit holders to create a "nutrient management plan" that sets limits on the amount of animal manure that can be applied to fields” (EPA rule aims to, 2002). This plan will help to reduce the amount of manure that can be eroded into lakes and rivers. There are consequences regarding these solutions to animal agriculture. With any change comes consequences, good and bad. The negative side of our society eating plant based is that more and more heavy pesticides will have to be applied in order to yield enough crop to sustain human populations. With heavy chemicals being used this damages our environment as well. A negative side of creating legal requirements for farms is that there are ways around these rules or loop holes so to speak. I do believe however, that the good outways the bad in this situation. Animal agriculture is something that this world depends on in order to continue human survival. Change starts with just a small group of people. In order to reduce the detrimental effects of animal agriculture our human race is going to have to make a huge transition in our food system. With different solutions and trial and error changes can be made possible in the near

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