I have a Beef with Beef

[Paul McDonald]

Waterworld

Many people have predicted that in the not too distant future wars will be fought over water. Water is becoming a scarce resource. If you took some water transporter trucks and filled them with the amount of water consumed globally in a single day, and lined them up nose to tail, they would circle the planet 37 times. Isn't that shocking?

A case in point

The river Nile is generally regarded as the longest river in the world. The Nile has two main tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The Blue Nile accounts for most of the Nile's drinking water and is the source of most of the Nile's fertile land. It starts in Ethiopia, flows into Sudan and continues through desert into Egypt, whose population has depended on the Nile for millennia.

As well as providing essential water for drinking and farming, water from the Nile is also diverted into cities and large settlements to such an extent that during dry periods the Nile no longer reaches the sea, a prospect unimaginable only a short time ago. Developments in Sudan, downstream from Egypt, are now diverting water from the Nile to such an extent that it is predicted that Egypt will become dry in the coming decades. What does a country with a population of 80 million do without water?

So what's the Beef?

Studies have suggested that in the United States, almost half the water consumed in the country is used in the production of livestock. To produce beef you need a cow, to produce a cow you need land and grain, to produce grain you need more land and water, lots of water. It is estimated that a single pound of beef requires 2,500 Gallons of water. To put that into perspective, the famous environmentalist and vegetarian John Robbins quotes that the amount of water that goes into a 1000 pound steer would float an American Destroyer.

Consider also the amount of land required. The equivalent amount of land to produce 250 pounds of beef could produce 40,000 pound of potatoes. That's the difference between feeding one person and 160 people. Land used for livestock production has also been a major contributor to the destruction of Central and South American Rainforests.

And it's not just water and land that is used in livestock production. Worldwide food prices are at record levels and increasing. The price of grain is at such a level that large parts of Africa are slipping back into the kinds of wide spread famines that we saw in the 1980s. Now picture yourself owning a field of grain. You have a number of starving African families on one side who would use it to feed their families and a cow on the other side. Who gets the grain? The reality, unfortunately, is that the cow gets it. Why? Because we want our steak.

Subsidies

A small farmer in the Third World earns the equivalent of $1 per day. This is what he has to feed himself and his family, to provide shelter, and to build a future for his children. The US and the EU subsidise cows to the tune of $2.7 per day. We are literally paying cows over twice as much to feed our stomachs as Third World farmers have to provide for their families. Are our cows worth more to us than our fellow human beings in the Third World? Do we choose a juicy steak over a poor farmer's family?

I'm not a vegetarian, but eeeoooow

Do you know why meat tastes so good anyway? If I told you that the biggest contributor to the flavour of meat is the ureic acid of the animal from which it came, would it taste so good the next time you eat it? And yes, ureic acid comes from the animals urine. Now, I'm not a vegetarian, although my meat consumption has dropped dramatically lately, but that is not nice. I don't want to sit at the dinner table Mmmm'ing over the taste of animal wee.

What can we do?

Like most people, I often suffer from the "one person can't make a difference" mentality, but in reality you can. The fight against unjust resource usage between livestock and human beings won't be won on Capitol Hill, in Downing Street, in Brussels, Beijing or the UN, it will be won at the supermarket.

We've already seen all the major fast food players change their menus to accommodate a greater range of salads and healthy options because of a rise in public knowledge about the health implications of their menu. Raising your own awareness and that of others, about the environmental and social consequences of our diet choices will have the same effect.

I'm not a vegetarian, and I'm not preaching that anyone should be, unless of course you choose to be. But the next time you are in the supermarket and you pick up a nice steak, a burger or minced beef, and you look at the little price tags that says £3.19 or $4.25 you are looking at a costly illusion. Behind that sticker lies several acres of land, thousands of tonnes of grain, thousands of gallons of water and the livelihood (and life) of a Third World farmer. Ask yourself, "is it worth that much?".