The American beef industry has taken a bit of a beating in recent years. Beef has been linked to heart disease and cancer and hamburgers have been recalled. We’re also often told that cattle require a lot of precious food and water to make tender steaks.
But a study
wants to rectify beef’s image as an environmental miscreant. It says
modern beef production is a lot kinder to the environment than it was 30
years ago.
Jude Capper,
an assistant professor of dairy science at Washington State University
who did the study, found that cattlemen used 33 percent less land, 12
percent less water, 19 percent less feed and 9 percent less fossil fuel
energy in 2007 to produce the same amount of beef as they did in 1977.
How? Mainly by getting more meat out of fewer cows.
