Where's the Beef? In the Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico...

A few years ago, one of the students in my Global Business course was discussing global warming and said that cutting down on beef would directly contribute to a significant reduction in carbon emissions. In her view that was the simplest change a person could make in his/her lifestyle and contribute positively towards the environment.

Today, Michael Reilly, in his Discovery News article, America's Meat Habit Feeds Gulf Dead Zone, reports that "America's taste for meat is a well-known enemy of the environment; growing feed for livestock guzzles far more oil and water, and pumps out far more nitrogen-laced runoff, than if we were all vegetarians. Now new research shows how the leftover fertilizer is contributing to an oxygen-starved dead zone where the Mississippi River drains into the Gulf of Mexico. Last summer, the zone was nearly the size of Massachusetts." Gidon Eshel of Bard College at Simon's Rock in Massachusetts and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago calculate that if Americans kicked their meat habit, it would prevent seven million tons of nitrogen from spilling into the gulf -- a reduction of nearly 90 percent. "When we did the calculations, it was astonishing," Eshel said. "The main reason is we're feeding so much corn to livestock. It takes 4.5 times more cropland to do that than if you feed people a plant diet, and corn is so nitrogen-intensive."