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On Just Eating

— by Andrew Chignell

The Dung Factor

A problem that is occasionally mentioned in environmentalist and animal rights circles, but has until recently been less prominent in the mainstream media is that of what to do with all the manure produced by farm animals, especially the ones cooped up together in the mega factory farms.  Hence the welcome Post article today on manure pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.

Forget about how the animals are fed, handled, or killed: even apart from all of those issues there is the cost-- to our respiratory well-being and the temperature of the planet--of all the methane they produce, and of the dead-zone-producing algae blooms that live off the mountains of manure sliding into our lakes and oceans.  Methane, by some estimates, is 20 times worse as a greenhouse gas than the carbon monoxide produced by our cars.  And these algae blooms rid huge Rhode Island sized swaths of the ocean of crucial, life-supporting oxygen.

My sense is that there is not one 'killer' argument for giving up meat--no knockdown proof (yes, philosophers do use this sort of violent language to describe arguments), but rather a kind of cumulative case.  For those of us on the cusp of giving it up, is the dung factor enough to push us over the edge?

Okay, most people reading this site will agree that factory farmed meat is dubious if not evil.  What about 'local' and 'family' farms?  If there are just a few animals around, then presumably most of the manure is absorbed into the ground as fertilizer without running off into waterways or ending up in the aquifers.  But does that prevent the methane from being released into the atmosphere?  I honestly don't know.  (I mean: the methane from the manure after it has exited the cow.  About the methane that the cow herself emits, I fear there is little to be done.)

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