Methane again

Watching BBC Panorama 'What Price Cheap Food?' last night, I was horrified to see the future of livestock farming, dairy in particular.

The mega-dairy system was promoted as caring for livestock, suggesting the cattle were happy. Holy cow! Penned permanently indoors in a stationary position, they are fed a strict diet of concentrates and hormones. They never move, not even to defecate as their waste drops directly into a slurry ditch, so like battery chickens they will lose the use of their legs. They never go outside. It can’t be good for them, yet the ‘farm’ manager said they were properly cared for.

Bah humbug!

That off my chest, what about the ecology of this? Well, the effect of methane on climate change has got me going on curtailing livestock agriculture as you saw in my post on Cancun. Aside from the issue of how we treat cattle, whether as fellow sentient creatures or production units pumped up with hormones (kidding ourselves they are happy because they don't get exposed to the natural elements), there is an added benefit of letting them graze naturally in the open: traditional ley pasture reduces the amount of methane the cattle produce. It has been shown too that certain wildflowers in a traditional pasture mix significantly reduce methane emissions still further.

If the mega-dairies supported the idea of sustainability, we wouldn't be seeing the slurry as a waste product they are allowed to dump in the surrounding environment. They would be endeavouring to compost it so it could become a useful soil additive, instead of a threat to the supply of our drinking water. And more mutations of fish generated by high hormone infusion?

Scary