wageslaveonbike

I will never give it up.

(1) The USDA reports that animals in the US meat industry produce 61
million tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human
waste - or five tons for every US citizen.

(2) North Carolina's 7,000,000 factory-raised hogs create four times as
much waste - stored in reeking, open cesspools - as the state's 6.5 million
people. The Delmarva Peninsula's 600 million chickens produce 400,000 tons
of manure a year.

(3) According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and
cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and
contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

(4) Pfiesteria, a microscopic organism that feeds off the phosphorus and
nitrogen found in manure, is a lethal toxin harmful to both humans and
fish. In 1991 alone, 1,000,000,000,000 (one billion) fish were killed by
pfiesteria in the Neuse River in North Carolina.


(5) Since 1995, an additional one billion fish have been killed from manure
runoff in estuaries and coastal areas in North Carolina, and the Maryland
and Virginia tributaries leading into the Chesapeake Bay. These deaths can
be directly related to the 10 million hogs currently being raised in North
Carolina and the 620 million chickens on the Eastern Shore of the
Chesapeake Bay.

(6) The pollution from animal waste causes respiratory problems, skin
infections, nausea, depression and even death for people who live near
factory farms. Livestock waste has been linked to six miscarriages in women
living near a hog factory in Indiana.

(7) In Virginia, state guidelines indicate that a safe level of fecal
coliform bacteria is 200 colonies per 100 milliliters of water. In 1997,
some streams had levels as high as 424,000 per 100 milliliters.

(8)The United Nations reports that all 17 of the world's major fishing
areas are at or beyond their natural limits. One third of all the world's
fish catch is fed directly to livestock.

(9)Factory farming is also one of the leading causes of the destruction of rainforest.

Anyway, the list goes on and on and on and....

bugmenot

What a crock. People should be getting regular aerobic exercise anyway. Does this paper take into account how bicycling saves the energy people might otherwise go to the gym and use? Does it take into account how people getting enough cardio exercise don't consume health care products nearly as much? No. The real way you can tell whether something costs less energywise is generally if it costs less period. And biking for commuting clearly does. The author of this paper is completely ******** and if that's what Cornell is producing than their school's diplomas ought to be used for toilet paper.

cooker

I posted the link to the source paper...maybe you can read it and find some holes in it.

Roody

Well this thread proves one thing at least:

People are even more defensive if you insult their food than if you insult their ride.

Cosmoline

First of all, you arguments seem to be against large scale factory meat processing not meat eating per se. Secondly, WTF does any of this have to do with bicycling wasting gasoline? Or with bicycling at all?

bragi

If I remember correctly (it's been a long, winding thread, full of "trolls"), the OP's original point was that a meat-eating bicyclist may actually consume more fossil fuel than a vegan car-driver, because meat production in this country is very energy-intensive and uses a lot of fossil fuel to feed, drug, water, kill, and transport the animals to market. I don't really agree with him, but I can definitely see a relationship to bikes here. He's not a total weirdo, just wrong. Meat production is, in fact, very energy-intensive and very destructive to the environment (I once did a waterborne-microbe survey downstream from a feedlot, and there were literally no microbes to count). Meat is just plain inefficient (and delicious). But the commercial production of vegetarian fare in this country is also very energy-intensive. Those carrots, loaves of bread and heads of lettuce don't just walk to Safeway, do they? If you buy food at a store, meat or no meat, you use fossil fuel. But if you ride your bike to the store to buy that food, you use less. Which makes you morally superior to car drivers and allows you to smirk at them with impunity. Until you need to borrow their pickup to buy a refrigerator.

wageslaveonbike

You are completely ********. Did you read the thread?

By the way, colleges give out degrees, not diplomas. You obviously wouldn't know about that though, now would ya', dingle berry. This study is using solid math, you are just incapable of understanding what the actual subject matter is.

wageslaveonbike

Nuge, shouldn't you be out clubbing a baby seal right now? Anyway, do you really have to ask what this article has to do with bicycling?

wageslaveonbike

Actually, I am a total weirdo.

So what did I get wrong here? Where are the factual errors in any of this?

cyclezealot

Well,if we just all commit suicede, it's save the planet lots of resources. But, told that is against social norms.
I suggest, I use my bike to save at least 33% of our driving; we are doing our part. My commuting to work- i'd say over ten years, I've reduced my driving miles on average 4000 miles a year. Ten years that is 40,000 miles. I feel proud of that fact.
I rarely will do a bike ride / race if it's entry means I have to drive to the start point. Defeats the purpose of having a bike.

bentstrider

Just jumping on board here.
Instead of using farm vehicles to do most of the work, why not just use draft animals to plow the fields and drop the seeds and sprinkle the water.
Those Old Order Amish types have good, hearty meals with meat and veggies.
And for the most part, they get it done without a single drop of oil.
In this case, a heavier emphasis should be placed on organic farming and livestock raising.
And if the vegan camp wants everyone to stop eating meat, the only way they'll accomplish that is through a soy-product "switcheroo".
Secretly phase out all the actual beef/poultry and replace it with a soy-substitute that tastes exactly the same.
That way, everyone could be happy, and their won't be some crazy, "herbivore vs. omni/carni-vore" civil war.
But, getting back on track, fossil fuel resources are a better bet when they're placed on agriculture and bulk-material moving.
If Henry Ford saw what became of his creations today, I bet he would destroy all of his written ideas when he returned to his own time. Him and all the other people involved with the personal auto through its beginning stages.
I'm done.

Roody

I hate to say it, but I think the OP does have a good point buried under all the trollery. The Union of Concerned Scientists has been saying for years that transportation and food are the two areas where consumers both use the most resources and create the most pollution. (Utilities would round out the top three.) Which is number one--food or transit--is arguable, and would probably vary from one household to another. Obviously, us carfree folk cause proportionately more environmental damage with our food consumption, since damage caused by our transportation is already low.

If you're carfree, or even carlite, you are already doing much to help the environment, especially in the important areas of greeenhouse emissions and particulate emissions or non-toxic air pollution.

If you want to do even more, the next logical step would be to change your food consumption habits. This step will especially help in the areas of land use, water consumption and water pollution. These areas, IIRC, not the fossil fuel consumption, are the main areas in which food production and consumption damage the environment. Buy organic food, and buy more locally produced food. Eat much less meat, or stop eating meat. Do some research to find out more.

If you ride a bike rather than drive a car, you're probably saving a lot of money. If you eat more sustainably, OTOH, you will probably spend more money. Of course both cycling and eating sustainably are also better for your individual health, as well as better for the health of the planet.

And IMO, you should not necessarily eat more if you are cycling a lot. Most North Americans are overweight and obese, so if they cycle but consume the same calories, they will lose weight and further benefit their own health.

krazygluon

I'd still say the vegan car driver uses more resources.
most if not all american meat is grown in the country, whereas I see a LOT of foreign countries' names on my produce. I'd bet pushing a ton of grapes 1600+miles (not to mention the energy involved in making and transporting the pesticides, fertilizers and farm equipment) is energy intensive enough that the energy saved by a biking omnivore (who buys meat from in their country) is better than the marginal energy gain from being vegan.

now, a bike-riding, locally grown produce eating vegan who consumes a minimum of heavily processed goods (say that wonderful textured soy protein I'm having in my sloppy joes tonight) would probably be the best combination.

It definately matters more how far you food has traveled to get to you and how much it was processed before it got to you, than it matters whether you eat meat or not. (if you're really eating healthy, you don't eat much meat to begin with)

wageslaveonbike

You still gotta feed those work animals. Which is gonna be more energy spent.

I don't know how large the omish population is but I'm just guessing that it doesn't equal the population of, say, Los Angeles.

Like I said before, if the meat industry wasn't highly subsidized people wouldn't buy meat nearly as much.

wageslaveonbike

Ah, I'm bored... Seriously, I could keep posting this stuff forever.

https://www.oilcrash.com/articles/eating.htm

more than one-third of all fossil fuels produced in the United States are used to raise animals for food. This makes sense, since 80 percent of all agricultural land in the U.S. is used by the meat and dairy industries (this includes, of course, the land used to raise crops to feed them).

Simply add up the energy-intensive stages: (1) grow massive amounts of corn, grain, and soybeans (with all the required tilling, irrigation, crop dusters, and so on); (2) transport the grain and soybeans to manufacturers of feed on gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing 18-wheelers; (3) operate the feed mills (requiring massive energy expenditures); (4) transport the feed to the factory farms (again, in inefficient vehicles); (5) operate the factory farms; (6) truck the animals many miles to slaughter; (7) operate the slaughterhouse; (8) transport the meat to processing plants; (9) operate the meat-processing plants; (10) transport the meat to grocery stores; (11) keep the meat refrigerated or frozen in the stores, until it's sold. Every single stage involves heavy pollution, massive amounts of greenhouse gases, and massive amounts of energy.

Between watering the crops that farmed animals eat, providing drinking water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning away the filth in factory farms, transport trucks, and slaughterhouses, the farmed animal industry places a serious strain on our water supply. Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food.

It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year.

According to the nonprofit group Greenpeace, all the wild animals and trees in more than 2.9 million acres of rainforest were destroyed in the 2004-2005 crop season in order to grow crops that are used to feed chickens and other animals in factory farms. While many of the world's largest meat, egg, and dairy-products companies are responsible for this, Greenpeace blames the notorious animal-abusing company KFC for leading the way in laying waste to the Amazon

The most common crop grown in the rainforest is soy—in fact, much of the enormous amount of soy that is needed to feed the world's farmed animals now comes from the rainforest. (The soy that is used in veggie burgers, tofu, and soy milk in the United States is almost exclusively grown domestically, not in the Amazon.) A whopping 80 percent of the world's soy crop is used to feed farmed animals.

What do we get back from all the grain, fossil fuels, and water that go into making animal products? Tons and tons of feces. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the run-off from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined.

Fecal Contamination
Animals raised for food produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire U.S. population, roughly 68,000 pounds per second, all without the benefit of waste treatment systems. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, animals on factory farms in America produce 20 tons of fecal matter each year for every U.S. household. A pig farm with 5,000 animals produces as much fecal waste as a city of 50,000 people. According to Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke, factory farming constitutes "a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems."

A contamination study conducted by John Chastain, a Minnesota agricultural extension engineer, reports, "The data indicates that the pollution strength of raw manure is 160 times greater than raw municipal sewage."

In other words, farmed animal waste is much more dangerous than human waste. There are no federal guidelines that regulate how factory farms treat, store, and dispose of the trillions of pounds of concentrated, untreated animal excrement that they produce each year. This waste may be left to rot in huge lagoons or sprayed over crop fields; both of these disposal methods result in run-off that contaminates the soil and water and kills fish and other wildlife. The concentration of parasites, bacteria, and chemical contaminates in animal excrement can wreak havoc on the ecosystems affected by farm run-off, and there are countless reports that humans who live near these farms have become very sick from the pollution.

A Scripps Howard synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm pollution issued this warning about animal waste: "[I]t's untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased. … It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick. … Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. … Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick."

wageslaveonbike

The U.S government indirectly subsidizes the meat industry. The cost of a common hamburger would be $35 and the cost of one pound of beefsteak would be $89 if water was not subsidized by taxpayers.

Eatadonut

you're neglecting to count the resource savings that would result from the mass suicides as people realized that life isn't worth living unless you can eat a cow now and then.

nedgoudy

WageSlaveonBike Wrote:
You make a great case, and
I believe every word. I would
be down with the whole thing
if soy protein provided all the
nutrients of whey. If you can
verify that to be the case,
(credible internet references
will do.) I will switch back to
soy. It is more expensive than
whey in the 44# bag, but I would
gladly do that to help the environment
and save us from Global Warming.

Then too, I could become a super prick.

No car, living on soy protein powder
and veggie juice and be-deviling
everyone else to do the same. :O)

Ah,...what a moral victory! And
there must be hot women somewhere
that would go for a guy like that. :O)

Maybe Hippie chicks! :O)

wageslaveonbike

Well since population is a problem, I guess you are killing two birds with one stone. Thats voluntary human extinction baby! Woo hoo!

nedgoudy

Hey Wageslaveonbike,

I did my own research and I am down
with the soy. I used it originally for
4 years for weightloss til I found whey
on the cheap, BUT... I just did an Internet
search and found a place to get a 44# bag
CHEAPER than the same amount of whey.

I am going to be intolerable to live with!

wageslaveonbike

Hmmm. Well I don't know which nutrients you are refering to. I know that there are no nutrients in animal products that you can't get from plant sources. I have been vegan for eight years and according to my doctor, I'm doing great. There are lots of vegan athletes and bodybuilders that are getting good results too. Check out hemp protein. Hemp is basically the most nutritious food on the planet (no, it doesn't get you high).

Anyway, not every vegan is a self rightious hippy. I am difinately not a hippy. I swear. If you are into hippy "chicks", thats your deal. Not my style though. I don't have any problems with the ladies anyway. I don't just walk around like a big "PC fascist" or "vegan eco-nazi" despite what some of you may think of me.

wageslaveonbike

Just remember not to overload on soy. Try to get a variety of plant based proteins. Seriously, check out hemp. It may be more pricey (I don't know how much more pricey), but its worth it.

Wogster

Lets look at this reasonably, the whole argument is about eating lots more meat, except meat is not a great fuel, because it mostly consists of protein and fat, which take many hours to process. What a cyclist needs for fuel is carbohydrates, which are often grains, and certain vegetables. Carbohydrates are what diabetics need to avoid, and the things they most often need to avoid: breads, carrots, potatoes, pasta and rice.

It's true that North Americans eat too much meat, and that cutting down is a good idea, but the article implies that the only thing that people who walk or bike (rather then drive) eat more of, is meat, when in reality they probably eat less meat then average. Heck I rode 30K today, and the only meat that I ate was 2 eggs at breakfast, and some people do not even consider that meat.

lyeinyoureye

One last thing, I read an article today that stated every calorie of grain we produce requires 16 calories of fossil fuels. If this is the case then a calorie of meat requires roughly 160 calories of fuel, so a vegetarian cyclist is only about as efficient as a normal car when both are operating at ~15mph. Provided your diet is adjusted, the increase in food/energy required to bike is more than it would be to not expend the energy biking and ride in a fuel efficient car at the same speed. So, it seems like agribusiness is worse than I thought in terms of fossil fuel use, obviously this doesn't apply to you if you grow/hunt your own food w/o fossil fuels, but for the rest of us, it means that biking can be more fossil fuel intensive than driving. Here's the story. And the quote from chapter 2...
Not all of these calories are from gasoline, as electricity and fertilizers contribute to the fossil fuel costs. But in an energy to energy comparison, cycling and eating mass produced food either breaks even or looses depending on the vehicle driven.

wageslaveonbike

Hmmm. I don't think I buy that one. I have typically heard from most credible sources that it takes about 10 calories of fossil fuels for every 1 calorie of food. Thats the standard american diet. I imagine it is significantly less for just plain wheat.

https://www.organicconsumers.org/btc/gasfood112105.cfm

www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002956.html

https://www.solartoday.org/2005/july_...cornerJA05.htm