The Meat Industry and its impacts on our water

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Two ways the meat industry affects our water

The meat industry affects our water in two ways. First by the quantity it uses. Raising animals for food accounts for more than ½ of the total fresh water used in the United States each year. It takes an incredible amount of water to produce a small amount of meat, as much as 13,000 gallons of fresh water to produce one pound of beef.

The meat industry uses water in many ways including

· Keeping the processing and slaughter houses clean and sanitary

· Transporting the animals waste into lagoons for storage

· Growing food to feed the livestock that are being raised

· Some meat is cut using water pressure rather than knives or saws

The meat also affects our water supply by polluting millions of gallons of water per year that they did not use at all. The industry overall is the largest polluter of fresh water in the United States.

The main way the meat industry pollutes our water is by the use of lagoons. Lagoons are large sometimes man made pools or lakes that farmers pump the excess animal waste into.

Here is an example of a lagoon on a Smithfield farm in North Carolina

Lagoons are a problem because

· It requires a large amount of fresh groundwater to pump the waste into the lagoons

· Lagoons are often lined with clay but can still break or crack causing the waste to leak out

· Even the lined lagoons that do not break or crack can still leak thousands or potentially millions of gallons of waste per year into local lakes and streams

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Besides lagoons spray fields are the other big problem the meat industry has that causes pollution. Spray fields become a problem because farmers almost always have much more waste than they need to adequately fertilize their fields. However, waste is hard to get rid of so many of these farmers let their sprayers run 24 hours a day to get rid of the extra waste. This causes runoff into lakes and streams because the fields get over saturated.

Smithfield Foods is the largest producer of pork in the United States. Smithfield also happens to be one of the largest polluters of freshwater in the meat industry.

· In 1997 Smithfield was fined 12.6 million dollars for intentionally dumping pollutants into the Pagan River.

· Smithfield’s largest slaughterhouse in North Carolina has been caught polluting the Cape Fear River more than 40 times.

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Possible solutions to the pollution problems caused by the meat industry include:

· Requiring companies to reduce the number of animals living on each acre of land

· Requiring lagoon covers, covers are typically made out of something such as wheat or alfalfa which can get expensive to change

· Require lagoon liners made out of concrete or cement, these would be more reliable than the clay liners which can crack and leak, although concrete

and cement are much more expensive

· The best possible solution would be to phase out the use of lagoons all together

Possible solutions to the water use problems caused by the meat industry include:

· Minimize the amount of water used in production by installing shut off valves, many water hoses in meat processing plants run many more hours per day than they need to

· Eliminate the practice of using water to transport animal parts such as hair and feathers, this is commonly done because it saves time, however it wastes a large amount of water

· Separate cooling water from processing water, cooling water is still clean and could be recycled through the system

· Use detergents and disinfectants in the cleaning process, this would reduce the amount of water required to clean a meat processing room

Links to information about the meat industry

Factory Farm

Meat Processing and Rendering Information

Americas Animal Factories

Cesspools of Shame

Irrigation and Stalinization

Water Use: Developed vs. Developing Nations

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Sources:

Arenburg, B. and Blechinger, E. (2003) Factory Farms – The Bloody Truth About Our Meat. [Online] Available: http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article19.php?id=370 [2006, October 28]

Gardella, F (1999) The Meat Industry……Is It Worth It? [Online] Available: http://www.dbc.uci.edu/~sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry.html [2006, October 30]

Forney, R. (No Date) Smithfield Corporate Responsibility. [Online] Available: http://www.smithfieldfoods.com/Enviro/ [2006, November 4]

Motavalli, J. (2004) The Case Against Meat. Environmental Magazine [Online] Available: http://www.emagazine.com/view/?142 [2006, November 7]

Natural Resources Defense Counsel (1998) Americas Animal Factories: How States Fail To Prevent Pollution From Livestock Waste. [Online] Available: http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/factor/exec.asp [2006, November 1]

Natural Resources Defense Counsel (2005) Pollution From Giant Livestock Farms Threatens Public Health. [Online] Available: http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/nspills.asp [2006, November 2]

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (No Date) Tax Meat – The Ecological Argument. [Online] Available: http://www.taxmeat.com/ecological.asp [2006, November 17]

World Bank Group (1998) Meat Processing and Rendering. Pollution Prevention and Abatement Handbook. [Online] Available: http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/gui_meat_WB/$FILE/meat_PPAH.pdf [2006, November 2]