Summary.

Studies have shown that cattle farming operations – even ones that are perceived to be ‘better’ like pastured operations – have negative climate and environmental impacts. Numerous cattle pastures in Brazil, for example, are created through deforestation. Cattle production can also drive land degradation, soil acidification, and overabundance of nutrients that disrupt the balance of aquatic ecosystems. Planet-warming greenhouse gases are also emitted throughout the entire cattle-product lifecycle, from farming operations to final product. Beef products, for example, have the highest carbon footprint of any food product (per kilogram produced). Several mitigation measures have been proposed by scientists for these issues; however, viral online misinformation continues to mislead people to greatly underestimate the impacts above.

  • AllrightImmaHeadOut
    2·
    6 hours ago

    cattle populations grew from 942 million to 1.5 billion globally – a roughly 63% increase.

    No, that’s roughly a 47% increase.

    Lol, I can’t math either. Should be 36%, which is still (too) much.

    • azolus@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago
      942 mio × (1 + x) = 1500 mio
0.942 × (1 + x) = 1.5
x = (1.5/0.942) - 1
x = 0.59

      Using this formula I got a 59% increase, which may very well be within truncation error range (1.535 mio is 163% of 943 mio).

      Did you get to 36% by calculating the change starting from the increased value? When talking about percentage increase the increase is usually given relative to the previous value.