[fredrikholm]

What?

The problem is that cattle consumes orders of magnitude more water compared to plants, on top of the fact that they also eat plants, of which they convert a small portion of into (edible) mass.

Their urine, en masse, is highly toxic to the local environment as it kills plants (high salt content, fertilizer burn) and pollutes rivers (pH, over-fertilization, algae blooming).

[cfn]

I live in a very small island where the main industry has been cattle (meat and milk production) for several decades. If the urine of the cows was toxic, the island would have been deserted a long time ago. It is as green as it has ever been, just lookup the Azores for some pictures.

It is true that lot feeds and industrialized cattle production create massive amounts of pollution but so does industrialized agriculture. The problem is on the how and not on the what (see Joel Salatin for a good example).

[fredrikholm]

Cheers; you're right. 'En masse' wasn't sufficient in communicating what I wanted, which was to say "in large, repeated and undiluted amounts".

> The problem is on the how and not on the what

If we could realistically supply the entire demand for beef with cows grazing on fields on the same amount of land, without raising the price directly or by subsidizing the cost, I'd be all in. This is literally impossible as industrialized cattle production is that much more efficient, no matter how revoltingly disgusting it is.

[cfn]

Pretty much all the beef production is done in grazing fields as it is cheaper and less work. It is only the bulk up that is done in feed lots (1-3 months before going to the abbatoir). There is even pasture finished beef production where cows stay in the fields without feed until the end.

[fredrikholm]

Is there any data on that?

I meet quite a bit of animal-activist types (by association) that 'expose' parts of the meat industry by taking jobs and secretly filming (as it's often illegal to do).

Most of the extreme horrors they've recorded are in slaughterhouses, but I have vivid memories of seeing cattle confined in small cages which fecal infected infections. Perhaps that's dairy production, as it doesn't affect the outcome (as much)?

[marliechiller]

thats... not how toxicity is working in this sense and your anecdote doesnt disprove what he is saying. Another anecdote - I went surfing at the end of last summer and was advised not to go into the sea as there had been heavy rains up the valley which had washed refuse off the fields and into the estuary. Lots of people who ignored the advice got sick that day as it turns out the runoff is toxic.

[cfn]

At least I have an anecdote that produces a large percentage of the beef and dairy consumed in Portugal. I fail to see proper data from anyone else showing the contrary elsewhere.

[himinlomax]

That water claim was based on a flawed accounting that's been repeated over and over so much without source. The debunking was posted right here on HN a few years back, don't have time to find it for now, maybe later.

Other than that, what you describe only applies to industrial farming, not grazing cattle. Cows graze pasture, they shit and piss in pasture, it's almost a closed cycle except for the added salt the herder usualy gives them.

[fredrikholm]

> That water claim

What water claim? That cows consume water and excrete concentrated urine? I don't know what you're debunking without a source, but appears to be a straw man.

> industrial farming, not grazing cattle

Grazing requires orders of magnitude more land compared to cramming cows into small cages, which decreases the amount of food you can derive from this already (very) expensive food source.

I love beef, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an incredibly wasteful source of food and it ultimately unsustainable compared to plants, fish, eggs etc.

[sprucevoid]

I'd like to know if you think any of the claims on this page are incorrect and if so what evidence you have against them https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food