Informative Speech : Animal Agriculture

Introduction (Attention Step): What do you think is the greatest cause of emission pollution? What do you believe is harming our planet? Well if you guessed that fossil fuel emissions are the biggest emission polluters, then you are completely wrong (attention getter). Animal Agriculture is actually the number one Greenhouse Gas emitter in the planet. Yes, cow farts are destroying the environment. It sounds crazy, but ever since the mid 60’s, agriculture associations have been spreading across the Americas and dominated the industry. The most destructive of all Ag corps are Livestock Corporation. These associations include IBP, Conagra, Perdue, Farmland National Beef, Cargill, etc … Animal Agriculture is effecting every single person in this room because we all breathe in the same air, drink the same water, and eat the same (credibility). The buildup of Animal Agriculture is a great destruction to our planet and our species because it is creating

Chicken, lamb, turkey, milk, pork, eggs, fish, etc., all contribute to the environmental problems facing the planet. The fossil-fuel energy consumption to protein output for these livestock are as follows: chicken has a 4:1 ration, lamb 50:1, turkey 13:1, milk protein 14:1, pork 17:1, and eggs at a 26:1 ratio. This averages out to almost eight-times more “fossil-fuel energy than production of plant protein” (Pimentel). In addition, each animal has its own benefits and downfalls. Pigs propose a lower carbon footprint but if raised in ideal free-range environments they can pollute the soil with nitrogen (Goffman 5). Chickens pose the threat of spreading bacteria through rivers and streams and spurring algal growth which create “dead zones”,

The ethics of animal production for food did not represent a concern by society until about 25 years ago. The public's awareness of both environmental consequences and effects of production systems on the animals welfare have become perpetually evident over the years. From an environmental perspective, the local grass-fed beef production will have a much smaller impact on the environment compared to the grain-fed production method. Grain-fed beef have to be shipped to the feedlots, incurring high energy costs in the transportation process. Manure at feed lots is not always properly disposed of, leading to foul odors, harmful natural gases, and the potential for leaching into the groundwater, contaminating local groundwater/drinking water supplies. Water pollution is by far the largest environmental impact. Research has shown that runoff resulting from cattle production has polluted at least 170,000 miles of river, 2,000,000 acres of lakes, and 1,800 square miles of estuaries. This is a major ethical issue, as water is our number one resource

Working at a zoo with wild animals might sound like the dream job. But I wanted to get to the source of the problem, which led me down the environmental path. As it so happens, livestock production is one of the major causes of many of our environmental problems, as well as a business which rarely takes proper animal welfare into consideration. This contributes to my value that the consumption of livestock produce must largely

Meat and dairy productions’ livestock is responsible for over 51% of the greenhouse gas emissions, that could be cut by over 70% if we changed our diets to vegan or vegetarian. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the animals on the farms produce over 500 million ton of manure each

Thesis Statement: The U.S. government should ban factory farms and require the meat industry to raise animals in their natural environments.

Factory farming is the application of industry models and production to farms and agriculture. It stresses efficiency and maximum output, but has some terrible consequences. Nearly 65 billion animals worldwide, including cows, chickens and pigs, are crammed into CAFOs. Most farmers have no where to put waste so they put it in lagoons. Collecting animal waste in the massive lagoons is bad because the waste breaks down and forms ammonia gas. This then breeds bacteria, which combines with other pollutants in the air to form nitric acid. The nitric acid builds up in the atmosphere and then returns to the surface of the earth as acid rain, harming soil, forest habitats, and water ecosystems. This causes vast amounts of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of all human-Introduced greenhouse gas emissions and because we burn fossil fuels there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there has been for the past 600,000 years. Methane comes from the animals and it is stronger than CO2. This bad because carbon cycle filter out only so much of it at a time and if there is to much it can damage the ozone layer. There is more to animal agriculture than just making product for people around the

As mentioned above, people are concerned a large amount of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide being released from the slaughter houses every day. There’s a proof that slaughtering livestock have resulted in the air pollution, water pollution, and polluted soil. “The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations recently repor1ted that livestock production is one of the major causes of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution” (Finding A Scientific Connection Between Food Choices And The Environment 3). Farming and slaughtering cattle not only require a vast area and a huge amount of water, but it is also the potential contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions,

There are many side effects of food waste, one of which is it significantly contributes to climate change. An article from the National Geographic states, “The energy that goes into the production, harvesting, transporting, and

The sector emits significant amounts of three of the most important GHGs: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). In fact, globally the farm animal sector accounts for: 9% of human-induced CO2 emissions, 35-40% of human-induced CH4 emissions, which has 25 times the global warming potential (GWP), or power, of CO2 over 100 years, and 65% of human-induced N2O emissions, which has about 300 times the GWP of CO2.” The Humane Society International explains here that animal agriculture is responsible for up to 65% of our emissions of these compounds, and shows that animal agriculture contributes to more emissions of the most powerful substances, while it contributes less to the weaker ones. While animal agriculture isn’t responsible for all of our pollution, it definitely plays a major role in the way we affect our

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released, in 2006, a publication which looked over the environmental impact of livestock on the planet. The conclusions found from that report are that up to 70% of grazing land is considered degraded, livestock contributes in CO2 approximately 18% of the climate change, and livestock accounts for about 37% of methane emissions.As we continue to find out the extent of the effects of these things, we must take these things into consideration. Presently, however, the conclusions found from this report among others the impact on the environment is substantial and at unsustainable levels for the near and far future.

“The UN along with other agencies reported that not only did livestock play a major role in global warming, it is also the leading cause of resource consumption and environmental degradation destroying the planet today.” (Andersen & Kuhn, 2014). It is important, then, to consider the effects of animal agriculture on the environment. This essay will argue that animal agriculture is harmful to the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water- and land use, and that policies in the form of subsidizing plant foods, altering the Canada Food Guide, and creating plant based nutrition coaching and support groups should be enacted to solve these problems. The first section of this paper will outline scholarly literature on the effects of animal agriculture on the environment. This paper will then discuss why a plant based diet is also suitable for optimal health. Finally, this essay will conclude with an overview of the various social policies that must be executed to solve these environmental issues.

Animal agriculture is connected to the crops through mixed farming systems. On these systems, farmers balance the number of animals with the number of nutrients the land is able to hold, from their manure (“HSI Fact Sheet: The Impact of Animal Agriculture on the Environment and Climate Change in Brazil” 2). The problem with this is that factory farms confine these animals on small land areas that are not proportional, resulting in the production of a large amount of manure that will be used on the surrounding land, causing damage to the environment.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (2008), industrial livestock operations produce over 300 million tons of wastewater per year. Although there are

Other environmental issues that contribute to eating animals is how much of our resources are used to feed and water these animals. For example, a dairy, on a dairy there are hundreds of cows, in one day a single cow will drink up to fifty gallons of water. For our location, here in the central valley, a cow