Professor debunks disingenuous claims against the environmental footprint of cows

According to UC Davis Professor of Animal Science and Air Quality, Dr. Mitloehner, the water footprint of cows is 94% green water, meaning the majority of the water used through a cow’s life is actually recycled, unlike that of almonds which use mostly non-green water and dry up freshwater reserves.

The following is an excerpt from a YouTube video called “Eating less meat won’t save the planet. Here’s why” by What I’ve Learned that details the process:

Dr. Mitloehner: “So the water input that people assign to beef includes, and that’s the majority, the so-called green water. And the green water is rainwater. That rainwater would fall on that land where the animals graze with cattle present and without cattle present. Now the vast majority of the water that goes into a beef animal will go into the beef animal in the form of feed – not in the form of water that they drink. And guess what happens to that water a few hours after it’s ingested? It’s urinated out. It’s not staying in the animal. It stays in the animal as long as the tea that you drank this morning stayed in your body, or inside your body. So that water is not all of a sudden miraculously gone, okay. It is going in and it’s coming out—the vast majority of that is rainwater.

So, to me, it is disingenuous to say: “Oh look at all that water that goes into growing cattle!” would we say the same thing about all the water that goes into trees to grow?”

A figure presented by Vox on-screen reads: “A typical cow’s water footprint is 94% green water. Just one quarter-pound hamburger takes 1,650 liters of water to produce.”

“So these people who come up with these statistics of these enormous amounts of water going into beef, they’re counting rainwater, they’re counting green water. And that’s just not right.

The real worry we have is overusing our freshwater reserves for irrigation and 70% of the world’s freshwater reserves go into irrigating crops. 53% of the groundwater for crops goes to rice, wheat, and cotton. Sure, at 122 liters of non-green water per quarter pound, beef uses more than say rice which is 90 liters, or bread which is 55 liters. But, think about this: 94.5% of Californian Almond’s water usage is not green water. That’s 1097 liters per quarter pound —almost ten times more than that of beef. Think about that the next time you’re ordering an almond milk latte.”

SOURCE: What I’ve Learned