Accounting for nitrogen in food sustainability. In
a recent study, University of Pittsburg environmental scientists Dr.
Xue Xiaobo and Professor Amy Landis in Pennsylvania, USA calculated the
“nitrogen footprints” of various foods.
They then compared this
measure of environmental impact with the same foods’ carbon footprint.
Nitrogen pollution is created from nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizer
runoff as well as nitrogen contained in livestock manure, both of which
are washed by rain into rivers and out to bays and the ocean, where they
spur the growth of algae, which dies and is then consumed by bacteria.
The
oxygen-depriving effects of the bacteria create the often-massive dead
zones such as the 8,000-square-mile area near the Mississippi River and
the Gulf of Mexico.
Of all the foods measured by the scientists,
meat and dairy products topped the list as the most nitrogen-damaging
to the ecosystem, while plant-based foods had the lowest impact.
Our
appreciation, Drs. Landis and Xue for helping us to understand the
environmental damage caused by nitrogen and its primary source in animal
products.
May such insights motivate us all to adopt the truly
eco-friendly plant-based lifestyle. During a November 2009
videoconference in Washington, DC, USA, Supreme Master Ching Hai
explained the harms of livestock waste to both the environment and lives
while suggesting the simplest way to reverse the problem.
Supreme Master Ching Hai: Livestock
produces 130 times as much waste as the human population in the US. Can
you imagine that? In Virginia State, even the poultry farms are
producing 1.5 times polluting nitrogen, more than all the people living
in the same area. We are killing ourselves.
One time, an 8-acre
large,such pig manure lagoon burst in North Carolina, spilling 25
million gallons of this poisonous waste, twice the volume of the
notorious Exxon-Valdez oil spill.
Hundreds of millions of fish
in the state’s New River were killed instantly due to the nitrates in
the waste, with further harmful effects once the contamination reached
the ocean.
Not only that, we have the enormous dead zone in the
Gulf of Mexico, the size of New Jersey, which suffocates all marine life
there. And this is overwhelmingly due to the nitrogen runoff from the
Midwest, from the animal wastes and the fertilizers for the animal feed
crops. This waste is toxic.
It contains antibiotics, hormones and
pesticides, and 10 to 100 times the concentration of deadly pathogens
like E. coli and salmonella compared to human waste.
There is a
very good reason to abolish meat, fish, eggs and dairy – all the animal
products al together. We must stop animal production now and at all cost
if we want to keep this planet.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i32/8832news6.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cen_latestnews+%28Chemical+%26+Engineering+News%3A+Latest+News%29 https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/08/06/how-does-your-diet-affect-gulfs-dead-zone
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