Can We Be Gotten Out Of Our Old Habits?

April 1, 2024 Editor, The News-Gazette:

It’s unfortunate that publication of the number of bovines (cows) on planet Earth fails to scurry up any particular public concern about the negative impact on the global ecosystem from raising, killing and eating cows. Long-standing human behaviors are extremely hard to alter. Social scientists claim that considerable repetition is required in order to persuade people to change.

Facts help, as long as there is a pretty fair pile of them to present to the target audience. The average cow excretes, every day, 50 pounds of bodily waste: a pollutant customarily misnamed as “fertilizer.” Thus, the 1.545 billion cows on Earth are dropping, daily, 77 billion pounds of waste. Google says the Earth’s habitable land (not including mountains, oceans, polar ice fields) approximates 16 billion acres. Simple math reveals, on average, every acre of Earth’s habitable ground could be catching approximately five pounds of bovine waste … every day … or 1,825 pounds of bovine waste … every year.

The thought of nearly one ton of untreated animal waste deposited on every acre of habitable land on planet Earth ought to be worth some public debate on whether humans should tolerate the livestock industry as a proper human enterprise. Can we as individuals give up animal flesh as a food substance in favor of building a sustainable world for our children? Can we be gotten out of our old habits?

Americans seem to be settling for the Regenerative Agriculture sales pitch which only drives us headlong and deeper into the same “business as usual” climate-killer industry we have nurtured since the turn of the 19th century. DON HENKE Goshen