By Michelle Miller
Ag Daily
Animal-rights activist & vegan/vegetarians constantly repeat the myth that we could feed more people if we stopped feeding cows. However, this isn’t really the case, and I’ll explain why.
Beef cattle take about 2.6 pounds of grain for every pound of meat they produce. Each year, we feed out over 14 million head of “finisher” fat cattle going to market, but only 7 percent of the grain that’s produced is fed to cattle! The rest goes to chickens, pigs, and other animals (including your dogs and cats), and also to feed you! Feed, seed, and industrial use of corn accounts for about a third of production, 20 percent goes or global export, and about 40 percent of field corn is used for ethanol production, which helps reduce the need for fossil fuels — this one biofuel has a carbon footprint that is 43 percent lower than gasoline.
So, if we stopped feeding cattle, we would have 8 million more acres of corn for human uses, but is there really a need for more filler- or “junk food”-type products? I doubt it.