Global warming

FACT

Canadian cattle contribute approximately 0.025% of the greenhouse effect from methane emissions in the world.


Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons are called greenhouse gases.  These gases form an envelope around the earth to contain our atmosphere and decrease the amount of ultraviolet rays that reach the surface.

Plants use carbon dioxide to produce cellulose and starch during the photosynthesis process.  The methane by cattle comes from the digestion of plant material in the rumen (the first of the four stomachs).

The carbon production from cattle, in the form of methane belched into the air, is not the same as the carbon produced when fossil fuels are burned. Cattle are recycling carbon that was once in the atmosphere.  This carbon is either sequestered by the soil or by the grasses the grazing cattle eat. Cattle are a link in the nutrient recycling process.

Cattle are part of the carbon cycle.   Carbon in the atmosphere is taken in by plants and converted to cellulose and starch during the photosynthesis process.  This plant material is then digested by cattle who release some of the carbon contained by the plant back into the atmosphere in the form of methane.

A study at Cornell University, New York, calculated that the entire beef cattle population in the world contributes 1.0% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The average daily production of greenhouse gas by a cow is equal to that of a car driven 3.2 kilometres. In fact, driving to the store to buy groceries produces 800 times more greenhouse gas than does the production of a hamburger.  One landfill site in the Vancouver area creates more methane emissions each year than all of the cattle in British Columbia.