water is being used much faster than it is being replenished; every
year the water has to be extracted at deeper levels. For instance, over
more than half the land area of the United States, over a quarter of
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ETHICS
&
THE ENVIRONMENT,
16(2) 2011
70
the groundwater withdrawn is not replenished and around Beijing in
China the water table is falling by 2 m[eters] a year as groundwater
is pumped out. (188)
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO), “The world is moving towards increasing problems of freshwater
shortage, scarcity and depletion…” (Steinfeld et al. 2006, xxii). By the
year 2025, the FAO estimates that 64% of the world’s population may
live in “water-stressed” basins (Ibid.).
9
And by 2050 the number of indi-
viduals living in
severely stressed
water basins is projected to rise from 1.5
billion to 3 to 5 billion (Houghton 2009, 193). While it is certainly true
that the rapid growth of the human population is behind many of these
figures, how
freshwater is
used
has as much or more to do with this crisis
than just
how many
people use it. What many often neglect is the key role
that agriculture, and livestock in particular, play in both the depletion and
degradation of freshwater supplies.
“Domestic” use of water accounts for only 10% of freshwater con-
sumption while agriculture accounts for 66–70% of global freshwater
usage, making it the single largest user of freshwater.
10
Hidden in this
percentage of water used for agriculture is the amount dedicated to live-
stock production, which currently accounts for more than eight percent of
global water use (Steinfeld et al. 2006, xxii). For instance, according to a
study by the
National Geographic
(2010), it takes 1,799 gallons of water
to create one pound (0.5 kg) of beef, 576 gallons for one pound of pork,
468 gallons for one pound of chicken, and 216 gallons for one pound of
soy beans. Overall, it is estimated that producing one kilogram of animal
protein requires 100 times more water than producing one kilogram of
grain protein (Pimentel and Pimentel 2003, 662s).
The negative implications of livestock production are not limited to
the grossly inefficient use of increasingly scarce freshwater. Livestock pro-
duction also has far-reaching impacts on both the replenishment and qual-
ity of freshwater stocks.
11
In the United States, livestock produce ten times
more waste than the human population (Singer 2002 [1975], 168) but,
unlike human waste, which must be cleaned in waste treatment facilities,
livestock effluent is collected in vast lagoons that often leak into aquifers
and waterways. As Schlosser and Wilson vividly describe it, “Each steer
deposits about 50 pounds of urine and manure every day. Unlike human
waste, this stuff isn’t sent to a treatment plant. It’s dumped into pits—gi-
gantic pools of pee and poop that the industry calls lagoons. Slaughter-
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BRIAN G. HENNING
