Sustainable beef? U.S. has most environmentally friendly livestock industry in the world

Frank Mitloehner, an animal science and air quality specialist at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) will show you two pictures from either side of a California fence. There are 40 acres on one side occupied by a 3rd generation dairy with 1,000 cows. On the other are 40 acres occupied by a 5-year-old residential development with 1,000 homes.  The residential development sued the dairy over environmental quality — and won. It didn’t matter that a subsequent comprehensive life-cycle assessment — an assessment of all environmental footprints — conducted by UC Davis researchers showed that converting farmland to residential land is 70 times more harmful to the environment. It mattered not that the U.S. has the most  environmentally friendly livestock industry in the world, as measured with scientific fact by its carbon footprint.