why is it a problem that it takes so much water to produce 1kg of beef – something like 15,000 liters – if the cows just pee it all back out anyway?
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There’s a huge misconception in your question. That isn’t water the cow drinks. That’s water used to irrigate the fields that grow the soy beans and corn that is used to feed the cows. That water evaporates into the atmosphere. It isn’t water that the cow “just pees back out”.
It takes a massive amount of feed to raise a cow, and we only eat a small portion of it. Protein and nutrients from that feed have to go toward growing all the fur and skin and bones and internal organs and the rest of the animal that we don’t eat. That same quantity of feed, or at least the land and water and fertilizer, could grow grains and vegetables that could feed far more people than the quantity of meat from the cows that the same amount of land could support.
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