bad comercials will be the ruin of us all! After much preparation, I can now intelligently discuss a wide variety of environmental topics. I wrote a midterm today and was responsible for knowing all sorts of depressing environmental facts. Some of the more depressing things out there are Intensive Livestock Operations; also known as feedlots. Today I learned that an ILO in Canada with 300 �animal units� (and most of the ones here are near where I live) can have a maximum density of 43 �animal units� per acre. An animal unit for cows is 1 cow, but an animal unit for chickens is 60,000! That means that they have 2,580,000 chickens per acre! Imagine that many chickens in one acre. Now, remember that these chickens aren�t moving around, they�re confined in cages. It�s enough to make me vegetarian. In fact, I�m strongly considering becoming a vegetarian if I can�t afford organic/free range meat products. It�s disgusting and barbaric, that�s what it is. Do you think people would stop eating ILO meat if they knew? For a brief, wild minute, I imagined myself crusading against ILOs in Alberta. Then I imagined what the agribusinesses would do to me if I tried. Industrial farming is a big deal up here and they don�t take kindly to any interruption or obstacle. sigh. Maybe I could raise livestock. Just enough to keep me fed. They�d live happy lives and then die without ever knowing what was happening. Or maybe, if I stopped eating meat I could avoid the energy cost of keeping livestock fed. Just take out the middleman, so to speak, and reduce my impact on the earth. Idealism in a cynical world isn�t easy. I got an assignment back from this class too. I got 14 out of 15 but the only comment on the whole paper was �could use less paper�. Does this mean I lost a whole mark for using too much paper? !!! No, it probably just means it wasn�t really good enough for 100% but he wasn�t really sure why. So annoying. It�s a good thing I didn�t put very much work into it. It�s things like this that make people cynical. This and really bad commercials. |