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Mostly returned to the water table? The water in beef should offset the water used to grow the cattle???
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See if you can follow this: 1 gal water weighs on the order of 10^1 lb. Cow drinks 10 gal daily, or 10^2 lb of water, but only gains 1 lb/d, ergo: at least 100 - 1 = 99 lb of water is NOT retained, but urinated back onto the ground (steers are not potty trained) and it soaks in, eventually reaching the water table. [More like 100 - 0.7, but we're approximating the 100, so resorting to decimals is not appropriate.]
That means 99 lb of water is re-cycled and not "used" for every lb of water that remains in the beef. That's a small net drain on the water table, but nowhere near the 1600 gal water / 1 lb beef commonly quoted by the PETA fools.
BTW: for medical calculations, humans are considered 70% water content, and beef the same for nutritional calculations. Body water - Wikipedia
Last edited by guidoLaMoto; 12-01-2017 at 03:43 AM..
Barring sudden giant explosions of cattle as the water in them turns into energy in nuclear explosions to end all nuclear explosions (each and every cow would explode with an energy multiple times that released at Hiroshima), water is neither created nor destroyed when they are raised and slaughtered. There is a lot of water that is part of the process, from growing grain for feedlots, to washing down processing equipment at the abattoirs.
What the vegan religious nuts try to deceive the public with is that the water that falls on land is going to sink in to the earth or run-off or evaporate anyway, unless there is a crowd of them standing there with mouths open and tongues stuck out. If you grow 1000 pounds of corn and let it dry in the field to 15% for commercial use, 150 pounds of water are locked into the corn until it is used. The rest is doing what water naturally does. Got a problem with that? OMG, TREES use crazy amounts of water! ONE large tree can lift up to 100 gallons of water out of the ground and discharge it into the air in a day. Each year, one person uses wood and paper products equivalent to a 100 foot tree 18 inches in diameter. Cut down the Sequoias!!!
The claim of cropland being used by cattle misses that a LOT of cattle are raised on marginal land that is not suitable for row crops for various reasons. There are pastures around me that are hilly, stoney, and small. I can see remnants of terracing on some of them back from the days of sharecropping and that hideous poverty, but there is no way modern machinery can handle such land.
I'll admit that some of the videos and propaganda are slick and enticing, but they are full of half-truths and poor science. All you need to do to find the agenda is follow the news in Britain for a while. The vegans and animal rights groups are as strident as any cult, to the point that even many of the proponents are telling them to back off, that they are alienating people more than helping.
Most metal roofs today and ALL shingle roofs are laden with chemicals that are not good for your health. I would not drink the roof water without a) diverting first runoff and b) heavily filtering the rest. This kind of water is also not suitable for your veggie garden. Make sure you understand what exactly ends up in your water. One easy way is to submit a sample to a detailed analysis by a reputable lab.
Most metal roofs today and ALL shingle roofs are laden with chemicals that are not good for your health. I would not drink the roof water without a) diverting first runoff and b) heavily filtering the rest. This kind of water is also not suitable for your veggie garden. Make sure you understand what exactly ends up in your water. One easy way is to submit a sample to a detailed analysis by a reputable lab.
No. Metal roofs are fairly benign today compared to the past. There might be a zinc strip to limit mold, but the paints are more of an enamel and not prone to leaching. In contrast, I remember that my grandparent's metal roof was painted with red lead paint, and very little would grow in the ground around the drip line. The EPA has done decent work on the issue.
Composition shingles are crushed rock in a type of tar. I consider them more iffy, but after a couple of years on the roof, the volatiles that might get into the rain barrel are limited.
I would agree with your post were it not for the veggie garden comment. Uptake of chemicals in veggies is minimal and element uptake is species specific - like rice is prone to uptake arsenic, green veggies such as spinach and collards iron, etc..
No. Metal roofs are fairly benign today compared to the past. There might be a zinc strip to limit mold, but the paints are more of an enamel and not prone to leaching. In contrast, I remember that my grandparent's metal roof was painted with red lead paint, and very little would grow in the ground around the drip line. The EPA has done decent work on the issue.
Composition shingles are crushed rock in a type of tar. I consider them more iffy, but after a couple of years on the roof, the volatiles that might get into the rain barrel are limited.
I would agree with your post were it not for the veggie garden comment. Uptake of chemicals in veggies is minimal and element uptake is species specific - like rice is prone to uptake arsenic, green veggies such as spinach and collards iron, etc..
Either way I would not be saturating my soil with chemicals if I could help it. One reason I grow my own food is because I want to avoid chemicals, the dumbest thing I could do is add to them from the roof...
Fair enough. Running the water through a barrel of wood charcoal would prevent most of that, but I understand your concern. Does your roof water go into a municipal sewer?
Maybe it should be pointed out that asphalt is not water soluble and that the time of water exposure to it in a rainfall is very fleeting, so there's not enough time for chemicals to leech into it to any great extent, if at all.
Maybe nothing grew near Gramp's drip line because that area takes a physical beating after every rainfall. Nothing grows near anybody's drip line, regardless of roof type. [BTW- Pb is poisonous to animals because it interferes with kidney enzymes and is neurotoxic. Plants have neither kidneys nor nervous systems.]
I've watered my horses with roof run-off (asphalt shingles) and they're still healthy after almost 20 yrs of this.
How toxic is Pb? Well I did an "orders of magnitude" calculation after the Flint MI episode: it turns out that if Flint's water lead level was 100x higher than the Fed legal limit, a kid would have to drink 5 gal a day-- for 109 yrs-- to achieve a toxic blood level-- and that only if he didn't excrete any during that century (or die first from water intoxication...yes, you can drink too much water).
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