Bovines Bother Environment

Cattle made environmental news in at least three separate reports this past week.

From The Week, August 12, 2005:

"A California air-quality agency is blaming cows for the San Joaquin Valley's terrible smog problem.  The flatulence and burping of the valley's 2.5 million cows produce 50 million pounds of organic compounds annually, officials say, far more pollution than is produced by cars.  Dairy farmers will now be required to install pollution-control technology and may even have to alter the cows' diets to minimize their production of gas.  "We are talking about a public health crisis," said an attorney for a local advocacy  group.  "It's not funny to joke about cow burps and farts when one in six children in Fresno is carrying an inhaler." "  Read the LA Times article.

Also from The Week, August 12, 2005:

"Nigerians don't just have to worry about terrorists bringing down planes, said Adelkunle Adekoya in Lagos' Vanguard.  Now we have to worry about cows.  Last week, a herd of cattle wandered onto the runway at Port Harcourt just as an Air France flight from Paris was landing.  The plane plowed into seven cows, crushing them all and skidding off the runway. " Read the BBC account.

From Newsday.com, August 11, 2005:

Three million gallons of liquid manure spilled from a northern New York dairy farm into a nearby river, killing what state officials estimate are hundreds of thousands of fish.

Comments

[Cynthia]

Part of the problem with LA is that humans were never intended to live there. It was a desert. They are focusing on cows and cars because they're not likely to get rid of all the plants, which in fact are among the largest contributors to smog in southern California. Almost nothing grew there before they started introducing plants, such as eucalypts from Australia -- all of which give off a fine eucalyptus-oil mist when the sun hits them. That oil mist is great for collecting particulate matter. A similar thing is beginning to happen in Arizona -- all those people who moved out there for their asthma are now in trouble again because so many people are planting grass and building swimming pools -- humidity has been dramatically raised and the grass pollen and mold are as bad as some places back east.

I do think changing the cows' diets is probably a good idea -- especially if they're getting the kind of high-protein food that amounts to what is called "industrial cannibalism." If it helps with air quality, too, that's nice. But LA's biggest problem is that it shouldn't exist.

[Monica]

Um, isn't the article about the smog in the San Joaquin Valley? That is not LA and certainly not a Desert.