Solution: 'Eliminate animal farming'
By Drovers news source
| Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Patrick O. Brown, a Stanford University biochemist, invented the DNA microarray, a tool that measures how cells make use of their DNA; he then showed researchers how to make their own, transforming genetic research. But over the next 18 months Brown, 55, will take a break from his normal scientific work (finding out how a small number of genes are translated into a much larger number of proteins) in order to change the way the world farms and eats. He wants to put an end to animal farming, or at least put a significant dent in our global hunger for cows, pigs and chickens.
Brown, who has been a vegetarian for more than 30 years and a vegan for 5, notes that while livestock accounts for only 9 percent of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, it accounts for 37 percent of human-caused methane (most of it emanating from the animals' digestive systems) and 65 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide, according to the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Both are far better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, meaning that cows, chickens and their ilk have a larger greenhouse effect than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world. The green cognoscenti are choosing animal husbandry as their new enemy.
Brown says growing crops to feed animals requires a lot more land, energy and fertilizer than growing them to feed people. He says 70 percent of the land that was once Amazon rain forest is dedicated to grazing. Even if scientists figure out how to make milk with stem cells, it's unlikely they will be able to create milk with the same efficiency as they can corn or wheat.
"There's absolutely no possibility that 50 years from now this system will be operating as it does now," says Brown. "One approach is to just wait, and either we'll deal with it or we'll be toast. I want to approach this as a solvable problem." Solution: "Eliminate animal farming on planet Earth."
Read the full story from Forbes.
