Environmental Fact of the Day

According to a report released earlier this year by Environment America, an environmental advocacy group, five big meat companies — Tyson, JBS, Cargill, Smithfield, and Perdue — produce a combined 162 million tons of manure every year. Combine that with the amount of fertilizer needed to grow the feed grain that sustains large-scale animal feeding operations, and it’s easy to see how the waste from our industrial meat complex can literally seep into our waterways, causing everything from local water pollution to massive dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. Another Environment America report found that Tyson, one of the biggest meat producers in the world, is responsible for dumping more toxic pollution into waterways than companies like ExxonMobil or Dow Chemical.