This week on VICE The global threat caused by skyrocketing demand for meat. Our focus is on making the meat as cheap as possible that's where we often have environmental catastrophes Then crisis that humanity is facing in our global water supply. Something's happening this drought is worse than anything you've ever seen. In the history of farming here in silicon valley yes. Those red spots represent groundwater depletion it's happening all over the world *music* The World Health Organization recently classified processed meats in the same cancer causing group 1 carcinogens as tobacco, diesel exhaust, and asbestos But some scientists feel that our global addiction to meat might pose an even greater threat. *music* *music* So this is the very first step of getting the stem cells out of a piece of muscle. if we just take a very small piece of it, in a couple of days those stem cells will fall out. Once we have sufficient number of cells we will provide the conditions for them to uh grow into a tissue meat so what is it that you are actually doing here in this lab? We are creating hamburgers from stem cells. Dr Mark Post is famous for his work in creating the first synthetic burger. And how long does that whole process take to turn these tiny little stem cells into meat? About seven weeks, so that's much faster than a cow much much faster than a cow So this is the new McDonald's. Yes. Can I try? No. Mark's first burger cost him more than $325,000 to make This will be the first time a burger made with cultured beef has been cooked. It's close to meat, there's quite some intense taste But Marks' hopeful he can produce them cheaper and on a larger scale. What are your biggest reasons for for wanting to make this sort of synthetic meat in the first place? The demand for meat is going to increase and there is no way with current livestock production method that we can match that demand. So that we'll put a lot of pressure on food security. If we would all say let's refrain from eating meat five days a week, it would work out fine. But we're not doing that. We're actually doing the polar opposite. Global meat production has quadrupled Since the 1960s and by 2050 it will increase by half again. One country that's capitalized on that explosive growth is Brazil, which is now behind only the US for title of largest beef producer in the world. There's a hell of a lot of resources that go into a feedlot like this, I mean water, energy, absolutely everything is done for maximum efficiency and that means that each one of these cattle gets to eat about 48 pounds every single day. Pedro Morolo, owner of the feedlot explained to us how it works. Oh wow! Look at these skinny little runts. These guys are the cattle that have just arrived These are the ones that are about to go for slaughter? Wow, look at the difference in size that three months can make. You've fed these guys pretty damn well Feeding all these cattle is already a massive operation and Pedro is planning on doubling his production to keep up with global demand So what is this they're mixing up here? And how much feed do the cows eat every day? 450 tons a day? Wow. This system is called a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. This CAFO is designed to make these cattle gain nearly 400 poiunds in just 90 days. These cattle have been cooped up in their pens but now they've finally reached the end of the road; they're just being herded towards the final weighing station before heading out to one of several slaughterhouses across the country So many cattle have you got in today? Uh, everything's done on such a massive scale. The amount of cattle that they're processing is crazy. And business is expected to get even better Brazil's about to be allowed to export fresh beef directly to the US. Americans ate more than a hundred pounds of read meat per person in 2014, and now Africa Asia are moving toward that same diet. We spoke to Ken Cook A food policy expert about the state of meat production today. 70% of the land devoted to agriculture on the planet is devoted to meat production. That's almost a third of the entire surface area. That many acres producing red meat pork, chicken, all of that is completely unsustainable. Let's assume that the world population will grow to 9 billion people by 2050. There isn't enough land, there isn't enough water, there isn't the capacity for the Earth's atmosphere to absorb all of the CO2 and the methane that would come out of animal agriculture. The problem is that our focus is on making the meat as cheap as possible, and as they cut those corners, that's where we often have environmental catastrophes. To see how meat production can lead to those environmental catastrophes, we went to Duplin County in North Carolina, where the pork industry is so big the hogs outnumber people. So this is the lagoon right here. See the pipes coming out? It doesn't smell pretty either. Larry Baldwin monitors CAFOs in North Carolina for the water keeper alliance. This is the situation. The pigs are in there, they're defecating, you know, so you've got urine and feces dropped through the floor, but then there are slots through that concrete the waste falls through that and then gets flushed into the lagoon which is what you see over here. So that's where we can see the pipes coming straight out of this Each one of these buildings has a pipe that empties into the lagoon . That's a hell of a lot of waste Right here. People would be outraged, even suggesting that's the way we would handle human waste. What's the difference? And when you see this region from the air, the scope of these hog CAFOs and their waste is incredible. So up here you can see every single CAFO is attached to these huge lagoons There's hundreds of them, there's such an intense concentration here The ground simply cannot absorb this much waste. And according to NAME of Cape Fair riverwatch that's wreaking havoc on local waterways. Now this stream's surrounded by You see, nitrogen and phosphorus level off the chart, bacteria levels off the chart it's raw, feces. And how many sort of streams like this are you looking at in North Carolina? Thousands. If you're a fisherman or if you're a swimmer, if you're throwing your ball for your dog you gotta deal with the dangerous levels of bacteria. and this stream flows downstream into the northeast and part of the Cape Fear Basin which is part of the the river basin in North CaRoLiNa it's a problem, you have to pay more to treat your water which means you have to pay more to drink your water. You drink this water? A fifth of North CaRoLiNiAnS drink out of the Cape Fear Basin and it isn't just the quality of the water that's the problem, in meat producing regions in the west, it's the quantity. In the dry high plains region, many feed crops draw water from the Ogallala Aquifer, which is now losing water faster than if can be replenished. Mike Callicrate a small cattle rancher in this area broke down the relationship between water, corn and industrial meat. It takes about 2500 gallons of water to produce a bushel of corn. And if an animal eats 50 bushels of corn in its time in the feedlot, we're looking at about 125,000 gallons of water per animal under the industrial model. So when it comes to those industrial scale feedlots, the majority of the water that they're using actually goes into producing the corn? That's correct and the reason that JBS has a big feedlot at Yuma Colarado is because there's water. and they don't pay one dime for that water and they pay below the cost of production of that corn. The corn is the cheapest thing that we can feed because we buy it below the cost of production. The water is subsidizing that operation So, with free water and cheap corn the price of mass produced beef is kept artificially low. The question is, how much of the Ogalalla Aquifer do we need to support an industrial model or any model as far as that goes, and if we are so foolish as to let that precious resource run out that's a tragedy. Mike showed us the scale of land and water used by the giant meat producers here. So we're just flying over Yuma County in Colarado. This is one of the huge huge scale feedlots. You've got a hundred thousand cattle in this one feedlot down here. Is this call corn down here, these circular crops? While this is the system that produces most of our meat we spoke to one farmer who 's going in a drastically different direction. The system that depletes your resource base will eventually crash and burn. Joel Salitan is part of the farm to table movement that focuses on responsible production. He uses a system called rotational grazing holla holla So you just move these cows from this patch into her? Yes, so every day the cows get a brand new salad bar that was one day's plate full of food, today they get a new plate full of food So there's a huge difference between where they were just now and where they are now? Sure, this looked just like this yesterday at this time, and in fifty days this will look like this again So this is the way that cows have traditionally grazed on grass right? This is the role of herbivores in nature On this type of farm, every animal has a role and even their waste plays a part. Joel 's demonstrating for us this integrated system that he's got going on. So he's actually moving his egg mobile containing all the chickens right to the spot where the cows have just been. doo doo We follow the cows with the eggmobile, the chickens then scratch through these cows paddies and help break them into the soil, eat out the fly larva and actually sanitize the field before the cows come back through so it's a very multi speciated system. I've never seen anyone so excited to eat shit before.
Great info. I wish they pushed further for how to combat the water crisis via going vegan. I know Vice is more investigatory but damn maybe at the end just say what people can do i.e. Stop eating fucking meat.