The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is criticizing PETA’s anti-beef "naked shower" protest planned for this afternoon in Birmingham, at the intersection of at the intersection of Magnolia Avenue and 20th Street South. The protest demonstrates that the animal rights group's employees either aren't terribly good at math, or don't shower often enough.
PETA falsely claims that “1 lb. of Meat Equals 6 Months of Showers." According to the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), a research institution made up of agriculture scientists, it would take less than 18 ten-minute showers to consume the amount of water required to produce a pound of American beef.* That includes all the water consumed by cattle, plus everything involved in irrigating feed crops and processing the meat.
“If these PETA protesters are only showering 18 times every 6 months, I guess a Birmingham intersection is as good a place as any to catch up," said David Martosko, Director of Research at the Center for Consumer Freedom. “We've always said that PETA stinks, but now we know why.”
The EPA calculates that America’s livestock industry is responsible for less than 3 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. And one 2004 research paper found that improvements in beef production efficiency over the past five decades have saved the use of 165 million acres of land which would otherwise be needed if we still used older methods.
Martosko continued, “One good way to protect the planet this Earth Day is to encourage meat producers across the globe to catch up to American efficiency standards. Another way is to stop buying what PETA is selling.”
*CAST calculated in its 1999 Animal Agriculture and Global Food Supply report that producing one pound of beef consumed a total of 435 gallons of water. Typical modern showerheads consume 2.5 gallons of water per minute; a 10-minute shower uses 25 gallons.
