Case Study Brief

Why is beef important to the United States?

United States is one of the largest beef producers
August 2022: record high of 2.51 billion pounds of beef produced (Bernt, 2022)
September 2022: 682,600 metric tons of beef were exported (Bernt, 2022)
Beef consumption in the United States has begun to rise, with the average American eating about "181 pounds of meat annually" (FoodPrint, 2023)

Water usage for one hamburger compared to other water usage (Rouk, 2015).

Beef water usage in comparison to other food items (Broocks et al, n.d.).

One pound of beef requires around "1,800 gallons of water to produce" (FoodPrint, 2023)
The majority of water, about 98%, used during the production of beef goes directly into feeding the cattle (FoodPrint, 2023)
Wastewater from slaughterhouses goes into bodies of water and contaminates drinking water or disrupts life under water (Hunn, 2021)

Breakdown of how water is used for beef production and ways to make it more sustainable (Delynko, 2019).

Broocks, A., Buchanan, J., Place, S., Rolf, M., & Lorenzo, M. (n.d.). Tough questions about beef sustainability: does beef really use that much water? Beef Research. https://www.beefresearch.org/resources/beef-sustainability/fact-sheets/water

Delynko, Kristi. (2019, February 14). What's the beef with water? Denver Water. https://www.denverwater.org/tap/whats-beef-water?size=n_21_n

FoodPrint. (2023, April 5). The water footprint of food. FoodPrint. https://foodprint.org/issues/the-water-footprint-of-food/

Huun, Kate. (2021, March 4). Waste in the meat industry. University of Colorado Boulder. https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/03/04/waste-meat-industry

Nelson, Bernt. (2022, September 30). Increased beef production indicates continued cattle industry contraction. American Farm Bureau Federation. https://www.fb.org/market-intel/increased-beef-production-indicates-continued-cattle-industry-contraction

Rouk, Steven. (2015, August 13). Your diet is causing the drought in California. Boulder Food Rescue. https://www.boulderfoodrescue.org/your-diet-is-causing-the-drought-in-california/

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