Livestock
Table of Contents
Impact of Livestock
"Humans are easily outnumbered by our farm animals. The combined total of chickens (19 billion), cows (1.5 billion), sheep (1 billion) and pigs (1 billion) living at any one time is three times higher than the number of people, according to the Economist.
But those figures are dwarfed by the number of animals we eat.
An estimated 50 billion chickens are slaughtered for food every year – a figure that excludes male chicks and unproductive hens killed in egg production.
The number of larger livestock, particularly pigs, slaughtered is also growing..."
"In the last 50 years the number of people on the planet has doubled. But the amount of meat we eat has tripled."
The chart beneath compares the populations of humans vs some of the species we farm. We couldn't include the vast amount of farmed fish because estimates range wildly between sources, and is generally estimates in millions of tonnes, rather than individuals like other animals.
"Seventy percent of Brazil’s deforested land is used as pasture, with feed crop cultivation occupying much of the remainder. And in Botswana, the livestock industry consumes 23 percent of all water used. Globally, 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to the livestock industry—more than is produced by transportation-related sources. And in the United States, livestock production is responsible for 55 percent of erosion, 37 percent of all applied pesticides and 50 percent of antibiotics consumed, while the animals themselves directly consume 95 percent of our oat production and 80 percent of our corn..."
Calls to Action
Urge governments to end harmful livestock subsidies and redirect that money to regenerative agriculture or other environmentally friendly programs.
If you are a livestock farmer, learn how transitioning to non-animal agriculture can provide better income while helping the planet.
If you want to help recover livestock-damaged land and return it to nature, please consider supporting the Vegan Land Movement's Dairy Land Buyout Program where damaged livestock fields are being turned into wetlands and reforested.
Please put the set of graphs from this link [ https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food?country=#key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food ] here! Plus a link to the original page.
According to the graph on the right (or above depending on your screen):
26% of green house gas emissions come from food production.
50% of Earth's habitable land is used for agriculture.
70% of freshwater withdrawals are use for agriculture.
78% of ocean and fresh water pollution is caused by agriculture. 19% is caused by industry, and 11% is caused by households.
96% of global mammal biomass (excluding humans) is livestock.
71% of global bird biomass is poultry livestock.
Wild birds only made up 29% of global bird biomass, but their numbers have been under threat from pesticides used in agriculture as well as bird flu which can spread to wild birds from farmed poultry.
Air Pollution
Livestock, their feed, and other steps in the production to table process create significant pollution including powerful green house gases, small particle pollution, mold spores which cause Farmer's Lung, noxious smells that have been found to make people sick, burn their eyes, and make every day life extremely difficult for those who live near livestock farms. Some types of pollution including nitrous oxide have been found to heat our atmosphere, cause ozone depletion, and have brought back acid rain which harms our soil, crops, buildings, even aquatic life such as coral reefs.
Ammonia
Ammonia is a major problem on farms as it burns lung tissue, causing harm to both workers and farm animals. Birds are particularly delicate when it comes to air quality, and since the majority of poultry are raised in tightly-packed factory farms, this means that billions of birds are forced to breath this harsh gas all day every day until they are slaughtered.
Broiler chickens (99.9%) live on factory farms
Turkeys (99.8%) live on factory farms
Egg chickens (98.2%) live on factory farms"
"Small air pollution particles can infiltrate deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream. In very old people and people with underlying illnesses such as asthma and heart disease, they can make heart and breathing problems worse and may even result in death.
These tiny specks of particulate matter — about 1/30th the width of a human hair — are called PM2.5 and have many sources. Power plants, factories and cars can pump such particles — and the precursors to these particles — into the air. So, too, can natural events, such as forest fires. Sometimes PM2.5 forms when gaseous chemicals react in the atmosphere. Ammonia, a nitrogen-based compound, is one of those chemicals.
In the past 70 years, global emissions of ammonia have more than doubled from 23 to 60 teragrams per year. (One teragram is 1 billion kilograms or 2.2 billion pounds.) Researchers say the increase is due in large part to an increase in ammonia emissions from agriculture. Our ability to grow crops depends on nitrogen, which is a critical plant nutrient. But in overabundance, nitrogen can spell trouble. Nitrogen in animal waste and in excess fertilizer can turn into gaseous ammonia. In fact, in the U.S. and Canada, agriculture accounts for more than three-fourths of all ammonia emissions.
When ammonia enters the atmosphere, it combines with air pollutants — mainly nitrogen and sulfuric oxide compounds — from nearby vehicles, power plants and factories to form PM2.5, which can travel long distances in the atmosphere. That’s how ammonia emissions in one part of the country can impact air quality in a downwind region.
A few years ago, a group of scientists led by Jos Lelieveld, a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany showed that agricultural emissions were the largest contributor to PM2.5 in Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia, Turkey and the eastern U.S. and the leading cause of deaths attributable to air pollution in Germany, Japan, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. They estimated on a global scale that one-fifth of PM2.5-related deaths could be avoided by eliminating agricultural air emissions.
“There’s a very tight link between growing food and ammonia-based small particles in the atmosphere,” says James Galloway, a biogeochemist at the University of Virginia who studies how nitrogen cycles through the environment."
The same article explains that "Researchers estimate that livestock production contributes roughly two-thirds of ammonia emissions associated with agriculture while nitrogen fertilizer use contributes about one-third."
...
"“Up to 80 percent of nitrogen in feed is lost to the environment,” says Opio. More than 50 percent of the nitrogen content of manure comes in the form of ammonia, which can easily volatilize and enter the atmosphere."
"They estimated that a 50 percent reduction in agricultural ammonia emissions worldwide
could prevent more than 200,000 deaths per year across 59 countries."
Click the Air Pollution button to learn more about air pollution in general (including from livestock and food production) or scroll down.
Mapping Ammonia Hotspots
Industrial and Agricultural Ammonia Point Sources Exposed "Through its important role in the formation of particulate matter, atmospheric ammonia affects air quality and has implications for human health and life expectancy1,2. Excess ammonia in the environment also contributes to the acidification and eutrophication of ecosystems3–5 and to climate change6. Anthropogenic emissions dominate natural ones and mostly originate from agricultural, domestic and industrial activities7. However, the total ammonia budget and the attribution of emissions to specific sources remain highly uncertain across different spatial scales7–9. Here we identify, categorize and quantify the world’s ammonia emission hotspots using a high-resolution map of atmospheric ammonia obtained from almost a decade of daily IASI satellite observations. We report 248 hotspots with diameters smaller than 50 kilometres, which we associate with either a single point source or a cluster of agricultural and industrial point sources—with the exception of one hotspot, which can be traced back to a natural source. The state-of-the-art EDGAR emission inventory10 mostly agrees withsatellite-derived emission fluxeswithin a factor of three for larger regions. However, it does not adequately represent the majority of point sources that we identified and underestimates the emissions of two-thirds of them by at least one order of magnitude. Industrial emitters in particular are often found to be displaced or missing. Our results suggest that it is necessary to completely revisit the emission inventories of anthropogenic ammonia sources and to account for the rapid evolution of such sources over time. This will lead to better health and environmental impact assessments of atmospheric ammonia and the implementation of suitable nitrogen management strategies."
Satellites make mapping hot spots of ammonia pollution easier "Animal feedlots and other sources of the gas can lower air quality"
Carbon Dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a long-lived greenhouse gas that is produced in greater quantities from livestock than from other forms of food production. Fortunately carbon can also be sequestered via certain crops and farming practices, such as planting trees and growing cover crops. Click the Food & Carbon button to learn more about the intricate details of how our diets influence this greenhouse gas.
Methane
Nitrous Oxide
Disease
Antibiotic Resistance
"A massive 75% of the world’s antibiotics are given to these farmed animals.
The NHS is under record pressure, and now they are facing the burden of dealing with patients that have developed antibiotic resistance.
Worryingly, the levels of humans developing antibiotic resistance are rising and this is predicted to be the leading cause of death by 2050, with an estimated economic cost of £66 trillion.
Furthermore, with the intensive farming practices that these animals are subjected to, the risk of creating zoonotic pathogens is higher, which could result in more viruses that are contagious to humans." - The NHS is Paying for the Hidden Health Costs of Cheap Meat
The Effects of Feeding Waste Milk Containing Antimicrobial Residues on Dairy Calf Health "A number of studies have reported that there is a high prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant faecal bacteria excreted by dairy calves. Although faecal shedding is influenced by a variety of factors, such as the environment and calf age, feeding milk with antimicrobial residues contributes significantly to an increased prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) bacteria, such as extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing E. coli. As a follow-up to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Scientific Opinion on the risk of AMR development in dairy calves published in January 2017, this review aims to illustrate more recent research in this area, focusing on the period 2016 to 2020. A total of 19 papers are reviewed here. The vast majority assess the commensal faecal bacteria, E. coli, isolated from dairy calves, in particular its antimicrobial-resistant forms such as ESBL-producing E. coli and AmpC-producing E. coli. The effect of waste milk feeding on the prevalence of pathogens such as Salmonella spp. has also been investigated. Current research findings include positive effects on daily liveweight gain and other advantages for calf health from feeding waste milk compared to milk replacer. However, the negative effects, such as the demonstrable selection for antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, the shift in the intestinal microbiome and the possible negative consequences that these could have on global public health, should always be taken into consideration."
Animal to Human Disease Transmission
(Bird) Flu "Most influenza viruses that infect humans seem to originate in parts of Asia, where close contact between livestock and people creates a hospitable environment for mutation and transmission of viruses. Swine, or pigs, can catch both avian (meaning from birds, such as poultry) and human forms of a virus and act as hosts for these different viral strains to meet and mutate into new forms. The swine then transmit the new form of the virus to people in the same way in which people infect each other -- by transmitting viruses through droplets in the air that people breathe in."
Nipah Virus "was first recognized in 1999 during an outbreak among pig farmers in, Malaysia. No new outbreaks have been reported in Malaysia since 1999."
...
"During the first recognized outbreak in Malaysia, which also affected Singapore, most human infections resulted from direct contact with sick pigs or their contaminated tissues. Transmission is thought to have occurred via unprotected exposure to secretions from the pigs, or unprotected contact with the tissue of a sick animal."
Swine Influenza (Swine Flu) "is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that regularly cause outbreaks of influenza in pigs. Swine flu viruses can cause high levels of illness in swine herds, but usually cause few deaths. Common signs in sick pigs include fever, depression, coughing (barking), discharge from the nose or eyes, sneezing, breathing difficulties, eye redness or inflammation, and going off feed. However, influenza-infected pigs also may not appear ill or be only mildly ill. Swine influenza viruses may circulate among swine throughout the year, but most outbreaks occur during the late fall and winter months similar to outbreaks of seasonal influenza in humans."
Diseases that Transmit to Wildlife
Food Security
Food security encompasses aspects of food production from the quantity and resources we need to produce it, to how safe and nutritious the resulting food is.
Efficiency of Animal Production
The Opportunity Cost of Animal Based Diets Exceeds All Food Losses "With a third of all food production lost via leaky supply chains or spoilage, food loss is a key contributor to global food insecurity. Demand for resource-intensive animal-based food further limits food availability. In this paper, we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss."
Meat and Animal Feed "Over the past 50 years, global meat production has almost quadrupled from 84 million tons in 1965 to more than 330 million tons in 2017. The IAASTD predicts that this trend will continue, especially because the growing urban middle classes in China and other emerging economies will adapt to the so-called western diet of people in North America and Europe with its taste for burgers and steaks.
On average, every person on Earth currently consumes 43.5 kilograms of meat per year. This figure includes babies and adults, meat eaters and vegetarians alike. In 2013, US citizens consumed 115 kilograms of meat and people in the UK 81 kilograms, while citizens in India only ate 3.7 kilos. In general, men eat more meat than women. In the EU, meat consumption has stagnated recently, with a growing number of people switching to vegetarian and vegan diets. Moreover, beef has lost in popularity while the consumption of chicken has increased remarkably. The favourite meat of Europeans is pork. The Chinese also share this appetite for pork. Since 1965, per capita meat consumption in China has increased six-fold. Since the population almost doubled to 1.4 billion people over the same period, global demand for meat and animal feed has exploded.
The production of meat, milk and eggs leads to an enormous loss of calories grown in fields, since cereals and oil seeds have to be cultivated to feed to animals. According to calculations of the United Nations Environment Programme, the calories that are lost by feeding cereals to animals, instead of using them directly as human food, could theoretically feed an extra 3.5 billion people. Feed conversion rates from plant-based calories into animal-based calories vary; in the ideal case it takes two kilograms of grain to produce one kilo of chicken, four kilos for one kilogram of pork and seven kilos for one kilogram of beef.
By their nature, cattle and sheep eat grass. More than two thirds of the global agricultural area is used for permanent meadows and pastures. If livestock eat grass and other plants that are not suitable for direct human consumption, they do not compete for cereals but increase food supply and add significantly to agricultural production. They produce manure, contribute to soil cultivation, serve as draught and pack animals, recycle waste and stabilise the food security of their owners.
Large parts of the grasslands used today, especially in arid regions, are not suitable for any other agricultural use except extensive grassland management. However, it is no longer possible to substantially increase its production capacity. In some areas of the world, overexploitation of grasslands, also through traditional livestock husbandry, has become a serious problem. ..."
Animals Pass More Than Just Nutrients to Humans
Heavy Metals
Pathogens
Prions
Milk
Prions can be passed from infected animals to other animals or humans, via the consumption of milk. Prions are damaged neurons which act like "zombies" in that they damage and infect healthy brain cells even after their own death. This causes more healthy cells to become damaged and go on to infect more. Prions are famous for causing mad cow disease outbreaks which (when they infect a human) become "a human form of mad cow disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which is fatal. Over time, vCJD destroys the brain and spinal cord." - My Health Alberta
"Surprisingly, pasteurisation (heating for 30 seconds to 72°C) and ultra-high temperature treatment (heating for 1–4 seconds to 135°C) only leads to a partial reduction of the amount of PrPC. This supports the observation that PrPC is highly stable in milk. Thus, the heating procedures used to inactivate DNA-containing pathogens are not sufficient to eliminate endogenous prion proteins." - NCBI: Prion Protein in Milke
PFA & Plastics
"Highlights
Extensive investigation of PFASs in Italian eggs from backyard chickens (EBC).
More contamination in EBC than in eggs from commercial laying hens.
EBC contribute to PFAS intake of up to 29% of tolerable weekly intake in children."
Forests & Deforestation
Cattle grazing is the #1 driver of deforestation, followed by soy (70-75% of which is used as livestock food, 6% is eaten by humans), palm products (also becoming a major feed source, currently the UK feeds 10% of the world's palm meal to livestock and pets), followed by the timber industry. The cattle industry alone is responsible for the majority of deforestation in the Amazon (80%) and Australia with "More than 90% of land clearing in Great Barrier Reef catchments over a five-year period was attributable to the beef industry, according to new analysis by The Wilderness Society."
People often brag that Europe has virtually no deforestation for livestock farming, but that is because we have steadily deforested Europe since the Neolithic period to make space for grazing animals and later for growing their feed. Now we have so little land left that we're exporting our deforestation to places like Asia and South America to support our growing livestock industries.
Click the Livestock & Deforestation button to learn about the impacts of livestock on forests around the world, including their impact on the water cycle.
Click the Deforestation button to learn which activities have the greatest impact on our forests, and learn about ways to reduce or eliminate the worst drivers of deforestation from your daily life.
Land
Global
Europe
UK
UK Factory Farm Map "While it is often claimed that the UK is one of the countries with the highest standards of animal welfare worldwide, the reality is that around 73% of farmed animals in the UK are kept in factory farms. They spend their lives in overcrowded, barren barns or cages, deprived of fresh air, natural light and the ability to express their natural behaviours."
North America
USA
"The U.S. land area covers nearly 2.3 billion acres. In 2012, the latest update to ERS's Major Land Uses (MLU) series, grassland pasture and range uses accounted for the largest share of the Nation's land base, surpassing land in forest uses, which includes grazed forest land, for the first time since 1959. Although the shares of land in different uses have fluctuated to some degree over time, land area in the top three categories (grassland pasture and range, forest, and cropland) has remained relatively stable. Land dedicated to special uses, which includes land in State/national parks and wilderness areas, has increased substantially since the MLU series began 1945. Urban land use has also increased, albeit more modestly, as population and economic growth spur demand for new housing and other forms of development. About 52 percent of the 2012 U.S. land base (including Alaska and Hawaii) is used for agricultural purposes, including cropping, grazing (on pasture, range, and in forests), and farmsteads/farm roads."
Oceana
Australia
Climate Works Australia: Interactive Map shows how livestock grazing uses a over half of the country's land.
Moving to a Vegan Agricultural System for Australia – Part 1 "One interesting example of a change in land use in line with a vegan agricultural system is the destocking and regeneration of the rangelands at Wooleen Station in Western Australia. This land had been over-grazed for over 100 years resulting in most of the prime land being in poor or very poor condition with some of it being badly eroded and degraded to the point where it was never expected to recover. The situation at Wooleen is typical of neighbouring areas and in fact of much of the Australian rangelands.
In 2007, the leaseholders of the 200,000 hectare station “Wooleen” decided to completely destock the entire property for four years. The re-establishment of the vegetation “has progressed much better than expected”. A multitude of plants re-appeared, including the slow growing, but sturdy, saltbush. This regrowth occurred because cattle were no longer grazing and despite a long drought. Some plants returned to areas where they were never expected to grow. Plant and animal species threatened with extinction also began to return. Perennial plants, crucial to restoring the land, were among those re-established.
During the time when no farmed animals grazed, grasses were planted and infrastructure was changed to replicate the natural systems that had been lost, culminating in the Roderick River flowing clear of eroded sediment for the first time in living memory. In just four years, a red river had been turned clear by removing farmed animals from the land and restoring some of the natural systems. “Nature is bouncing back.” Please see video presentation on the regeneration at Wooleen.
In Australia, most grazing land is owned by the state and leased to farmers. It is interesting to note that a condition of the lease is that the land must be stocked with farmed animals. The majority of income must come from grazing. Other uses, such as tourism, are not encouraged. In fact, the leaseholders of Wooleen had to wait one year for permission from the Pastoral Lands Board to remove stock from the property. These unhelpful regulations act as barriers to change and will need replacing to be more in line with present day needs of the country. The success of this case study in such a short time suggests that it may be possible to restore land quickly and without great expense in many parts of Australia. "
New Zealand
"Agricultural land makes up at least 50% of the area of almost all regions..." Grazing land is decreasing but, "Most of the reduction in farmland relates to a decline in the area of grassland, tussock and danthonia used for grazing livestock (a decline of 392,000ha and 508,000ha respectively). However, grazing land still accounts for 72.5% of all farmland in New Zealand. While grazing land declined, some of the less common types of land use expanded. The most notable increase was the area planted with grain seed and fodder crops, which grew by 33.5% (124,000ha) between 2007 & 2017." - Agricultural Land Use
Pesticides
Sheep & Wool Production
Ocean Health
Emissions from livestock such as nitrous oxide further threaten species with extinction by creating acid rain which melts exoskeletons, egg shells, and coral reefs.
Livestock Feed Encourages Overfishing
Overfishing is not only lowering the biomass and CO2storage abilities of our oceans, but also threatens species at every level of the food web.
Coral Reefs
Reefs make up a small proportion of the known ocean, but are a vital spawning location for perhaps the majority of ocean life. Overfishing, including bottom trawling and dynamite fishing for food/livestock feed, as well as cyanide fishing for the pet trade industry already put these delicate ecosystems in peril. Warming which livestock also contribute to creates another layer of danger, however deforestation, grazing, antibiotics, manure run off, slaughterhouses, wool, leather facilities create a cocktail that further poisons the many species living off our coastlines. The following are some examples of the mess we are creating. Deforestation removes the riparian borders that used to protect water from deadly amounts of run off, so focusing on removing livestock from waterways, flood plains, and replanting/protecting riparian borders may be the fastest way to make a serious impact on how our waterways impact delicate reef systems.
Dead Zones
Soil
Livestock, their hooves, their habits, and their manure all have a variety of impacts on our soil.
Click the Soil button to learn more about these complex interactions, including carbon sequestration and erosion.
Water Use & Pollution
Livestock farming uses far more water than is sustainable.
For livestock and their feed, farmers have been draining aquifers much faster than their stores can be replenished, meaning that hundreds or millennia worth of natural water storage is dropping enough to make the ground sink, rivers are drying up, and much of the remaining water is being contaminated. In fact pollution levels are growing so quickly that new dead zones being created by their massive amounts of manure run off, and natural dead zones are growing much larger.
Click the buttons beneath to learn more.
Welfare
Both livestock and human wellfare are important if we want a just food system. Click the Welfare button to learn more about humans and animals in the food system including livestock and fishing industry.
Wildlife & Biodiversity
It seems almost fashionable for people to complain that humans are overpopulating Earth, but there are less than 8 billion of us. According to this source we farm around 22.5 billion land animals ever year, and according to this source "It is estimated that between 51 and 167 billion (ie 51,000,000,000 - 167,000,000,000) farmed fish were slaughtered for food globally in 2017..." with these numbers rising.
This is particularly worrying because we already have 3 times more than the sustainable number of fishing vessels at sea, and ever year we feed 1/3rd of the global catch to farmed animals including chickens, pigs, and farmed fish. This is putting so much pressure on wild fish populations that humanity is now spending more resources and time than ever to catch fewer and fewer fish.
Animal biomass has historically been a major form of carbon sequestration on our planet. Previous mass extinctions have coincided with lower carbon biomass, and higher carbon levels in the atmosphere. The following infographics/pages show the current miss balance as we've replaced rich biodiversity with livestock.
6th Mass Extinction
Vertebrates on the Brink as Indicators of Biological Annihilation and the Sixth Mass Extinction "Around 94% of the populations of 77 mammal and bird species on the brink have been lost in the last century. Assuming all species on the brink have similar trends, more than 237,000 populations of those species have vanished since 1900. We conclude the human-caused sixth mass extinction is likely accelerating for several reasons. First, many of the species that have been driven to the brink will likely become extinct soon. Second, the distribution of those species highly coincides with hundreds of other endangered species, surviving in regions with high human impacts, suggesting ongoing regional biodiversity collapses. Third, close ecological interactions of species on the brink tend to move other species toward annihilation when they disappear—extinction breeds extinctions. Finally, human pressures on the biosphere are growing rapidly, and a recent example is the current coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, linked to wildlife trade."
The link below talks about how poorly-conceived rules in Australia encourage the overgrazing of damages grasslands, and how quickly even endangered species can return when livestock are removed.
Documentaries on Livestock vs Wildlife
Maps
International
Animal Rights Groups Search the interactive map to find organizations near you!
Europe
England and Wales
Is My River Fit to Play In? This map shows where the sewerage network discharges treated effluent and overflows of untreated effluent and storm water into rivers." Some of the sewage is from humans, but livestock farms including a growing number of factory farms also run illegal pipes down to water ways.
Oceana
Australia
The map in the following link shows where species decline is most problematic in Australia.
North America
Counterglow Map Interactive map of livestock farms, slaughterhouses, and similar facilities, mostly in the USA and Hawaii.
Organizations
Europe
Grants
International
Animal Charity Evaluators "ACE Movement Grants (formerly “Effective Animal Advocacy Fund”) is for anyone who is interested in making the animal advocacy movement more effective."
Awesome Foundation "Every two months, the Vegan Chapter of the Awesome Foundation grants $1000 to an awesome vegan project, no strings attached."
Farmed Animal Funders "Our group is open to all individuals and foundations giving more than $250,000 per year to end factory farming."
The Greenbaum Foundation "At The Greenbaum Foundation, we focus our funding on effective and efficient projects working to bring about the end of suffering (human and non-human) in areas of the highest need and where we can have the most impact. We assist organizations with guidance, networking and funding."
North America
USA
Eat The Change "ETC Impact™ is a grant program working to promote and expand access to climate-friendly foods. We're donating more than $1.25 million over three years to support a diverse group of changemaking nonprofit organizations."