by frog
For those of you who have followed the farming practices in the USA, and in particular the stories about cattle that are made to eat feed supplements rather than their genetic preference for grass, may have taken some comfort that New Zealand cows are renowned for being grass fed.
Except, as it turns out, they are not exclusively grass fed, as Russel exposed this morning. Our cows ate 455,000 tonnes of imported palm oil cake last year. Virtually no palm oil cake was eaten in 1999 but this year as industrial dairy continues to expand across our countryside cows could eat an estimated 700,000 tonnes.
“Consumers in this country and overseas have an advertising image of cows grazing on pure New Zealand grass, but industrial dairying is gradually turning farms into feedlots,? says Greens Co-Leader Russel Norman.
“Increases in consumption of palm kernel mixtures or ‘cakes’ by New Zealand agriculture over the last seven years, excluding this year, would need up to 900,000 hectares of rainforest to be cleared for palm oil to meet the increased demand if new plantations were required,? Dr Norman says.
“The palm oil industry is knocking down rainforests and burning peat across Indonesia and Malaysia to expand production to meet the increased demand. This is resulting in the release of massive amounts of greenhouse gases and the destruction of the habitat of endangered animals such as the orang-utan.?
Here’s the figures:
2000 – 1,554,475 kgs
2001 – 25,876,818 kgs
2002 – 23,258,239 kgs
2003 – 43,322,490 kgs
2004 – 95,920,594 kgs
2005 – 188,261,717 kgs
2006 – 318,324,189 kgs
2007 – 455,313,609 kgs
Published in Campaign | Environment & Resource Management | Society & Culture by frog on Wed, April 30th, 2008
Tags: Food, GE, Genetic engineering
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
it gets better and better- not only is dairy expansion destroying our rivers it’s also wrecking tropical forests and the climate we all depend on. how much more of this has to go on before Labour or National is prepared to admit there’s a problem worth acting on? GO RUSSEL
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Bad Milk, bad. I had no idea, was busy being all smug about our grass fed cows. Yuck.
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Just to clarify, the cows do not eat palm oil. They eat ‘palm oil cake’, which consists of what is left from the oil palm seed once the oil has been removed. I don’t know if this is good or bad for cows, but it is largely cellulose, like grass, so I doubt it’s as bad for their health as the North American practice of feeding them on corn.
The environmemtal concerns are genuine and serious – I’m just casting doubt on the animal welfare concerns that the headline might have raised.
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Will farmers use mossanto maize here to bulk there cow feed for the winter?
My cousin grows maize for feed to sell to other farmers what if you get all the farmers growing half for feed and the rest for grazing,mossanto maize will look really good since it’s already round resistant.
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I don’t suppose this is an animal health issue per se, but this truly huge increase in imports is a very graphical example of what happens when you start intensive farming, and the problem is, when do you stop? Unfortunately we live in an economy where “growth” is everything and market forces rule. Competitive pressures are “forcing” this country down a very dangerous environmental cul-de-sac. A far sighted and sustainable economy would deal with all these matters before they got out of hand. For instance, there should be no dairy farming on the Canterbury Plains, full stop. It is not a suitable environmental niche for such intensive, water requiring and polluting farming. Yet our society is powerless to set such rules. As a consequence of this intensification we are now hearing urgent entreaties for reservoirs to be built in the South Island high country to feed these increasing dairy demands. Again, where does this stop? It seems to me that only the Greens have the foresight to understand these issues, and the rest of the world is, basically, going mad. I am now getting to the point of hoping some good research will show that milk and dairy products are very bad for your health, and that the burgeoning demand for them will come to an abrupt halt.
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Could you please let me know where all those figures come from?
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