To reduce CO2 gas emissions, replace cattle meat with ostrich meat?!
Answers:
Ostrich meat is not very tasty. I don't know where you're buying your beef, but I'd recommend you go find yourself a Certified Angus Beef (CAB) ribeye and put it on the grill for a few minutes. Add a little salt and it's wonderful. Overcooking beef is the way to ruin it. There are several different levels of beef. Walmart sells the cheapest beef. It's cheap because it's not as good.
But the kicker on your question is size. An ostrich weighs about 300 lbs. A steer ready to slaughter weighs about 1100 lbs. Let's say 4 times as much. That steer will produce about 400 lbs of boneless beef. The ostrich about 30. We've developed a system to deal with about 99% of the beef production byproducts: leather, medical items, construction items, food additives (see link). We have no such chain in place to deal with ostrich slaughter byproducts. So they would go to the landfill. Much of the feed in beef feedlots is a byproduct of human food production, potato chip peels, corn husks and cobs, etc. Because they're not ruminant animals, ostrich can't eat those things. So all of that would have to go to the landfill and we'd have to raise food specifically for ostrich.
http://www.rense.com/general6/cow.htm
Yes. Ostriches will be responsible for less methane emissions than beef, fewer input resources and the feed is more sustainable and less water intensive than the grain fed to cattle. They wont need to drink as much water either.
So you picked the right question, but the wrong category. In future, try "green living" or "climate change" in the environment section for things like this :)
http://cronkitezine.asu.edu/fall2007/ost…
Is CO2 the major problem with cattle, or is it methane? Methane is worse in terms of global warming.
"Over the next 20 years methane has a warming potential at least 72 times that of carbon dioxide."
Source: The Physical basis of climate change, AR4 final report / Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group 1, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7600005.stm
You're right in that ostriches (or emus or kangaroos or even crocodiles) would create less of a carbon footprint than cattle. But substantially reducing the amount of animal flesh (and dairy products) produced for human consumption would go a lot further.
Vegan!
Ostrich meat is horrible- too many fibers, smarmy taste. This methane gas nonsense is more global warming (or is it back to cooling like in 1975) lies. They want to exert control and power over the economy and are using this lie to trick you fools. See the East Anglican emails showing the lies.
how about replacing meat? Period.
no idea