Scientists
predict that so much pollution is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico this year
that it is creating a larger-than-ever "dead zone" in which low
to no oxygen can suffocate or kill fish and other marine life.
The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA)
is expected to announce this week the largest recorded hypoxic
zone in the gulf, an oxygen-depleted swath that's even larger than the New Jersey-sized, 8,185 square-mile dead zone originally
predicted for July.
And in a new analysis from environmental group
Mighty, the meat
industry as well as the country's appetite
for meat is much to blame.
When fertilizer and manure
washes off soy and corn fields used to grow feed for livestock, it not only
contaminates local drinking water supplies, it flows into larger water bodies
and creates toxic algal
blooms from the excessive nutrients, particularly phosphorus and nitrogen.
When the algae dies and decomposes, it depletes the waters of oxygen and
eventually leads to vast dead zones that is toxic to aquatic life.
"While fertilizer
pollution starts in the Midwest, it flows down the Mississippi River until it
finally dumps out into the Gulf of Mexico, which collapses into one of the
world's largest Dead Zones each year as a direct result," the report
states.
"Approximately 1.15
million metric tons of nitrogen pollution flowed into the Gulf of Mexico in
2016 alone, which is around 170 percent more pollution than was dumped into the
Gulf by the BP oil spill."
Mighty is calling on Big Meat—particularly Tyson Foods, the largest
meat company in the U.S.—to urge their grain producers such as Cargill and
Archer Daniels Midland to take steps to reduce and prevent runoff pollution.
"This problem is
worsening and worsening and regulation isn't reducing the scope of this
pollution," Lucia von Reusner, campaign director at Mighty, told the
Guardian. "These companies' practices need to be far more sustainable. And
a reduction in meat consumption is absolutely necessary to reduce the
environmental burden."
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