American grain-fed beef requires ten times more grain to produce equal calories as people would glean from eating the grain itself. Then there’s the waste management problem—Iowa’s hog farms alone are responsible for more than fifty million tons of excrement annually. We have them and the other confined animal feeding operations in the US to thank for nearly three-quarters of our water-quality problems.

“Factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long as degrading waterways is free,” Bittman quotes a geophysicist as stating. “If dumping this stuff becomes costly, the entire structure of food production will change dramatically.”

Intensive meat production also breeds antibiotic-resistant bacteria like extra-strength E. coli or similar harbingers of the apocalypse, and those are easily transferred to humans; poultry workers recently tested in Virginia were 32 times more likely than local residents to have antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli in their blood.

The USDA doesn’t require producers to publish the amount of antibiotics meted out to animals, but according to one study, an estimated 60-80 percent  of the antibiotics made in America are given to healthy livestock as a preventative measure—that’s not even counting the antibiotics fed to the sick ones! The Ethicurean relates a WHO report that Sweden and Denmark use less than 3 grams of antimicrobial agent per pig, whereas US producers apply a generous 47 grams.

Our animals are bursting with hormones and antibiotics. When we eat the meat from these animals, we gorge on hormones and antibiotics, too. Now, we have not only man-boobs, but super-strength E. coli. It’s enough to interest even the most carnivorous amongst us in vegetables.