Is Today's Beef Better For The Environment?

The American beef industry has taken a bit of a beating in recent years. Beef has been linked to heart disease and cancer and hamburgers have been recalled. We're also often told that cattle require a lot of precious food and water to make tender steaks.

But a study wants to rectify beef's image as an environmental miscreant. It says modern beef production is a lot kinder to the environment than it was 30 years ago.

Jude Capper, an assistant professor of dairy science at Washington State University who did the study, found that cattlemen used 33 percent less land, 12 percent less water, 19 percent less feed and 9 percent less fossil fuel energy in 2007 to produce the same amount of beef as they did in 1977. How? Mainly by getting more meat out of fewer cows.

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