Nitrogen Footprint: Heavy Pollution and Resource Losses Due to Liquid Manure

Factory farming for meat production is harmful to the environment. In addition to its direct emissions of methane, its use of liquid manure releases climate-damaging nitrogen compounds such as ammonia and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and pollutes the groundwater with nitrates. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have analyzed how the liquid manure produced by livestock farming, which is often used as fertilizer, affects its nitrogen footprint. They showed that the nitrogen pollution caused by liquid manure from the production of beef is three times higher than that for pork and eight times higher than that for poultry