The smelly side-effects of our meat-eating ways

We crave meat. To satisfy our hunger, Canadian feedlots ready 3.5 million cattle for slaughter every year. And those cattle produce more than meat: A single steer can crank out up to 30 kilograms of manure and urine every day, and some feedlots house more than 40,000 animals! That means more than a thousand tons of pee and poo have to be dealt with in some fashion every day. Obviously, all that waste creates a massive odour problem caused by a huge array of smelly compounds that are released through bacterial action on manure. Most of these compounds have been identified, with indole, skatole and dimethyl sulphide, also present in human excreta, having been found to be particularly noxious.

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