Miyazaki to triple number of hogs and beef

The authorities in Miyazaki Prefecture who are deciding how many meat animals (beef and pork) will be slaughtered in reaction to the latest foot and mouth outbreak. They are guessing 205,000 additional animals.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-19/japan-to-triple-cattle-hog-cull-on-foot-and-mouth-update1-.html

Japan to Triple Cattle, Hog Cull on Foot-and-Mouth (Update1) - BusinessWeek

www.businessweek.com

Japan will almost triple the number of animals to be culled in Miyazaki prefecture, a major farming region, as an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease threatens the nation’s livestock industry.

 

That is 155,000 pigs, each pig producing 75kg of meat for 11,625,000kg of pork. 50,000 beef at 225kg of meat for each animal, making 11,250,000kg. If you figure that one Japanese person consumes, on average, 43.9kg of meat per year, and there are about 30,000 people in my town, that means that the amount of meat wasted in Miyazaki is going to be 17.369 years worth of food for every man woman and child in the town. 

 

What in the world is going on?
-Beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1
-Grain-fed beef production takes 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food.
-On lands where feed grain is produced, soil loss averages 13 tons per hectare per year.
-"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans."

 

These resources aren't coming from Japan. (all except the water maybe) The rest is coming from the rest of the world. Japan don't need burgers that bad.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html