Livestock production in California (image via Flickr/US Department of Agriculture).

There’s been an interesting debate published in the Wall Street Journal this week on whether feedlot beef is bad for the environment. Robert Martin, director of the Food System Policy Program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, says the pollution spreads for miles. Jude Capper, a livestock sustainability expert based in Britain, says the beef industry keeps things safe

‘Feedlots play a huge but controversial role in the raising of beef cattle in the U.S., which produced an estimated 24.3 billion pounds of beef last year, down slightly from an average of 26 billion for the previous five years.

‘The overwhelming majority of beef cattle spend their last months with hundreds if not thousands of other cows in feedlots, where they are fattened before being slaughtered.

‘But while feedlots help provide large amounts of protein in Americans’ diets, there…