Interesting idea to jack up beef prices even more... So, having worked with a few ranchers out in Wyoming on the oil and gas side, I can tell you that in some cases the cattle have access to free water, but it ain't that good water you and I can drink. Produced water from oil and gas wells, depending on cleanliness at the well head, can be "land applied" and that is what some ranchers use. This water is a health hazard for us, but is supposedly fit for cattle. That water still evolves entrained gas and has some sort of rough minerals/chemicals for the body in it. I wonder if this is all getting captured by their calculations.
I agree with you that it would be better for cattle to simply never be born and to never live on Earth, than for them to have access to water of questionable quality.
This is in alignment with the perspective of the plant-based diet community, which holds that animals should not be born because then they might die.
