Natural Sciences: Create an Experiment on Cow's Milk - Assignment Example

Whether this is true or not, the environmental cost to the prevalent habit of drinking bottled water, especially buying many small bottles of water in the course of the day, is high. The plastic bottles that water is sold in are not biodegradable, and those that are not recycled end up in landfill for many decades, taking up space and contributing to the growing problem of waste from our society. Even when the bottles are recycled there is significant energy that goes into this process, and often also burning of fossil fuels to power the machines that are involved. This has a negative effect on the atmosphere. A better alternative is to buy large bottles of water less often, or refill bottles wherever possible. Part II Hypothesis The hypothesis for this experiment is that cow’s milk that is produced by cows which were fed with pesticide treated food is not significantly chemically different than cows that have been fed the same food that is not pesticide treated. Introduction Pesticides are widely used to control the insects that feed on crops such as wheat, grasses, corn and other commercial crops. Their use allows the crops to grow free from the influence of the pests, which can reduce crop yield. Consequently, the use of pesticides has allowed for the cheaper production of food both for human and for animal consumption (Chauhan & Singhal, 2006). Their use has also significantly increased from historic levels, and they are now used in large quantities worldwide (de la Riva & Anadon, 1991) However, one of the problems with the use of pesticides is that their effect is generally only tested on the crop itself and on those that eat it rather than any downstream effects. Many of the crops that are treated with pesticides are eaten by animals, such as grazing cattle, processed and then waste is excreted. One source of concern is surrounding grazing cows and how the pesticides are processed in their body. Research indicates that the way that cows process their food may result in a significant concentration of pesticides or chemicals derived from pesticides in the milk produced by cows that have eaten food treated with pesticides (Kampire et al., 2011). Methods This experiment will use cows that are fed on the same type of feed, for one group the feed will have been treated with pesticides and in the other case they will not have been. It is experimental and between five and ten populations of cows will be used for each group. The group that has no pesticide in their feed is the control group, while the other is the treatment group. The advantage of choosing multiple groups of cows for each treatment is that it ensures and differences observed are a consequence of the treatment, rather than a consequence of differences between the populations. For this study the independent variable (IV) is the feed, which will be either pesticide treated or non-pesticide treated, and the dependant variable (DV) is the cow’s milk and the concentration of pesticide residues within it. Where possible other variables were held constant, such as the type of cow, type of feed, type of environment the cows were subjected to. To ensure no confounding factors, between five and ten groups of cows were used for each treatment. Two sources of feed will be used, one pesticide treated and if possible these will be obtained from the same farm or manufacturer to Read More