CAFO Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2691878254468402/
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“I heard how a company run by one of the defendants had bought a small farm and, without informing any of the neighbours, erected four buildings and filled them with those 15,000 hogs. The plaintiffs’ lawyer said that the new factory emitted noxious odors, through fans that blew dust, dander, and more than 200 gaseous chemical compounds over nearby homes. Manure, allowed to collect in vast pits, under the barns and applied to fields without any treatment in quantities that made the ground too wet to plow, created a stench so bad that the neighbors, many from families who had lived on the same land for several generations, had to keep their windows closed in the summer. Within two months of the facility’s opening, investigations from the Environmental Protection Agency found that dead hogs had been left lying around the barns to rot, creating more stink and attracting hordes of flies that pestered area residents. The three Hispanicemployees who tended the pigs spoke no English and could not read state manuals on how to legally dispose of the pigs that died in their care, which the plaintiff’s lawyer said could amount one hundred a week. State and federal officials had refused to act, forcing the reluctant plaintiffs to sue.“
Case brought by ten residents of Scott County, Illionois
Barry Estabrook, Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest for Sustainable Meat
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Socially Responsible Agricultural Project (SRAP)
Our Vision
Socially Responsible Agricultural Project (SRAP) works to help communities across the U.S. replace industrial livestock production with ecologically sound, socially equitable, and economically viable animal agriculture.
Our Mission
SRAP informs and educates the general public about the negative effects of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—also known as factory farms—while working directly with U.S. communities impacted by this destructive form of industrial animal agriculture. Through public education, issue advocacy, and local community organizing, SRAP empowers rural residents to protect their public health, environmental quality, natural resources and local economies from the damaging impacts of factory farms.
Contact details:
Toll Free: 1 (844) 367-7727 or locally (503) 362-8303
info@sraproject.org
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“Hilal Elver, the UN rapporteur for the right to food, has talked about the need to move away from industrial agriculture towards agro-ecological models. There is a groundswell – it’s almost starting to be a zeitgeist as key thinkers in civil society start to join the dots and see that actually we do need a new style of agriculture which goes beyond industrial agriculture, which goes beyond simple sustainability, which brings us to a point of regeneration.”
Philip Lymbery
Why factory farming is not just cruel – but also a threat to all life on the planet
In an interview with the Guardian [4.10.2017], Lymbery said that when he began campaigning on farm animals in 1990, it was still largely seen as a cruelty issue rather than something that went far beyond that.
Since taking over as chief executive of CIWF in 2005, Lymbery has focused on “moving the issue out of being a technical niche to get people to understand industrial farming as a big, global problem”.
“We need to go beyond an isolated approach,” Lymbery says. “Not just looking at the technical problems around welfare, not just looking at the technical issues around the environment, not just looking at food security in isolation, but putting all of these issues together, then we can see the real problem that lies at the heart of our food system – industrial agriculture.”
Read more
Overview of US CAFOs
American agriculture has changed dramatically over the past century, moving from traditionally small family farms to a large agricultural industry, where currently only four companies produce
– 81% of cows,
– 73% of sheep,
– 50% of chickens, and
– 60% of hogs
that Americans eat. To keep up with the increase in meat consumption, the agricultural industry now produces as much meat as possible with as little cost as possible, turning modern farming into a business. In 2009, there were 8.6 billion chickens, 113 million pigs, and over 34 million cattle, including 944,000 calves, killed for agricultural purposes. Almost all of these animals are raised on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.
Commonly referred to as “factory farms,” Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, are animal producing operations that have become a common part of today’s agricultural industry, providing most of the food animals that Americans eat. CAFOs are large Animal Feeding Operations, or AFOs, which “congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland.” CAFOs may confine over 125,000 chickens, over 10,000 pigs, over 1,000 cows, or many other large quantities of animals.
CAFOs raise animal welfare, environmental degradation, and human health concerns. In terms of animal welfare, one of the greatest concerns is the close confinement and crowdedness of the animals. These conditions create boredom and stress in the animals, as well as physical and mental illnesses. In terms of environmental degradation and human health concerns, the number one problem is animal manure, which is produced in such massive quantities that the soil cannot absorb the waste, thus leaving it to run off fields and pollute the surrounding soil and water, including human drinking water. Additionally, methane emissions from CAFOs both contribute to greenhouse gases and create adverse physical and mental health impacts in humans. CAFOs also increase the prevalence of antibiotic resistant diseases, due to the antibiotics regularly given to the animals.
How can animal welfare be improved?
While agribusiness has rapidly expanded, measures to protect animals, the environment, and human health have not kept pace with its growth. Beginning in 2002, several states enacted ballot proposals that focused on creating minimum confinement standards for animals on CAFOs. In reaction to these ballot initiatives, state legislation concerning animal welfare on CAFOs also sprang up. Concerns of this legislation included confinement standards, the treatment of nonambulatory animals, humane slaughter methods, the force-feeding of birds, and tail docking.
Ballot initiatives are much more effective than legislation in providing relief to animal confinement concerns, as they are created and voted on directly by the people, thus bypassing political constraints that might otherwise hinder legislative progress on these issues. Ballot initiatives tend to make greater advancements for animal welfare than do legislative acts, and are often begun by animal interest organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States or Farm Sanctuary. These initiatives have tended to spur legislation because agribusiness leaders attempt to preempt the more progressive ballot initiatives by encouraging legislatures to enact more conservative animal legislation before the ballot initiatives ever come to vote. Ballot initiatives, therefore, currently provide the most effective way of enacting change in animal welfare and treatment on CAFOs, as well as the most progressive form of change.
Source: Michigan State University, Animal Legal & Historical Center
CAFOs Fact Sheet:
https://www.sierraclub.org/michigan/why-are-cafos-bad
Article
Big Ag Is Hiding in Plain Sight and It’s Making Us Sick
Senior Attorney and Director, Animal Agriculture, Health and Food Division, Healthy People & Thriving Communities Program, The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
More than 9 billion animals are raised for food each year in the United States, the vast majority on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). These massive industrial facilities not only confine animals in horrific conditions, but they are major polluters of the air and water. Animals make waste, and the waste from CAFOs causes air pollution that hurts nearby kids and adults alike; they even cause harmful algal blooms (HABs). There are tens of thousands of these facilities and they’re everywhere—in nearly every state—and most attempts to regulate them have failed. Despite their prevalence and the danger they pose, no one, not even the EPA, knows exactly how many of these facilities there are, or exactly where they are located.
Two new reports by NRDC highlight just how secretively this industry operates, and how poorly it is regulated, leaving the public in the dark about where CAFOs are and how to protect ourselves from one of the major consequences of their pollution, Harmful Algae Blooms (HABs).
CAFOs: What we don’t know is hurting us.
The first, NRDC’s new report CAFOs: What We Don’t Know is Hurting Us, details the threat these facilities pose as well as the major data void that exists about even the most basic information about them. Agencies charged with keeping people and the environment safe do not know how many of these facilities there are or where they are located.
CAFOs produce a staggering amount of waste, just one can produce as much raw sewage as the city of Philadelphia. Animals confined in CAFOs produce a lot of manure. But unlike with human waste, the standard practice is not to treat CAFO waste. It is stored in lagoons, piles, and other primitive systems. Then, in lieu of treatment, industrial operators apply it to land, theoretically as a fertilizer but very often they apply it in excess quantities, which are harmful. In some places, like North Carolina, they typically spray it into the air (you read that right, they shoot manure into air) as a method of applying it to fields.
The result can be devastating to workers and surrounding communities. The festering waste can run off into surface waters, seep into groundwater, and produce noxious gasses.
Nitrates from the manure can get into drinking water, where they can hurt anyone, but they are particularly dangerous to very young children and fetuses. CAFO waste can cause a dangerous and sometimes fatal medical condition called “blue-baby syndrome,” in which a baby cannot get the oxygen it needs. One study found that nearly half of children living nearby these facilities experience asthma, and noxious odors from the facilities can impact an entire community’s quality of life and mental health. They breed and spread dangerous superbugs. Up to a third of workers in the sector experience asthma and chronic bronchitis.
What about the regulatory agencies?
Despite the risks CAFOs pose, we’ve known for a long time that regulatory agencies aren’t providing proper oversight of these facilities. For example, in 2001 NRDC published a landmark report Cesspools of Shame highlighting the problems with antiquated and ineffective waste management systems. In 2008 the Government Accountability Office found that “EPA does not have data on the number and location of CAFOs nationwide and the amount of discharges from these operations.” In 2011, in response to that finding and pressure from NRDC and other groups, EPA proposed a rule to rectify this problem and collect data on these facilities. However, in 2012, the agency bowed to industry pressure and withdrew the rule, claiming that it could obtain the information it needed from the states.
NRDCs actions
NRDC set out to see whether it was true that EPA could get the information it needed from the states, requesting the records EPA used and also seeking records from other sources. NRDC used public records laws to request the state data that EPA had when it made this determination. Industry did everything it could to keep this information from seeing the light of day; they even sued to try and stop it, or at least tie this data up in courts for years.
But NRDC pressed on, and working with the Yale Environmental Protection Clinic, we compiled the results of the information collection to try and asses the adequacy of state information, and the results are alarming. NRDC was able to find records about fewer than half of the (EPA) estimated more than 17,000 facilities nationwide. Unfortunately, it is not surprising that this research revealed that state governments have a poor handle on the CAFO problem. The withdrawal of the information collection rule is just one of many failed attempts to bring this industry into compliance with federal law and mitigate its health-harming pollution.
Despite the fact that EPA claimed it could get the information it needed to regulate CAFOs from states, that information (and therefore the information supporting NRDC’s report) is not without its limitations. NRDC’s research confirmed that states present extremely limited data on CAFOs on their websites, and the information NRDC got directly from EPA is from the past. Given these limitations, while the overall outlook remains similar, conditions may have changed in several states between when the data NRDC obtained was collected and the present. For example, Tennessee (a state that scored relatively highly on the transparency index) has recently moved to restrict information available about medium CAFOs (and do not be fooled by the name, “medium” industrial agriculture facilities still produce mega-waste). Nonetheless, this NRDC report represents one of the most complete repositories of data on large CAFOs ever compiled, and this underscores that without active EPA involvement the public will not be sufficiently protected or informed.
NRDC continues to fight the pollution of this industry, focusing on the places hardest-hit. For example, NRDC partners with REACH, an organization of residents directly impacted by hog facilities in eastern North Carolina, where there is some of the densest concentration of hog and poultry facilities in the country. There, as with elsewhere, industrial CAFOs have a disproportionate impact on poor communities and people of color. NRDC, REACH and partners have been fighting for a stronger permitting process with greater transparency and protections for their neighbors. These communities and groups are fighting to hold this industry accountable and level the playing field so responsible farmers can compete.
Toxic algae and CAFOs: What’s the connection?
NRDC also released a second report about Harmful Algal Blooms. Like with the CAFO report, NRDC found that states are doing a generally poor job informing the public of the presence and potential harms from this ubiquitous pollution. At first blush, it’s hard to tell what a harmful algal bloom has to do with a CAFO, or why it matters. As my colleagues report, there are many health and water impacts of these toxic algal outbreaks.
CAFOs are a major contributor to Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) nationwide. HABs occur when an overgrowth of algae takes over a body of water and produce toxins that can threaten environmental and public health. So-called “nutrients” (phosphorous and nitrogen), major constituents of CAFO waste, fuel these algae outbreaks. CAFOs hold massive amounts of manure at their facilities and they spread it onto land. When it rains a lot, the holding facilities can overflow or manure applied to fields can runoff. On top of that, many times people apply too much CAFO waste to fields and it builds up over time and the excess leaches into groundwater. CAFO waste that leaks, seeps, and runs off into waterways is a major contributor to nutrient pollution, which feeds HABs.
The NRDC HAB report looks at not only what causes these outbreaks, but what state governments are doing to alert the public about their presence, location, and harms. Much like with CAFOs, NRDC found that there is a lack of transparency. Most states are failing to provide the public with adequate information about HABs and the pollution, like CAFOs, that fuel them.
What can we do to address CAFOs, and their consequences such as HABs?
Although EPA has no plans to take action on the CAFO or HAB data problem, there are some bright spots.
- NRDC promotes agricultural policies that can minimize runoff and HABs.
- As my colleague Lara writes, healthy soils can prevent HABs.
- More robust CAFO protections can also prevent this problem. There are federal legislative proposals that would require corporate agribusinesses to take responsibility for the CAFOs they control, and stop further corporate consolidation in the sector. In the absence of robust federal action on CAFOs and their pollution, the states have a lot of authority to craft CAFO regulatory regimes that live up to the federal mandate to stop dangerous water pollution and that include robust enforcement programs. States typically revise their CAFO permits or rules every few years, and when they do citizens can speak out, use NRDC’s sample permit to suggest some steps forward for CAFO permitting programs. Policymakers and citizens can also speak out and fight back when industry tries to stymie progress.
Source: NRDC
Videos:
Pigs
Cows
Chickens
The peninsula is the birthplace of modern American chicken production, and as the country’s appetite for chicken grows, so does the industry. Americans eat three times more chicken now than they did 50 years ago.
In 2017, the region produced more than 600 million chickens, more than double the tally from the 1960s. Many of the region’s chicken houses can hold up to 40,000 birds at a time, and the operations emit climate-warming gases and ammonia.
As more and more of these houses are built, many residents are left wondering how the industry is affecting their health.
Learn more about concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) on the Delmarva Peninsula by reading the article by InsideClimate News reporter Georgina Gustin: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23… Sign up for the InsideClimate News Weekly newsletter: http://bit.ly/ICNweekly
Waste lagoons
General
Europe
The alternative?
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Books
Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest for Sustainable Meat
by Barry Estabrook,
–Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, and author of Eat, Drink, Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics
Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment
by David Kirby
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CAFOs: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories
by Dan Imhoff
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Cowed: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America’s Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment
by Gail Boyer Hayes and Denis Hayes
Long ago, cows provided food and labor to settlers taming the wild frontier and helped the loggers, ranchers, and farmers who shaped the country’s landscape. Our society is built on the backs of bovines who indelibly stamped our culture, politics, and economics. But our national herd has doubled in size over the past hundred years to 93 million, with devastating consequences for the country’s soil and water. Our love affair with dairy and hamburgers doesn’t help either: eating one pound of beef produces a greater carbon footprint than burning a gallon of gasoline.
Denis and Gail Hayes begin their story by tracing the co-evolution of cows and humans, starting with majestic horned aurochs, before taking us through the birth of today’s feedlot farms and the threat of mad cow disease. The authors show how cattle farming today has depleted America’s largest aquifer, created festering lagoons of animal waste, and drastically increased methane production.
In their quest to find fresh solutions to our bovine problem, the authors take us to farms across the country from Vermont to Washington. They visit worm ranchers who compost cow waste, learn that feeding cows oregano yields surprising benefits, talk to sustainable farmers who care for their cows while contributing to their communities, and point toward a future in which we eat less, but better, beef. In a deeply researched, engagingly personal narrative, Denis and Gail Hayes provide a glimpse into what we can do now to provide a better future for cows, humans, and the world we inhabit. They show how our relationship with cows is part of the story of America itself.
33 illustrations
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The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food
by Ted Genoways
A searching exposé in the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Rachel Carson, and Eric Schlosser, The Chain is a mesmerizing story and an urgent warning about the hidden costs of the food we eat.
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Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment
by David Kirby
Recent public health crises raise urgent questions about how our animal-derived food is raised and brought to market. In Animal Factory, bestselling investigative journalist David Kirby exposes the powerful business and political interests behind large-scale factory farms, and tracks the far-reaching fallout that contaminates our air, land, water, and food.
In this thoroughly researched book, Kirby follows three families and communities whose lives are utterly changed by immense neighboring animal farms. These farms (known as “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations,” or CAFOs), confine thousands of pigs, dairy cattle, and poultry in small spaces, often under horrifying conditions, and generate enormous volumes of fecal and biological waste as well as other toxins. Weaving science, politics, law, big business, and everyday life, Kirby accompanies these families in their struggles against animal factories. A North Carolina fisherman takes on pig farms upstream to preserve his river, his family’s life, and his home. A mother in a small Illinois town pushes back against an outsized dairy farm and its devastating impact. And a Washington State grandmother becomes an unlikely activist when her home is invaded by foul odors and her water supply is compromised by runoff from leaking lagoons of cattle waste.
Animal Factory is an important book about our American food system gone terribly wrong—and the people who are fighting to restore sustainable farming practices and save our limited natural resources.
Media
Speciesism: The Movie
Most of the animals used for food in the United States are raised in giant, bizarre “factory farms,” hidden deep in remote areas of the countryside. Speciesism: The Movie director Mark Devries set out to investigate. The documentary takes viewers on a sometimes funny, sometimes frightening adventure, crawling through the bushes that hide these factories, flying in airplanes above their toxic “manure lagoons,” and coming face-to-face with their owners
https://speciesismthemovie.com/
