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Factory Farms: An Environmental Hazard

The EPA has declared that concentrated animal feeding operations are one of the chief causes of water pollution in the United States.

by Marika Alena McCauley

Rhonda Perry, of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, tending to her livestock. By: Missouri Rural Crisis Center

Between 1995 and 1998, one billion fish were killed in North Carolina’s estuaries and coastal areas from manure runoff generated by factory farms. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) directly attributes these deaths to the 10 million hogs currently being raised in North Carolina. In 1995, Missouri lost a quarter of a million fish and 25 miles of stream habitat due to pollution from factory farms. The EPA has declared that concentrated animal feeding operations are one of the chief causes of water pollution in the United States. An estimated 35,000 miles of rivers and groundwater sources in 17 states have been polluted by waste from hogs, chickens and cattle.

The U.S. livestock industry produces 2.7 trillion tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human waste. Premium Standard Farms (the second largest pork producer in the United States) generated five times as much sewage in its operations in Missouri as did Kansas City. Factory farms are producing millions of hogs each year in states such as Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, and Illinois. The massive amount of excrement produced by factory farm hogs is typically piped into nearby open-air “lagoons,” which hold 25 million gallons of waste each. As the waste builds up in the lagoons, factory farm operators periodically spray the manure out over nearby farmland.

This practice begins a series of reactions in the air, land, and soil that have devastating consequences. Hogs in factory farms are fed growth supplements that contain heavy metals. Their manure contains a high concentration of these metals, as well as other toxic components. When the manure is sprayed over farmland, the metals are absorbed into the soil, creating a condition of permanent soil toxicity. The contaminants also enter local watersheds, polluting drinking water and nearby streams, rivers, and ponds. As mentioned above, more than a billion fish and other forms of aquatic life have been victims of this widespread water contamination. Finally, the air in rural communities is frequently contaminated by the stench of the waste lagoons, which can cause nausea, headaches, and coughing in area residents.

To help counter environmental degradation caused by factory farms, Oxfam America supports the work of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center. The Center, based in Columbia, Missouri, works to promote stewardship of the land and environmental integrity by preserving small family farms. To this end, the Center has been engaged for over a decade in a grassroots battle against corporate factory farms. Their work is also conducted at the national level, as they strive to effect change in national policies supporting the industrial farm system. “We’re working hard on Capitol Hill to show legislators the clear connection between national farm policy that strongly favors factory farms, and the dismal hog prices that our family farmers are receiving out here in Missouri,” says Rhonda Perry, the Center’s Program Director. Factory farms are a local manifestation of a national trend, in which corporate agribusiness has integrated its holdings of livestock processing, marketing, and sales in the interest of producing at a higher volume to increase profits.

The dedicated staff of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center has employed a diverse array of tactics to confront the staggering levels of small hog farm failure in their area as a result of factory farm proliferation. They begin with outreach to community members and farmers throughout the state to increase awareness about the damaging effects of factory farms. These efforts lead to action at the State level, as farmers and rural community members push lawmakers to enact and enforce stricter environmental and public health standards, and to restrict access to the State by new factory farm operations. As Rhonda Perry explains, “in 1996 our months of effort paid off, as the Missouri legislature voted to require Premium Standard Farms to pay $750,000 in penalties for the irreparable damage that they had done to our communities.” She continues, “The corporate farms can never repay us for the damage they have done, and continue to do, to our land, our families, and our livelihoods. But, the fines were a good start.” Premium Standard Farms was also ordered to spend more than $1 million to prevent future waste lagoon spills.

Building on state level successes, the industrial hog industry is also beginning to face increased regulation at the national level. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency recently ordered a major hog producer in Oklahoma to obey the same laws that regulate industrial and municipal pollution.

In another victory, a U.S. District Court judge in North Carolina acknowledged the damaging effects of factory farms by upholding the right of citizens to sue industrial pork factories for polluting the environment. The judge ruled that every industrial hog facility requires a Clean Water Act permit to operate, which very few facilities have at this time. The judge also ruled that unpermitted disposal of factory hog waste (by spraying onto fields) is illegal, because it compromises water quality. Community activist groups are now working to make sure that these rulings are upheld, and that both of these rulings become a major deterrent to the continued expansion of factory farms in rural America.