The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently delivered a major victory to factory farms. Under a 2008 EPA rule, any confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) "designed, constructed, operated, and maintained in a manner such that the CAFO will discharge" animal waste must apply for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit under the Clean Water Act. The livestock industry ridiculed the notion that a farm must apply for a permit to discharge manure whether it intended to discharge it or not. ...
...
The simple fact is that factory farms produce over 100 times more waste than all American humans produce combined. In the past, a pastured cow might disperse waste over an acre or more; how can farmers responsibly deal with the waste of 1,000, 5,000, or even 10,000 or more animals when they are crammed in tightly together? And, unfortunately for the farmers, they are often working under contract for major meat or dairy conglomerates who own the animals and leave the farmer with a tiny profit margin (or none at all) -- plus all of the liability, dead animals and manure. Therefore, in addition to simply disposing of manure responsibly, they also need to dispose of it cheaply if they are to stay in business.
...
The recent court decision ruled that the EPA has no right to require CAFOs to apply for permits unless they actually discharge waste. Once a CAFO discharges waste, however, the court decided that the EPA can then require it to apply for a permit.
The industrial farming groups -- the National Pork Producers Council, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Oklahoma Pork Council, United Egg Producers, the North Carolina Pork Council, the National Chicken Council, the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, Dairy Business Association Inc., and the National Milk Producers Federation -- also challenged the EPA's right to force CAFOs to design and implement Nutrient Management Plans and to penalize them if the plans are not followed and waste is discharged into waterways. On this issue, the court sided with the EPA.
What is the impact of this decision? Could it perhaps have no impact at all, as the CAFOs exempted from applying for permits are those that are not polluting? Sadly, this is likely not the case. By forcing CAFOs to apply for a permit, the EPA was forcing them to create a plan to manage the large amounts of waste their animals would inevitably generate. Without planning ahead for responsibly disposing of manure, how many CAFOs will wait until the last minute, like Inskeep, and then dump millions of gallons of manure into the environment? Even though the EPA will still be able to penalize them once they do, the damage to the environment will already be done.
These are not hypothetical scenarios. Just ask Rick Dove, an ex-Marine who serves as a Riverkeeper on his beloved Neuse River in North Carolina. After retiring from the Marines, he lived his dream of becoming a small-scale commercial fisherman on the river briefly -- until enormous hog operations moved in, each producing as much waste as a town of 20,000 people, and their waste killed the fish.
Dove has seen hog farmers oversaturating their "sprayfields" -- cropland intended to absorb the unfathomable amount of manure generated by the hogs -- resulting in contamination of local waterways, but he has also seen the farmers illegally dumping the manure directly into the rivers. And then he's seen the Neuse turn red, green, yellow, orange, and black with various types of algae blooms that precede fish kills that kill millions or even a billion fish at a time.
...
The losers in this story are not just "tree-hugging" environmentalists or even fishermen. In far too many cases, the losers are drinkers of water -- which is all of us.
This news was no surprise to me. No matter what you do conserve energy, water or reduce pollution, if you eat meat, you throw every other effort you could take out the window. There are lots of documentaries like A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms(Youtube link to full video) with visuals of the process of CAFO's polluting their local environment and waterways. It is too bad selfish meat-eaters cannot be sentenced on a rotational basis to live near CAFO's to have to bear the unbelievable stench, the high levels of arsenic, sulfur and other harmful substances in the air, that make your eyes constantly water, that cause dizziness, etc....
'Enough grain is squandered every day in raising America's livestock for meat to provide every human being on earth with two loaves of bread'
- John Robbins (From 'Diet For A New America')
I think that is the worst aspect, Cookie. Not only does raising so much meat pollute the waterways with the glut of animal waste produced, growing all the feeder crops for all those animals is depleting aquifers which took thousands of years to develop and fill.
We are expending our water sources at an alarming pace just to suit a taste and ideological preference that thinks everyone in developed nations ought to have at least one animal product for every meal, everyday. We don't need that much meat, especially with all the modern research on how unhealthy it is. But what we do absolutely need is clean water. Eventually this will all lead to water wars, excuses to privatize the water supply so the rich can have preferred access and other problems.
Eventually this will all lead to water wars, excuses to privatize the water supply so the rich can have preferred access and other problems.
That's an interesting point. Shame it's all going to come to that. Food too.
I've been following George Soros' reign of evil through out the years.
Buying farmland seems to another pastime of his lately. https://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/201...oros-in-on-it/
Just want to post out; that's the first time I've read Ann's blog (I think, maybe not) as I was looking quickly for info to show you on George's farmland adventures. So all the conspiracy mumbojumbo isn't what I am trying to convey.
Water pollution has existed for almost as long as agriculture has. It is an inevitable side-effect of sustaining such a heavily populated world. Thankfully the earth has natural purification systems, but unfortunately we are well beyond a sustainable level.
I'm quite familiar with non-point source pollution (agricultural water pollution), especially within the Mississippi River basin. Its biggest impact has been the large dead-zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
Farmers around here have been more than enthusiastic about new methods to reduce water pollution. Nobody is denying that it is a big deal, but people need to eat. If it weren't for the "evil factory farms," food prices wouldn't be nearly as cheap. I can get a conventional chicken for $3-$4, but an organic chicken costs $14-$18. Do you think many people would be able to afford chicken at these prices? It is only because of the high-density nature of factory farms that prices are so low.
There is a downside to free-range livestock: waste disposal. For instance, modern caged systems immediately remove the animal's waste from the animal's environment. In free-range environments, animals run around in their feces, which is exactly how disease is spread.
Scientists and farmers recognize that a stress-free animal is a healthier animal that produces higher yields. Modern caged systems are designed with this in mind, giving animals an adequate (and clean) environment for engaging in natural behaviors.
Humans are meat-eaters; they have been eating meat for the entirety of their existence, and it is unrealistic to think that they are going to stop anytime soon. The affects of meat-consumption are simply the inevitable affects of human society. We are going to impact the environment around us, and there is no getting around that. The key is to do so in an intelligent and responsible manner. One problem, especially with large-scale animal farms, is that the EPA is underfunded and cannot perform inspections nearly as often as necessary.
Factory Farms Produce 100 Times More Waste Than All People In the US Combined
Hybrid Mode
