Pollution from Giant Livestock Farms Kills Millions of Fish: Farms that crowd too
many animals into too little land are causing an environmental and health crisis.
ACT NOW
to stop factory farm pollution
Manure spills and intentional manure dumping at animal farms in 10 states killed 13
million fish over a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to a report by NRDC, the
Clean Water Network, and the Izaak Walton League. The survey, the most complete
analysis to date of water pollution caused by giant livestock farms (known as factory
farms or feedlots), documents at least 1,000 manure spills and at least 200 fish kills from
1995 through 1998.
The scope and severity of the pollution revealed by the survey underscores the need for
states and the federal government to impose strict pollution controls on giant livestock
farms. In spite of the huge amounts of waste they produce, these farms -- which can hold
hundreds of thousands of hogs, chickens, or cattle -- have largely escaped pollution
regulations. As a result of legal action brought by NRDC, however, the Environmental
Protection agency is now developing new federal standards for controlling factory-farm
pollution (the existing standards have not been updated since 1976). But early signs
indicate that the proposed rules still contain permitting loopholes and do not require
effective controls of animal waste.
Although the Clean Water Act requires pollution control permits for all industrial facilities,
loopholes in the law and a lack of enforcement allow most livestock farms to operate with
no oversight. Consequently, factory farms typically use the cheapest methods available
for handling the massive amounts of waste they produce. This means that untreated
manure and urine is usually funneled into huge, clay-lined waste "lagoons." These waste
pools are often the size of several football fields and are prone to leaking and spilling.
One North Carolina lagoon, for example, burst open in 1995, spilling 25 million gallons of
manure into the New River and killing as many as 10 million fish.
No Safety in Numbers
Feedlot pollution problems are not caused by more animals, but rather by concentrating
large numbers of animals on relatively small amounts of land (in other words, by the
growth of factory farms).
Concentrating large numbers of animals also concentrates manure and urine, which
overwhelms the soil, runs off into lakes and streams, and seeps into the groundwater.
The growth of factory farms
 During the past 15 years the number of hog farms in the U.S. dropped from 600,000
to 157,000, yet the number of hogs remains almost the same.
 In 1999, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that two percent of the hog
farms in the country produce over 46 percent of the total number of hogs.
 In the poultry industry, ten companies produce more than 90 percent of the nation's
poultry.
 Today's large livestock facilities operate more like animal factories than animal farms.
They raise thousands, and in some cases millions, of hogs and hundreds of thousands of
chickens. A single factory farm can generate the waste equivalent of a town or city. But
while towns are required to build sewage treatment plants for human waste, similar
volumes of waste produced by livestock go untreated -- even though animal waste
contains disease-causing pathogens that can be 10 to 100 times more concentrated than
in human waste.
Livestock waste also contains nitrate, which has been linked to spontaneous abortions in
women, as well as heavy metals like copper and zinc, which are toxic even at low
concentrations. The list of environmental and health threats that factory farms pose goes
on and on. They emit hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and methane gases, all of which
threaten human health (methane is also a potent greenhouse gas). People living near hog
operations report increased occurrences of headaches, runny nose, sore throat, diarrhea,
and burning eyes compared with people living in other areas. And nutrients such as
phosphorus and nitrogen cause explosions of algal growth, which rob water of oxygen,
killing aquatic life. (Nutrients from animal waste contribute to the "dead zone" in the Gulf
of Mexico -- approximately 7,000 square miles that cannot support most aquatic life.)
The root of the environmental and health crisis caused by large-scale livestock farms is
simple: too many animals, and too much manure, concentrated on too little land. In
addition, factory farms use woefully inadequate manure management "technologies,"
such as lagoons and sprayfields that collapse, overflow, or leak. A number of practical
remedies to these problems exist; they fall into the five categories described below:
 Regulation and accountability. Factory farms are industrial facilities and should
be regulated accordingly. All factory farms should be required to obtain permits,
to monitor water quality, and to pay for the costs of disposing and cleaning up the
waste they create.

Public awareness and participation. States and the EPA should implement a
tracking system for fish kill and manure spill data. This information should be kept
in a centralized, standardized format, readily available to the public. Armed with
this information, local governments and residents must be able to participate in
decisions about whether to allow animal factories to locate in their communities.

New technology. Animal farm technology standards, unchanged since 1976,
must be updated. The EPA should establish new national standards that ban
manure lagoons and the practice of disposing of manure and urine by aerial
spraying.

Alternative farming practices. States and the federal government should
promote methods of raising livestock that reduce the concentration of animals
and use manure as a fertilizer, applied in a safe manner. Many alternative
methods exist; they rely on keeping animal waste drier, limiting problems with
spills, runoff, and air pollution. "Hoop houses," for example, are structures that
allow manure and urine to mix with hay, thereby keeping it in solid form and
allowing for safer storage and composting. Pasturing and rotational grazing
methods also help to reduce the need for gigantic catch-all waste lagoons.

Pollution-reduction programs for small feedlots. Voluntary programs must be
expanded to encourage smaller feedlots, which fall outside of the regulations for
industrial facilities, to improve their management practices and take advantage of
available technical assistance and other resources.
Individuals can also take action to stop factory farm pollution, first, by writing to the
Environmental Protection Agency (see below), then, by supporting livestock farms that
use sustainable practices. In the grocery store, this means checking labels for "free
range," "hormone free," or similar wording, which indicates meat raised in a more
sustainable manner. Many sustainable livestock farms also sell directly or through local
farmers' markets.
Based on SPILLS AND KILLS: Manure Pollution and America's Livestock Feedlots, a September
2000 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Clean Water Network, and the Izaak
Walton League. For a print copy of the report, mail a check a check for $5.00, payable to NRDC in
U.S. dollars, to the Clean Water Network, 1200 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 400, Washington,
DC 20005.
Related Websites:

Clean Water Network (click on Feedlots Campaign)