News » October 6, 2004

Environmental Hogwash

The EPA works with factory farms to delay regulation of ‘Extremely Hazardous Substances.’

By Christopher D. Cook

In Bloomfield, Nebraska, pigs in confined cages wait for their once daily feeding in a poorly ventilated room filled with pig excrement.

Chicken has taken on a whole new meaning for Faye Lear, of White Plains, in western Kentucky, who lives 300 feet from two giant barns containing thousands of birds laying eggs for Tyson Foods.

There are the sickening wafts of ammonia and bird feather dust that chase her inside from her front porch. Clouds of well-fed flies swarm her car windows. Once a year, when the barns are emptied for cleaning, mass infestations of mice overrun the neighborhood.

“It’s like an open sewer for a big city,” says Lear, who works as a nurse. “It’s nauseating, it burns your eyes. I wouldn’t call them a farm—they’re like an industry.”

Across the country, thousands of these “factory farms”—each warehousing thousands of tightly confined hogs, chickens or cows—produce potentially toxic air emissions. These fumes are the byproduct of 1.3 billion tons of waste created annually by the sprawling compounds, which are the top polluters of America’s waterways according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Despite this torrent of manure, and a growing number of lawsuits by sickened neighbors, “there are essentially no pollution controls on these operations whatsoever,” says Sierra Club attorney Barclay Rogers. “The environment is being wrecked by these operations.”

But the EPA isn’t ready to stanch this stench anytime soon. According to documents obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request, the EPA has developed a voluntary air monitoring program in close collaboration with animal-industry groups such as the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and the US Poultry and Egg Association. (The cattle industry chose not to participate.)

The plan, still being hashed out internally at the agency “resolves [participating companies’] civil liability for potential violations” of federal clean air laws. In effect, this would mean a two-year amnesty from enforcement of the Clean Air Act—as well as immunity from federal Superfund and environmental right-to-know laws. During this time, some of the nation’s largest pig and chicken facilities would gather air emissions data. Only later could they be penalized for exceeding the emmissions limits for ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

Environmentalists are up in arms. “The exchange of data for prosecutorial immunity is antithetical to the notion of aggressive environmental enforcement,” says Rogers.

“These [poultry] operations are generating extraordinary quantities of ammonia gas,” says Rogers. Ammonia gas is listed as an “Extremely Hazardous Substance” in the Superfund law and is a key contributor to particulate matter pollutants. Indeed, EPA researchers have found that “animal husbandry operations” are responsible for 73 percent of all ammonia released into the air nationwide.

In 2001, EPA inspectors detected disturbingly high releases of ammonia from Buckeye Egg Farm in Ohio, then the nation’s fourth-largest egg producer. Some Buckeye facilities were churning out 700-800 tons of particulate matter per year—far in excess of the federal air-quality reporting standard of 250 tons. After years of enforcement battles begun under the Clinton administration, the EPA this past February secured a Clean Air Act settlement and a $880,598 civil penalty against the now-defunct Buckeye.

A 1999 analysis of air data by the Environmental Defense Fund found that hog operations spew 167 million pounds of ammonia nitrogen into the atmosphere each year in North Carolina alone. “Studies in the North Carolina region where hog facilities are clustered show that the level of ammonia in rain has doubled in the past decade,” the report stated.

Epidemiological studies, meanwhile, suggest the fumes may cause increased rates of asthma, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory disorders. A 1999 report prepared by epidemiologist Steve Wing for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services found that people residing near a large hog facility suffered increased levels of nausea, diarrhea and respiratory problems.

The livestock industry dismisses such information. “There has not been anything scientifically proven that these hog barns would cause any ill to human beings,” says Kara Flynn, director of communications for the NPPC. “I travel routinely to hog farms and I’ve never smelled anything that caused me any grief … it’s actually very pleasant, surprisingly, fairly normal.” Flynn says, “We are paying for that study to take place so that they [EPA] can … come up with regulations that impact us. I think that’s more than fair.”

The EPA—citing a 2002 National Academy of Sciences report calling for further study—insists that it needs more information before it can enforce the law. “A lot of people assume we know the quantity and type of emissions coming from these [animal feeding operations] and we don’t,” says EPA Press Secretary Cynthia Bergman. Rather than going after companies one by one, says Bergman, “a better way is to figure out what their emissions are industrywide.”

But critics say the Bush administration’s EPA has dragged its feet and stifled the momentum of factory-farm enforcement begun under President Clinton. Michele Merkel, a former EPA staff attorney now working with the Washington DC-based Environmental Integrity Project, says the agency “hasn’t initiated one investigation in four years. They’re not doing anything.”

Most distressing, says Merkel, is that the EPA has spent years negotiating a voluntary “safe harbor” approach when the agency has long had the “authority to gather the kind of data it needs to determine emissions levels at these industrial farming operations. It doesn’t need industry’s permission. It doesn’t need to sign up to this voluntary agreement. They’re privatizing a rulemaking process.”

Environmentalists call the EPA plan a “sweetheart” deal between the Bush administration and the livestock sector, which contributed $3.46 million to candidates for federal office in 2004, 79 percent of it to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Indeed, on September 16 the NPPC presented its “Friend of the Pork Producer” award to President Bush, citing his “tireless efforts to use reason and science in shaping environmental policies impacting agriculture.”

Now Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is preparing legislation to exempt industrial farms from federal Superfund and right-to-know laws altogether, potentially rendering the EPA plan moot. A coalition of 33 family farm and environmental groups is lobbying hard to block the rider.

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• Reader Comments

  Why is the article only about how bad the conditions are for the surrounding communities? What about the state in which the animals have to live? I eat pork and chicken, but I did not ask or expect animals to be treated like this.

  Its not about supply and demand. Its about making allot of dough at the expense of living creatures. Ban this type of farming and if there is not enough pork or chickens to go around, eat vegetables.

  Posted by Meat eater on Oct 7, 2004 at 7:27 AM

  What is the difference between a family farm and a factory farm? Are there any exact definitions of the terms: “factory farm”, “family farm” or “industrial farm”? Are family owned farm corporations that have facilities with several thousand hogs considered family farms or not?
        This article portrays the farm sector as polluters. Are the major agri-business corporations to blame or are farmers? or maybe both?

  Posted by Bob on Oct 7, 2004 at 3:17 PM

  What is really needed is common-sense ‘bodily integrity’ blanket legislation for animals… by blanket I mean law(s) and regulation that will not lead to loop-holes, will be very to the point in terms of defining bodily integrity, while not outlawing killing animals for food and will not have to go into too many specifics.

  By common-sense, this means allowing certain exceptions such as lab mice and the actions in testing them for product safety and medical purposes. Secondly, and more importantly politically, is common-sense in terms of if we go forth with these regulations, the enforcement and trade policies must be in place so jobs are not lost and businesses do not have to implode. There would have to be a long enough transition time, and there would have to be tax rewards and probably some government cost to transform the factory farm business. This also needs the influence of some major industries like doctors, insurance and managed care, and some more favorable one’s like independent family farmers
  (It’s better if environmental/animal rights groups just work behind the scenes, sorry ...and no celebrities!!!)

  The fact of the matter is once factory farming started it created a market where unless you sell the meat of free range, properly fed animal animals to a high-end market, then you are competing against businesses that can sell meat at very, very low prices. So a fair market has to be in place to keep out cheap meat produced out of country. If the price of meat goes up that is fine, as long as agribusinesses and fast food places can compete with each other. I don’t believe there is a lobby on behalf of consumers wanting cheap, high-fat burgers and chicken nuggets to counter this.

  Of course there is the real-cost big picture in speculating how this is a leading contributor to obesity and hence large-scale health problems (ripple effect to health premiums) - meaning cheap, high-fat meat producers ‘should’ be taxed like cigarette makers, but that is too far flung since there are far more people happily eating this food than there are cigarette smokers, and they do not want to be told what they can eat or taxed on it. So this is too big picture to argue.

  As long as agribusiness and fast food can compete in the same market but where they all have to account for higher production cost, then their profit margins should remain the same.

  So the bodily integrity case with these provisions is the best to be made and would take care of a lot of environmental and health problems and at least for me, ease the conscience.

  Posted by Dan on Oct 7, 2004 at 4:19 PM

  Just business as usual for the USDA. You really believe them when they tell you there’s only been one mad cow?
  There are no strict definitions fo family farmer, industrial farmer etc. The surest thing for a consumer (I know—-not everyone has this option)is to find a local farmer and buy direct.They’ll be glad to explain their methods and let you come see. I’m not sure government provided definitions really help. The USDA Organics program has basically just made the industry safe for the big corporate guys. In the last year several attacks on standards—-to allow pesticides, antibiotics and all sorts of other things the public views as unacceptable—have had to be fended off. These attacks will continue, and enforcement will be slack, especially if Boy George gets another four years.
  I raise (make that used to raise) poultry and sell it direct. Why am I no longer in business? Not economics, not a lack of market—my customers drove an average of fifty miles and paid three times the supermarket price and then sent me thank you cards. No, while the USDA, FDA and state agencies bend over backwards to allow filth in the supermarkets, the regulators make up for their impotence with the corporate boys by regulating little guys out of existence.
  One of the ways family farmers have been put out of business is “getting big” ( Earl Butz- Nixon’s Ag Secty) and trying to compete on an indutrial model. The consolidation at the top of the meat and poultry slaughter industries is well known. The goal is to put beef and hogs on the poultry model. The rancher will just become a contractor, have huge capital costs, but none of the benefits of employment. As one agribusiness lawyer said when asked when the coprorations would just take over the farms, “The average farmer is willing to exploit himself far more than we are legally allowed to exploit employees.”
  Whose to blame—- the corporations and our system that pays off regulators with private sector jobs. The farmers were largely guilty of believing their government agencies.
  There are two farm sectors. The corporate one has many astroturf and even some legitimate grassroots groups (i.e. The Farm Bureau) which get farmers to advocate their own destruction. The other sector supports local production, organic production, sustainable methods. Farm Aid, the Farmer’s Union,Slow Food, Tilth Producers, Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network, are some of the organizations involved that come to mind.
  Fast Food Nation- Eric Schlosser
  Against the Grain- Richard Manning
  The Gift of Good Land- Wendell Berry
  Three books to start with if you want to understand ag and your food.

  Posted by Walt Kloefkorn on Oct 8, 2004 at 2:00 AM

  None of this will ever end under John Kerry or W. We know this!! Yet so many of us liberals bitch and whine and complain and still vote for Kerry! Why? I honestly want to know why we know he will not do anything for us. And we know if enough of us vote Nader we can change this country to a progressive one for once and for all..but too many of us sit on our asses and our fucking tools of the democrats. I know the readership of this magazine I am one of you a far left progressive pissed off at politics as usual yet for some reason so many of us ignore Nader and side with Kerry..what platform does Kerry have really? Most of his supporters are voting for him on the basis for anyone but Bush. FUCK!! i am anyone but Bush should i be president just b/c i am not that fascist Bush? FUCK NO!!! But Nader is an intelligent candidate! Nader is a progressive candidate! Nader will stop our illegal occupation of Iraq! Nader will crack down on corporations! But for some reason we ignore him..i wonder why i honestly do. November 2nd will be a bad day for democracy if Bush wins of if Kerry win. PERIOD!

  Posted by Richard Rhodes on Oct 8, 2004 at 3:11 AM

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