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agriculture
The EPA Must Do Its Job and Regulate Factory Farms
Under the Clean Water Act, the agency should protect our water from harmful factory farm pollution, but the agency’s regulations have been failing for decades to achieve the act’s most basic requirements.
Sep 29, 2024
By design, factory farms generate stunning amounts of waste from the thousands or even millions of animals they confine. And while the industry swears it treats that waste “responsibly,” neighboring communities know otherwise.
Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should protect our water from harmful factory farm pollution. But the agency’s regulations have been failing for decades to achieve the act’s most basic requirements, a fact that EPA admits.
According to the agency’s own data, roughly 10,000 of the nation’s largest factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are illegally discharging dangerous pollution to waterways without the required federal permit. As a result, we’re facing a pollution crisis of epic proportions, threatening our drinking water, health, and environment.
When allowed to handle their waste cheaply, with little regard for the toll on people and the environment, their profit margins soar.
So in 2017, we led dozens of allies to petition EPA to strengthen its regulations to ensure all polluting CAFOs have Clean Water Act permits that effectively protect waterways as the law requires. When it denied our petition and refused to act, we sued.
A host of industry groups representing factory farm interests intervened in the case to defend EPA’s refusal to act. This comes as no surprise, as the industry has long peddled misleading arguments and downright lies to preserve the status quo. That’s because factory farms reap huge benefits from the lack of regulation. When allowed to handle their waste cheaply, with little regard for the toll on people and the environment, their profit margins soar.
This September, I countered those arguments in person before the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, explaining why EPA must strengthen its CAFO regulations to safeguard our water and our health.
Here’s the truth behind three false claims industry is pushing:
1. The Harms of Factory Farm Manure “Management” Are Clear
In their brief, industry groups claim that “modern feeding operations are designed and engineered to produce healthy animals and minimize environmental impacts from manure.” This is patently false. The industry employs—and EPA’s lax regulations allow— the cheapest waste management practices possible, with little concern for public health or the environment.
For instance, factory farms store millions of gallons of waste in open cesspools that are designed to leak, threatening drinking water. And because hauling waste away is expensive, they dump as much as they can onto nearby fields, where it runs off into waterways.
We, the scientific community, and EPA all know that lax regulations have fueled the current factory farm pollution crisis.
This is a main reason why CAFOs’ waste is such a big threat to our water. They claim they’re using this waste to fertilize crops, but in reality, they apply far more than the land or plants can absorb. It’s also common practice to dump waste on land that has no hope of absorbing any of it, including fields frozen solid in the dead of winter.
There is a trove of scientific literature documenting all of this, and even EPA concedes that its faulty regulations are to blame. Yet, EPA claims it lacks enough information to improve its regulations. This reasoning is frankly ridiculous, especially since the agency admitted it had not even reviewed the thousands of pages of scientific and government data we gave to it when we submitted our petition, including research it conducted itself.
In their brief, industry groups aim to sow doubt on this topic, but we, the scientific community, and EPA all know that lax regulations have fueled the current factory farm pollution crisis.
2. Factory Farms Benefit from a Gaping Regulatory Loophole That EPA Can and Must Close
The industry also defended an EPA rule that has created a loophole enabling thousands of CAFOs to circumvent the law. Under the Clean Water Act, polluting facilities must get a permit that requires them to limit and monitor their pollution discharges.
However, since 2003 EPA has chosen to interpret the statute in a way that exempts a huge portion of factory farm pollution from regulation. This “agricultural stormwater” exemption has also allowed the vast majority of factory farms to evade permitting requirements altogether, even for pollution that doesn’t fall under the exemption.
So we’re not surprised that the industry is determined to preserve this loophole. In its brief, it falsely claims that federal law requires EPA to apply this exemption to CAFOs. But in fact, the congressional and regulatory records make clear that legislators never intended for the exemption to apply to CAFOs or their waste disposal practices, and EPA understood that.
Contrary to industry claims, EPA applied this exemption to factory farms by its own discretion; the law did not compel them to. Now, in the face of substantial evidence that thousands of operations are exploiting this free pass, EPA can and must narrow the exemption and place stringent regulations on polluting factory farms, as Congress intended.
3. The Status Quo Is Failing to Prevent Pollution
Finally, industry groups argue that the current regulatory regime is working. They even point to Iowa and North Carolina as shining success stories for manure management. What they fail to mention is that these states have some of the worst factory farm-polluted waters in the country, because state regulators allow these operations to pollute with impunity. In fact, these states have laws that prohibit their environmental agencies from passing factory farm water pollution regulations more stringent than EPA’s.
EPA itself admits its primary pollution control strategy, “nutrient management plans,” are inadequate. For decades, the agency has assumed these plans minimize pollution runoff from fields applied with manure. That’s what the industry would like us to believe, too. But the truth is—as EPA recently acknowledged—nutrient management plans don’t do enough to protect against pollution because that’s not even their main focus.
The reality is that the status quo is not protecting rural communities from harmful factory farm pollution.
Instead, they prioritize “maximizing crop growth” where manure is applied. To fulfill its obligations under the Clean Water Act, EPA must stop pretending that nutrient management plans are a silver bullet for factory farm pollution.
The reality is that the status quo is not protecting rural communities from harmful factory farm pollution. Weak state regulations matter even less when the national permit program—the bedrock of factory farm pollution regulation—isn’t effective. EPA can and must overhaul its factory farm regulations.
The EPA Must Hold the Industry Accountable
EPA’s foot-dragging is welcome news to the factory farm industry. Under the agency’s current regulations, factory farms can continue cutting costs through irresponsible manure handling. They can dump the costs of their waste onto their neighbors, leaving rural communities with undrinkable water, health problems, and devastated quality of life.
This needs to change. EPA must stop toeing the industry line and finally stop this pollution.
Arguing before the court in September, EPA agreed the factory farm pollution problem was severe, but it swore up and down it was taking it seriously, pointing to an ongoing study Food & Water Watch forced the agency to launch through other litigation and an advisory committee it convened after denying our petition.
However, these are simply delay tactics. The study focuses narrowly on pollution standards that only apply to permitted factory farms, even though the heart of the problem is that thousands of factory farms don’t have permits to begin with. To add insult to injury, the study group is controlled by industry representatives. It’s simply not believable that the study process will lead to stronger environmental protections.
EPA’s weak arguments underscore what we’ve known for years: to address this pollution crisis, the agency must step up and strengthen its regulations. Not only do suffering communities need EPA to do its job, but the law demands it.
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Study Links Processed Red Meat to Dementia Risk
"This is really consistent with a larger body of science that tells us that diets that are lower in fat, lower in sugar, higher in vegetables overall, are what's really better for our brain health," said one expert.
Jul 31, 2024
Replacing one serving of processed red meat per day with healthier foods was linked to a 20% drop in dementia risk, preliminary research presented Wednesday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Philadelphia revealed.
The research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, tracked more than 130,000 participants in a pair of related medical studies for more than 40 years. It found that people who consumed more than two weekly servings of processed red meats—which include bacon, lunch meats, sausages, and other cured, salted, smoked, or preserved meats—had a 14% increased risk of dementia compared with those who ate less than three servings per month.
"We found that eating processed red meat could be a significant risk factor for dementia."
The study also linked each additional daily serving of processed red meat to more than 1.6 years of cognitive aging for overall cognitive function and nearly 1.7 years for verbal memory.
"Study results have been mixed on whether there is a relationship between cognitive decline and meat consumption in general, so we took a closer look at how eating different amounts of both processed and unprocessed meat affects cognitive risk and function," lead researcher Yuhan Li, an assistant professor at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said in a statement.
"By studying people over a long period of time, we found that eating processed red meat could be a significant risk factor for dementia," she added.
Heather Snyder, the Alzheimer's Association vice president of medical and scientific relations, toldNBC News that "this is really consistent with a larger body of science that tells us that diets that are lower in fat, lower in sugar, higher in vegetables overall, are what's really better for our brain health."
Li recommends including recommendations to limit processed red meat consumption in official dietary guidelines.
"Processed red meat has also been shown to raise the risk of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes," she said. "It may affect the brain because it has high levels of harmful substances such as nitrites and sodium."
The good news is that the researchers found that replacing one daily serving of processed red meat with foods including beans, nuts, and tofu could result in a 20% lower risk of dementia.
Furthermore, some experts said that while the new study showed more people who consumed processed red meat developed dementia, the research does not show cause and effect.
"It's important to remember that this doesn't mean that eating processed red meat is directly related to developing dementia," Richard Oakley of the U.K. Alzheimer's Association toldThe Guardian. "It may be that people who avoid processed red meat are generally more health conscious and avoid other unhealthy habits that increase dementia risk."
In addition to the health risks of eating both processed and unprocessed meats, animal agriculture also exacerbates the climate emergency. A 2020 study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Tulane University commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group, found that if Americans halved their consumption of animal products, it could prevent 1.6 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions within a decade.
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'Worrisome': Global Methane Spike Imperils Climate Goals, Study Warns
"It is imperative to rapidly reduce methane emissions to reduce the accelerating climate damages so many people around the world are suffering," one study author said.
Jul 30, 2024
Methane emissions are rising faster than expected, a new study has warned, and the surge is putting global climate goals at risk.
The study, published Monday in Frontiers in Science, found that methane emissions have risen quickly since 2006, with the growth rates for atmospheric methane seeing an "abrupt and rapid increase" in the early 2020s.
"The growth rate of methane is accelerating, which is worrisome," lead study author and Duke University climate scientist Drew Shindell, toldThe Guardian. "It was quite flat until around 20 years ago, and just in the last few years we've had this huge dump of methane. It's made the job of tackling anthropogenic warming all the more challenging."
"Reducing CO2 will protect our grandchildren—reducing methane will protect us now."
Methane is the second leading greenhouse gas heating the atmosphere and contributing to the climate crisis. It is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide during the first 20 years after being emitted, but it also fades from the atmosphere much more quickly—in around 12 years rather than centuries. Methane emissions released between the industrial era and 2019 have caused 65% as much global heating as carbon dioxide, according to the new paper.
Methane emissions have spiked in recent years, reaching record levels in 2021 and 2022. The increase in atmospheric methane concentrations in 2021 was also the highest ever recorded. The growth rates in the early 2020s "far exceeded" predictions, and the situation is not expected to improve on its own.
"This study shows that emissions are expected to continue to increase over the remainder of the 2020s if no greater action is taken and that increases in atmospheric methane are thus far outpacing projected growth rates," the authors wrote.
Methane is emitted primarily by leaks and flaring during fossil fuel production, animal and rice agriculture, and the decaying of organic matter. The authors considered what had caused methane production to spike in the early 2020s specifically, and concluded that the two main drivers were fossil fuels—primarily oil and gas production—and an increase in decomposition rates from wetlands as higher temperatures interacted with La Niña conditions in the tropics.
Despite the significant role that methane plays in accelerating the climate emergency, only around 2% of climate finance is dedicated to targeting it, and current policies only respond to around 13% of total methane emissions. Given the rising rates of methane growth, the authors argued that this must change.
"It is imperative to rapidly reduce methane emissions to reduce the accelerating climate damages so many people around the world are suffering," Shindell said in a statement.
Why has the world dragged its feet on methane so far?
"The world has been rightly focused on carbon dioxide, which is the largest driver of climate change to date," Shindell explained. "Methane seemed like something we could leave for later, but the world has warmed very rapidly over the past couple of decades, while we've failed to reduce our CO2 emissions. So that leaves us more desperate for ways to reduce the rate of warming rapidly, which methane [cuts] can do."
Methane, Shindell told The Guardian, "is the strongest lever we can quickly pull to reduce warming between now and 2050."
"There's just such a rapid response to cutting it," Shindell continued. "We've already seen the planet warm so much that if we are to avoid worse impacts we have to reduce methane. Reducing CO2 will protect our grandchildren—reducing methane will protect us now."
Refusing to curb methane could also undermine efforts to reduce CO2: for every 50 megatons of methane that are not eliminated in keeping with low-warming projections, the remaining carbon dioxide budget is reduced by 150 gigatons.
The scientists outlined three "imperatives" for tackling methane:
- Reverse the rise in emissions;
- Make a plan to tackle CO2 and methane together; and
- Optimize methane-reduction plans and technologies for maximum effect.
To that end, the study authors developed an online tool that policymakers and other interested parties can use to gauge the effectiveness and economic benefits of different technologies and strategies.
"The benefits of methane mitigation nearly always outweigh the net costs," Shindell said in a statement.
Each ton of methane emitted in 2020 caused between $470 and $1,700 in damages, without considering methane's contribution to deadly air pollution. If that is taken into account, the true cost per ton could be $7,000 or more.
The most effective action a stakeholder can take to reduce emissions will depend on where they live and their position in society. For governments in countries with large fossil fuel industries, for example, the most important tools would be regulating production, offering incentives for companies to capture any methane, or charging the companies for emitting methane, the study authors argue.
For individuals, the most effective actions may be altering their consumption patterns or taking political action.
"People can make sure they avoid overconsumption of beef and dairy, and compost their organic waste whenever possible," said Shindell in a statement.
"If it's not possible where they live, they can vote for those who'll create programs for composting in their towns. They can also vote for those who will make polluters pay for methane emissions rather than letting them profit while society picks up the tab for the damages they're inflicting."
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