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Watch these videos: Can we go "back to the start"? Which video is most realistic? What do you think of commercial agriculture and concentrated animal feeding opetations?
Back to the Start
Can we go "back to the start"? Which is most realistic?
How do factory farms affect us?
Natural Resources and CAFOS
Waste Lagoon at a Feedlot
Check here for images of CAFOs
What are the environmental effects?
What pollutants do CAFOs produce?
CAFOs produce huge amounts of animal sewage and other pollutants.
CAFO owners and operators spend millions of dollars on technologies that make it possible to produce massive quantities of milk, eggs, and meat, yet they resist investing in technologies and practices to properly treat the wastes that are by-products of this industry:
- The amount of urine and feces produced by the smallest CAFO is equivalent to the quantity of urine and feces produced by 16,000 humans.
- CAFO waste is usually not treated to reduce disease-causing pathogens, nor to remove chemicals, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, or other pollutants.
- Over 168 gases are emitted from CAFO waste, including hazardous chemicals such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane.
- Airborne particulate matter is found near CAFOs and can carry disease-causing bacteria, fungus, or other pathogens.
- Animals frequently die in CAFOs. Their carcasses, often in large numbers, must be dealt with.
- Infestations of flies, rats, and other vermin are commonplace around CAFOs and therefore around CAFO neighbors.
Often you'll hear owners of CAFOs argue that the wastes produced by the livestock provide nutrients that help them offset the use of synthetic fertilizers. The sheer amount of wastes produced, however, often overwhelms the ability of the land and crops to absorb CAFO wastes.
Are there different kinds of CAFOs?
One type of CAFO houses livestock in buildings the animals seldom leave. Removing wastes from these buildings is a major challenge.
- Dairy and hog CAFOs often use clean water to wash animal wastes and contaminants from the buildings into waste-storage structures or lagoons.
- Poultry CAFOs use dry-waste systems. The waste falls from animal cages to the floor, where it is scraped out of the building periodically or collected on conveyer belts and moved to composting or storage sites.
Another type of CAFO is the feedlot, which keeps the animals outdoors in pens. Here the manure waste accumulates on the ground, often washing off into nearby ditches and streams.
What's in CAFO waste?
In addition to plant nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen, CAFO waste is likely to contain:
- antibiotic-resistant bacteria
- chemicals used in livestock care
- milkhouse wastes
- cleaning agents
- ammonia and heavy metals
- silage leachate
- millions of gallons of water contaminated by all of the above.
Nutrients in this CAFO waste can cause bright-green algae blooms in ditches, streams, and lakes. As these surface-water algae blooms die off, the oxygen in the water is depleted. What does this do? It can lead to fish kills. Additionally, drinking-water plants must remove these nutrients before water is fit for consumption.
Pathogens such as E.coli bacteria, cryptosporidium, and salmonella, all of which can cause sickness or death in humans and animals, may be present in CAFO wastes.
CAFO wastes (including fish farms) can contain a slurry of toxins, including viruses, infectious bacteria, antibiotics, heavy metals, and oxygen-depleting nutrients that run off the land, contaminate groundwater and aquatic systems, and pollute the atmosphere.
Toxic Storage “Lagoons” Lagoon storage and sprayfield applications on land are two common methods of dealing with CAFO wastes. Neither is problem-free. Spraying liquid manure onto croplands can spread viruses, bacteria, antibiotics, metals (such as zinc, arsenic, copper, and selenium),3 nitrogen, phosphorus, and other compounds that run off the land, contaminate the groundwater, travel through subterranean field drains (tiles), and pollute the atmosphere. Spraying more animal waste than the surrounding land can safely absorb is common. When lagoons burst, develop leaks, or are overwhelmed by flood events, as often happens, millions of gallons of manure reach waterways and spread microbes that can cause gastroenteritis, fevers, kidney failure, and death. One bacteria, Pfiesteria piscicida, produces a powerful toxin that has been responsible for massive fish kills in waters polluted by hog manure.