Currently browsing posts about: CAFOs(Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations)

James Merchant and Robert Martin, eds. Public Health Impacts of Industrial Farm Animal Production.  Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024.

I served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production with both authors about 15 years ago and was happy to do a blurb for their book.

This hard-hitting book defies meat industry pressure and obfuscation to document the devastating effects of its current production methods on the quality of air and water and on human health.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Here’s a roadmap for a healthier and environmentally sustainable meat production system.

The book begins with an account of meat industry interference with the work of the Pew Commission and researchers investigating the health and polluting effects of CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations).

Our experience, and that of several of the authors of the 12 chapters in this book, have encountered considerable interference with their academic freedom as exerted directly by industrial agriculture or its pressure on academic administrators. Ensuring academic freedom, unbiased funding and unbiased research is critical to a sustainable environment and to protect the public’s health…. The pressure included industry harassment and intimidation of community residents, industry intrusion seeking to identify study subjects and research records, pressure applied to University administrators, and intimidation and litigation threats.

The multi-authored chapters document the extensive damage to health, the environment, and social justice caused by CAFOs, and recommend ways to deal with it.

Enforcing existing laws about air, water, soil, odor pollution, and animal welfare would be a good starting point.

The FDA has issued its boringly titled Southwest Agricultural Region Environmental Microbiology Study (2019 – 2024).

The report seems designed to be boring.  Its subject, however, is anything but.

Let me do some translating (in Italics).

• “The study was designed to improve understanding of the environmental factors that may impact the presence of foodborne pathogens in the Southwest agricultural region.”  [Leafy greens contaminated with pathogenic bacteria make lots of people really sick, undoubtedly because they come in contact with CAFOs, confined animal feeding operations].
• “Samples were collected from irrigation waters, soil, sediments, air/dust, animal fecal material, wildlife scat, and other sources across approximately a 54 mile (7,000 acres) area of the southwest growing region.” [It’s about time the FDA did this].
• “Special attention was given to the geography of the study region and the types and locations of agricultural and other adjacent and nearby land use activities relative to produce production areas.  For example, there is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) with more than 80,000 head of cattle and an associated compost operation in proximity to some of the produce production areas studied. [Oh.  What a surprise].

The investigation’s findings

• “STEC [Shiga toxin-producing E. coli] can survive in the air and that dust can act as a transfer mechanism for both pathogens and indicator organisms (e.g. generic E. coli) from adjacent and nearby land to water, soil, and plant tissue “[toxic bacteria spread from CAFOs by air and dust].
• “The research team repeatedly observed that generic E. coli concentrations and STEC prevalence and isolation frequency increased as irrigation canal water flowed past an adjacent livestock and compost operation” [toxic bacteria spread from CAFOs by water].
• “…birds and other wildlife do not appear to be significant sources of STEC or E. coli O157:H7 ” [blaming wild birds for contaminating leafy greens is not going to work].
• “STEC strains detected in water, sediment, and plant tissue harvested from our research plots genetically matched strains isolated in air samples providing evidence that bacteria in air can transfer to other locations and surfaces.”  [Toxic bacteria get around easily].

The conclusions

Having proven that CAFOs contaminate air, soil, and water with toxic bacteria, the report concludes:

The preliminary results of this study stress the interconnectedness between people, animals and the environment and serve as an important model for how to foster productive dialogue among diverse stakeholders to improve food safety.

Comment

Foster dialogue?  They have to be kidding.  CAFOs need to be held responsible for the waste produced by their animals.  Human wastes are not allowed to be released untreated into the environment; neither should animal wastes.

Here is food safety lawyer Bill Marler’s comment.

Last summer, food safety lawyer Bill Marler wrote a blog post:

28 years of Leafy Green E. coli Outbreaks – We can and should do better!  E. coli outbreaks associated with lettuce, specifically the “pre-washed” and “ready-to-eat” varieties, are by no means a new phenomenon. In fact, the frequency with which this country’s fresh produce consuming public has been hit by outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria is astonishing. Here are just a sample of E. coli outbreaks based on information gathered by the Center for… Continue Reading

It includes a long list of illness outbreaks (more than one case attributed to a particular source) from 1995 through 2022 caused by contaminated salad greens.

I did not add them up but the FDA reports a total of 78 foodborne disease outbreaks linked to leafy greens (mainly lettuce) from 2014–2021 reported to the CDC.  During this period, the CDC issued outbreak notices for several of the outbreaks.

Their cause: leakage of animal waste from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) onto vegetable fields.  This happens often enough to be worth advising against eating bagged salads from California or Arizona.

Bill Marler doesn’t eat bagged salads at all (see the 6 foods he won’t eat):

Prewashed or precut fruits and vegetables. “I avoid these like the plague,” Marler says. Why? The more a food is handled and processed, the more likely it is to become tainted. “We’ve gotten so used to the convenience of mass-produced food—bagged salad and boxed salads and precut this and precut that,” Marler says. “Convenience is great but sometimes I think it isn’t worth the risk.” He buys unwashed, uncut produce in small amounts and eats it within three to four days to reduce the risk for listeria, a deadly bug that grows at refrigerator temps.

Buy greens from farmers’ markets or grow your own.  If that seems impossible, buy them whole and grown in places unlikely to be neear CAFOs.  And wash them well in running water.

I could hardly believe this ad in the New York Times last Friday.

Cattle as a promoter of biodiversity?

My usual question: Who paid for this?

The only clue was the little checkmark and in tiny letters “Funded by beef farmers and ranchers.”

I did the thing with the QR code and went straight to www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com, the website of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, organizations paid for by per-animal levies imposed by USDA-sponsored checkoff programs.

The beef checkoff

acts as a catalyst for change and is designed to stimulate beef sales and consumption through a combination of initiatives including consumer advertising, research, public relations and new-product development.

The ad says:

Almost a third of U.S. land is too rocky or dry to be used for growing food crops.  But cattle can graze on and regenerate that land, naturally protecting open space and conserving precious habitats and ecosystems.

Yes, they can, but participants in the Beef checkoff generally raise cattle in CAFOs (factory feedlots), the antithesis of grazing on and regenerating land.

The beef industry is under siege these days from people who care about health and the environment.

Instead of doing all it can to promote regenerative grazing, it uses public relations to deflect attention from how it really raises cattle.

Butterflies?  Not a chance.

CORRECTION:  Several readers have written to complain that I obviously know nothing about how cattle are raised.  “You idiot,” they say (or imply), “cattle are raised on grass until the last few months of their lives.”  Not only that, says one reader, but their grazing on grass produces ecological miracles (see, for example, this video.)  That, however, still leaves them with months of finishing off on grains in feedlots, somehow not mentioned in the Beef Checkoff ad.  It may be, as one reader tells me, that beef producers hate this system and hate paying for it with checkoff funds, but that’s how it works.  Advocacy, anyone?  In any case, I apologize for not including this iinformation n my original post.

Food and Water Watch has a new report advocating a ban on factory farms.

Why?  Because factory farms:

• Produce enormous volumes of waste
• Fuel climate change
• Pollute air and water
• Exploit workers
• Harm animal welfare
• Drive antibiotic resistance
• Harm rural communities

This is ten years after the report of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (on which I served).

Not much has changed but this new one is particularly well researched and is a welcome addition to the ongoing debate.

As anyone who has ever been within sniffing distance of an industrial pig farm can tell you, the stench is pervasive, gets into your clothes, and seems impossible to avoid or wash out.  It seems incomprehensible that pig producers could be permitted to cause such odors and impose the stench on neighbors.

When I was on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, the primary finding of our investigations was this: Laws existed to stop pollution but nobody enforced them.

But now neighbors of a North Carolina hog farm sued Smithfield—and won!

As Politico explained

The jury agreed with the 10 plaintiffs in the civil case, who contended that a contractor to Smithfield Foods created a situation where residents could no longer enjoy their property because of noxious smells. Waste from the hogs is stored in open-air lagoons and sprayed onto fields as fertilizer. Neighbors said manure particles traveled to their property located a few hundred feet from the farm, coating their homes, clothing and cars.

The judges instructions to the jury were simple.

The first question to the jury was whether Murphy-Brown had “substantially and unreasonably” interfered with the plaintiffs’ use and enjoyment of their property. For each of them, the jury answered “yes” and awarded them $75,000 in compensation.  As to whether the company was liable for punitive damages, the jury again answered yes, and awarded each the same amount – $5 million.

They won’t actually get this amount; North Carolina laws cap damage payments.

Nevertheless, the verdict opens the possibility for other such lawsuits and further damages.

Smithfield will appeal, of course.

These lawsuits are an outrageous attack on animal agriculture, rural North Carolina and thousands of independent family farmers who own and operate contract farms. These farmers are apparently not safe from attack even if they fully comply with all federal, state and local laws and regulations. The lawsuits are a serious threat to a major industry, to North Carolina’s entire economy and to the jobs and livelihoods of tens of thousands of North Carolinians.

Yes, but does Smithfield have the right to ruin the lives of people in the community and create vast amounts of stinking waste that is not treated—amounts larger than that produced by people in small cities.

We would not dream of leaving human waste exposed and untreated.  Pig waste is no different.

Let’s hope the verdict sticks and causes big changes in animal production methods.

I was a member of this Pew Commission, which produced a landmark report in 2008: Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America.

Our report’s conclusion: The current system of raising farm animals poses unacceptable risks to public health, to communities near Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), and to the environment.

Our key recommendations:

1. Ban the nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials in food animal production.
2. Define nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials as any use in food animals in the absence of microbial disease or documented microbial disease exposure.
3. Implement new systems to deal with farm waste.
4. Phase out gestation crates, restrictive veal crates, and battery cages.
5. Enforce the existing environmental and anti-trust laws applicable to food animal production.
6. Expand animal agriculture research.

Recently, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) did an in-depth analysis of what has happened with these recommendations.  Its dismal conclusion: The problems have only gotten worse.

Many hoped the release of the report, which occurred within a year of a change in the administration, would help trigger a sea change in the federal government’s approach to regulating the food animal production industry…Early administrative appointments to top regulatory posts held promise for meaningful changes.

CLF’s review of the policy-landscape changes in the five years since the release of the report paints a very different picture. Contrary to expectations, the Obama administration has not engaged on the recommendations outlined in the report in a meaningful way; in fact, regulatory agencies in the administration have acted regressively in their decision-making and policy-setting procedures.

In addition, the House of Representatives has stepped up the intensity of its attacks on avenues for reform and stricter enforcement of existing regulations, paving the way for industry avoidance of scrutiny and even deregulation, masked as protection of the inappropriately termed “family farmer.”

The assaults on reform have not been limited to blocking policies…Instead, the policy debate…has shifted to the implementation of policies such as “ag-gag”, agricultural certainty, and right-to-farm laws, all of which are designed to further shield unsavory industry practices from the eye of the public and the intervention of regulators.

This week, some of the Commission members answered questions from ProPolitico reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich.  Ralph Loglisci reports in Civil Eats on that meeting and his conversation with former Pew Commission director Robert Martin, who is now the Center for a Livable Future’s Director of Food System Policy:

I think issues are going to drive change at some point. You’ve got this big group of people who want to see change. The problems of antibiotic resistance are worsening–the problems of 500 million tons of (animal) waste we produce each year are worsening and the ground in many areas of the country is really saturated with phosphorous. You can’t transport the material, so you’ve got to disperse the animals. So, the problems are reaching really a crisis point. So that could really force action too.

Is there any hope?  It sounds like things will have to get worse before they get better.  But how much worse?

I wish there were better news.  Food safety, animal welfare, and environmental advocates: get together and get busy!

The CDC has produced a major study on antibiotic resistance and how it works. 

The report provides convincing evidence that use of antibiotics in farm animals must be restricted to therapeutic purposes—and not used to promote growth.