Final Federal Plan Won't End Pollution From Factory Farms, Says EDF

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today criticized the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) final plan to control pollution from industrial-sized hog, poultry and other livestock feeding operations, and once again called upon the Clinton Administration to impose a moratorium on new factory farms. The final plan, which follows a draft strategy released by EPA and USDA last September, stops short of implementing the reforms proposed by EDF and other environmental and community groups.

“The Administration’s final plan takes some important steps in the right direction in its determination to regulate factory livestock operations in all fifty states and its apparent decision to hold corporations liable for pollution from the farms they control,” said Daniel Whittle, attorney for the North Carolina EDF. “Unfortunately, the government’s strategy stops short of adequately addressing the public health and environmental threats associated with current factory farm waste management.”

Instead of cleaning up, the plan will have many of the largest factory farms simply writing up strategies for storing and disposing large volumes of manure, based on existing federal waste management standards and practices. Among other things, these standards do not address air pollution or odor from factory farms, nor do they adequately safeguard against groundwater contamination. In January, the North Carolina State Health Director, Dennis McBride, concluded that odors threaten the health of people living near factory hog farms in North Carolina. EDF has been calling for the replacement of existing waste practices with new systems that do a better job of eliminating or reducing the impact of factory farms to water and air quality and to rural communities.

“Production at factory farms has rapidly increased in the past few years and spread into many states lacking even minimal environmental controls on these industries. Like the draft plan issued last September, today’s plan does nothing in the near-term to address the serious shortcomings of current animal waste practices,” said Joe Rudek, North Carolina EDF senior scientist. “The continued management of massive volumes of manure in primitive open-air lagoons and sprayfields that contaminate groundwater and streams, while releasing sickening odors and pollutants into the air, is utterly unacceptable.”

“In North Carolina — which up until last year was the country’s fastest growing pork producing state — lawmakers imposed a moratorium on new and expanded factory hog farms until a plan to phase out faulty waste management practices can be completed. It’s time for the EPA to follow suit by adopting a temporary national moratorium on new or expanding factory farms until real pollution control plans are put in place,” said Whittle.