Public Health & Water Quality Threatened by Factory Farms

Clean Water Action and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) released a report today documenting the threats animal feeding operations pose to public health and the environment in Colorado and at least 29 other states. The report is titled America’s Animal Factories: How States Fail to Prevent Pollution from Livestock Waste.

The report notes that currently Colorado has little to no regulation or enforcement power to protect the environment from animal factories. Luckily that is changing in Colorado. On November 3rd, voters passed Amendment 14, which regulates large hog operations.

“Amendment 14 was passed by voters from Bent County to Boulder County,” said Carmi McLean, director of Clean Water Action. “Now we need to ensure that this law is implemented in the way it was intended - to protect Colorado’s water and quality of life.”

“Right now, laws at the federal and local levels do not adequately protect the environment from the huge amount of waste generated by hog factories,” said Scott Ingvoldstad of the Environmental Defense Fund. “In Colorado, we have used the initiative process to go from worst to first in regulation of hog factories.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture will be holding a public hearing in Denver on December 14 to discuss national regulations on animal feeding operations.

For years minimal enforcement and lax regulations designed for family farmers have been exploited by factory farms. The report recommends ways to improve laws dealing with these large operations.

“These animal factories like to present themselves as the ‘new’ American family farm,” according to Dave Carter of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. “They come into the state promising economic growth, and are welcomed with taxpayer-subsidized incentives. But their impact on the quality of life is nothing like a true family farm.”