An Ill Wind From Factory Farms

[trogdor]

Congress will hold hearings soon on the nomination of Gov. Michael Leavitt of Utah to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. He's bound to be asked about his efforts to eliminate protections for wilderness areas in his state and his close ties to the mining and timber industries. But he should also be asked about another issue that has received far less attention: the threat to the environment posed by the huge factory farms that dominate meat production in the United States today.

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These operations pollute the air with the gases released from huge barns and waste lagoons and by processes that "air out" manure before it is applied to fields. Under the Clinton administration, the E.P.A. began ordering farms to measure emissions and apply for Clean Air Act permits just as factories do. Early results showed that Buckeye Egg Farm, an egg-laying operation in Ohio, released hundreds of tons of particulate matter every year.

But the Bush administration ordered such enforcement investigations stopped two years ago. The Department of Agriculture studies on bacteria were suppressed at industry's request, prompting the resignation of the study's author, James Zahn. Earlier proposals to make corporate owners responsible for wastewater discharges at contract farms were shelved.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/20/opinion/20KENN.html?th

[ronatchig]

1. This is also a big issue

in North Carolina, hog and poultry production being huge in this state. Hurricane Floyd flooded many industrial farming ops in the eastern region of the state afew years back causing widespread release of organic waste not to mention hundreds of thousands of carcusses of drowned stock into several river basins. Tho I have followed this issue closely, there has been to date no research released or remedial suggestions to my knowledge.
One wonders what Bush's EPA is sitting on (not releasing) on this issue.