Animal Feed Operations
The number of new concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have increased across the U.S. over the past seven years – bringing the total operations just under 20, 000, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency.
From 2011 to 2017, the United States saw more than 1, 400 new large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) established. That’s up 7.6 percent.
A CAFO is defined as an “agricultural enterprises where animals are kept and raised in confined situations, ” and most commonly contain hogs, poultry for meat and eggs, dairy and beef cattle.
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Iowa led the growth in animal confinements, adding nearly 2, 000 CAFOs in the seven year period, according to an analysis of data from the EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Delaware and Maryland fell to a distant second and third with just 881 new operations between the two states, with Delaware seeing a 600 percent growth and Maryland seeing a nearly 300 percent growth.
Iowa, Delaware and Maryland added 2, 821 confined animal operations since 2011, but a number of states reduced the number of operations. States showing the biggest drop in operation included Arkansas, Oklahoma and Illinois.
A look at the amount of animal production across these states can be one insight into the changes in the number of confinements.
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Delaware saw a 1, 000 head drop in the number of beef cattle, but the state added 42 million broilers – chickens raised for meat – since 2011, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Map: Change in CAFOs, by state. Click on the state to see the change in number of CAFOs from 2011 to 2017.
Maryland decreased the number of hogs, dairy cattle, broilers and beef cattle, but produced an additional 265 million eggs in 2017, compared to 2011.
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations
Iowa added animals in nearly every category, with more than 3.5 million hogs, broiler chickens and dairy cattle and an additional 1.1 billion eggs in 2017.
Arkansas’ drop in operations since 2011 can be seen in nearly 112, 000 fewer hogs, beef and dairy cattle, even as the number of broiler chickens and eggs in the state increased.
While poultry production in Oklahoma declined across the seven year span, the state did produce an additional 1.2 million hogs and 50, 000 beef cattle in that time, but still lost CAFOs.
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Animal Production Trends. Below are the states with the most change in hogs, broiler chickens, eggs, dairy and beef cattle, from 2011 to 2017.
This story was updated on June 29, 2018, to correct the graphic “Change in egg production, 2011-2017” . An earlier version of this graphic had incorrect data. The story was also updated to correct how much egg production increased in Iowa in 2017 to 1.1 billion more eggs. An earlier version of this story said Iowa saw a 1.1 million egg increase in production in 2017.
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Biggest Pros And Cons Of Cafo (concentrated Animal Feeding Operations)
Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, Fund for Investigative Journalism, Gary Marx Journalism Fund, Arnold Ventures, Kirkpatrick Foundation, Lumpkin Family Foundation, Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Builders InitiativeThis article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that oft accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statemts should be clarified or removed. (January 2021 )
), as defined by the United States Departmt of Agriculture (USDA), is an intsive animal feeding operation (AFO) in which over 1, 000 animal units are confined for over 45 days a year. An animal unit is the equivalt of 1, 000 pounds of live animal weight.
A thousand animal units equates to 700 dairy cows, 1, 000 meat cows, 2, 500 pigs weighing more than 55 pounds (25 kg), 10, 000 pigs weighing under 55 pounds, 10, 000 sheep, 55, 000 turkeys, 125, 000 chicks, or 82, 000 egg laying hs or pullets.
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By the mid-2000s CAFOs dominated livestock and poultry production in the United States, and the scope of their market share is steadily increasing. In 1966, it took 1 million farms to house 57 million pigs; by 2001, it took only 80, 000 farms to house the same number.
The vironmtal Protection Agcy (EPA) has delineated three categories of CAFOs, ordered in terms of capacity: large, medium and small. The relevant animal unit for each category varies depding on species and capacity. For instance, large CAFOs house 1, 000 or more cattle, medium CAFOs can have 300–999 cattle, and small CAFOs harbor no more than 300 cattle.
The categorization of CAFOs affects whether a facility is subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act (CWA). EPA's 2008 rule specifies that large CAFOs are automatically subject to EPA regulation; medium CAFOs must also meet one of two 'method of discharge' criteria to be defined as a CAFO (or may be designated as such); and small CAFOs can only be made subject to EPA regulations on a case-by-case basis.
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A small CAFO will also be designated a CAFO for purposes of the CWA if it discharges pollutants into waterways of the United States through a man-made conveyance such as a road, ditch or pipe. Alternatively, a small CAFO may be designated an ordinary animal feeding operation (AFO) once its animal waste managemt system is certified at the site.
Since it first coined the term, the EPA has changed the definition (and applicable regulations) for CAFOs on several occasions. Private groups and individuals use the term CAFO colloquially to mean many types of both regulated and unregulated facilities, both inside and outside the U.S. The definition used in everyday speech may thus vary considerably from the statutory definition in the CWA. CAFOs are commonly characterized as having large numbers of animals crowded into a confined space, a situation that results in the conctration of manure in a small area.
The EPA has focused on regulating CAFOs because they gerate millions of tons of manure every year. Wh improperly managed, the manure can pose substantial risks to the vironmt and public health.
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In order to manage their waste, CAFO operators have developed agricultural wastewater treatmt plans. The most common type of facility used in these plans, the anaerobic lagoon, has significantly contributed to vironmtal and health problems attributed to the CAFO.
States with high conctrations of CAFOs experice on average 20 to 30 serious water quality problems per year as a result of manure managemt issues.
The two main contributors to water pollution caused by CAFOs are soluble nitrog compounds and phosphorus. The eutrophication of water bodies from such waste is harmful to wildlife and water quality in aquatic system like streams, lakes, and oceans.
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Surface water may be polluted by CAFO waste through the runoff of nutrits, organics, and pathogs from fields and storage. Waste can be transmitted to groundwater through the leaching of pollutants.
Some facility designs, such as lagoons, can reduce the risk of groundwater contamination, but the microbial pathogs from animal waste may still pollute surface and groundwater, harming wildlife and human health.
) lagoon ruptured in North Carolina. North Carolina contains a lot of the United States' industrial hog operations, which disproportionally harm Black, Hispanic and Indian American residts.
Animal Feeding Operations
And killed 10 million local fish. The spill also contributed to an outbreak of Pfiesteria piscicida, which caused health problems in nearby humans, including skin irritation and short-term cognitive problems.
CAFOs reduce ambit air quality. They release several gases harmful to humans: ammonia, hydrog sulfide, methane, and particulate matter. Larger CAFOs release more gas, mostly by the decomposition of large stores of animal manure.
CAFOs also emit strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria into the surrounding air, particularly downwind. Levels of antibiotics measured downwind from swine CAFOs were three times higher than those measured upwind.
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Globally, ruminant livestock are responsible for about 115 Tg/a of the 330 Tg/a (35%) of anthropogic grehouse gas emissions released per year.
Livestock operations are responsible for about 18% of grehouse gas emissions globally and over 7% of grehouse gas emissions in the U.S.
The Intergovernmtal Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges the big effect of livestock on methane emissions, antibiotic resistance, and climate change. To reduce emissions, it recommds removing sources of stress and changing how animals are fed, including sources of feed grain, amount of forage, and amount of digestible nutrits.
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The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) argues for reducing use of non-therapeutic antibiotics, especially those that are widely used in human medicine, on the advice of over 350 organizations including the American Medical Association.
If no change is made and methane emissions continue increasing in direct proportion to the number of livestock, global methane production is predicted to increase by 60% by 2030.
Also, people near CAFOs oft complain of the smell, which comes from a complex mixture of ammonia, hydrog sulfide, carbon dioxide, and volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds.
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Waste disposal also makes air worse. Some CAFOs will use spray fields and pump the waste of thousands of animals into a machine that sprays it onto an op field. The spray can be carried by wind onto nearby homes, depositing pathogs, heavy metals, and antibiotic resistant bacteria into the air of poor or minority communities.
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