In her job caring for hogs in a Missouri livestock confinement holding thousands of animals, Angela Smith spent her days walking grates above huge cesspits full of pig urine and feces. Her eyes watered. Her throat burned. There were no regulations to protect her, no agency to complain to. Within a year, she had a permanent cough that followed her home. “I was coughing so hard, I would throw up,” she told food and farm safety publication Civil Eats, which didn’t use her real name, to protect her from retaliation. After two years, Angela’s health gave out and she had to quit. Her former employer refused to comment.
"I was coughing so hard, I would throw up."
Animal waste produces large quantities of ammonia, a precursor to small particulate matter, a regulated air pollutant that enters human lungs and triggers respiratory illness. On factory farms, ammonia is often trapped in confined spaces where workers and animals can’t escape its effects. Anhydrous ammonia is also a common chemical fertilizer. Factory farms are the single largest human-created source of ammonia, and a major source of other air pollutants. Industrial agriculture is also responsible for almost 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions.
These emissions pose serious health problems to farmworkers, members of the surrounding community, and the animals themselves. Confined dairy cows, for example, are commonly culled at ages between 4 and 6 due to health problems, when the normal lifespan of a healthy cow is around 20 years. A 2018 study found significant numbers of dairy CAFO workers had been subjected to exposures above the recommended levels of a swathe of airborne chemicals, including particulate matter and ammonia.
A separate 2018 study found significant increases in asthma rates amongst children living near CAFOs. Given these dangerous health implications, one might naturally hope that government regulators are on the case. Unfortunately, however, EPA has instead given thousands of factory farms immunity from following air pollution standards while pursuing a never-ending study of these risks which is already 14 years late.
Despite the connection between industrial agriculture and various toxic air pollutants, there has historically been relatively little regulation of air emissions from CAFOs.
Why this reluctance to regulate such a major source of air pollution? Proposed explanations include political difficulties due to the prime place of the American family farmer in the American identity—who has as much to do with CAFOs as a hand weaver has to do with a textile factory—or difficulties in applying the statutory framework of the Clean Air Act to industrial agriculture. But perhaps the most convincing explanation is the problem of regulatory capture: the ability of major corporations to exert undue influence over the very agencies that are supposed to be monitoring and regulating them. In general, this influence is partially explained due to unbalanced incentives, with the regulated entities having a massive stake in the outcome of regulatory policymaking, while each individual member of the public only has a comparatively small interest in these decisions (even though the public as a whole has a significant interest).
One form of regulatory capture that can be particularly problematic for environmental regulation is the strategic use of information disclosures by regulated parties to influence or control the outcome of policy making. Unfortunately, much of the data and practical knowledge that would be necessary to determine effective environmental policy—including emissions data, the feasibility of various technologies, etc—is held by the industrial polluters, who have little incentive to share this voluntarily with the EPA or state agencies, which often find themselves waiting on voluntary disclosures from industry that may take years or even decades. US Representative Rashida Talib recently noted the problems such an approach can cause, with industry actors involved in regulatory decisions from the ground up, while the effected members of the public are only brought in for the final notice & comment stage, when the policy is already all-but decided.
EPA’s failed efforts to regulate CAFO air pollution are an example of information capture in practice. A 2005 EPA agreement continues to shield thousands of factory farms from EPA enforcement.
In exchange for this immunity, CAFOs agreed to fund and provide data for a study on how EPA could accurately measure their air pollution emissions. Despite a 2010 deadline, in 2024 the study still has not been completed. With their immunity shield indefinitely extended, CAFO operators claim that the problem of measuring and controlling emissions is “too hard to solve”. It is time for the study to be completed, and for CAFOs to face regulation for their fair share of air pollution. For this specific issue, EPA could take inspiration from the successful regulatory efforts of industrial meat production in European countries. But for the more general problem of information capture, a broader shift in the regulatory culture is necessary. First, regulatory agencies must receive funding for independent research that is not dependent on participation by parties incentivized to avoid regulation. Secondly, any future agreements to trade immunity from enforcement for technical data must be adhered to strictly. Agencies should not extend immunity agreements for additional decades when the challenges of devising effective regulation prove more difficult than anticipated. Finally, if industrial corporations prove unwilling to be genuine participants in regulatory policy making, agencies must be free to move forward without them. The current incentive structures encourage regulated parties to resist sharing information in order to delay regulation; instead, they must be encouraged to participate efficiently in order to avoid being left behind in regulatory decision-making. Industrial agriculture should answer to government agencies, and not the other way around.
References:
- Nina G.G. Domingo et al, Air Quality-Related Health Damages of Food, 118 Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1, 1 (2021).
- Alyssa M. Burns et al, Data Gap: Air Quality Networks Miss Air Pollution from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, 57 Env’t Sci. Tech. 20718, 20718 (2023).
- EPA Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990-2022 (2024), EPA 430-R-24-004, at 5-1.
- Linda M. Thompson, A Breath of Fresh Air: Methods and Obstacles for Achieving Air Pollution Reduction in Washington Factory Farm Communities, 1 Wash. J. Env’t L. & Pol’y 130, 141-144 (2011).
- Sarah C. WIlson, Hogwash! Why Industrial Animal Agriculture is not Beyond the Scope of Clean Air Act Regulation, 24 Pace Env’t L. Rev. 439, 450-451 (2007).
- Ryan Levandowski, Polluting ‘til the Cows Come Home: How Agricultural Exceptionalism Allows CAFOs Free Range for Climate Harm, 33 Geo. Env’t L. Rev. 151, 158 (2020).
- EPA Animal Feeding Operations Consent Agreement and Final Order, 70 FR 4958 (2005).
- Proposed timeline on EPA National Air Emissions Monitoring Study, https://www.epa.gov/afos-air/national-air-emissions-monitoring-study
- Richard Jones et al, EPA Eleven Years After Agreement, EPA has not Developed Reliable Emissions Estimation Methods to Determine Whether Animal Feeding Operations Comply with Clean Air Act and Other Statutes, Report No. 17-P-0396 at 23 (2017).
- Reynolds, Stephen J., et al. “Systematic Review of Respiratory Health Among Dairy Workers.” Journal of Agromedicine, vol. 18, no. 3, July 2013, pp. 219–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/1059924X.2013.797374.
- Douglas, Philippa, et al. “A Systematic Review of the Public Health Risks of Bioaerosols from Intensive Farming.” International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, vol. 221, no. 2, Mar. 2018, pp. 134–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheh.2017.10.019.
- Davidson, Margaret E., et al. “Personal Exposure of Dairy Workers to Dust, Endotoxin, Muramic Acid, Ergosterol, and Ammonia on Large Scale Dairies in the High Plains Western United States.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, vol. 15, no. 3, Mar. 2018, pp. 182–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15459624.2017.1403610. 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83, 84, 85 85 84 8
- Nour, Mahmoud M., et al. “Summary of Known U.S. Injuries and Fatalities Involving Livestock Waste Storage, Handling, and Transport Operations: 1975- 2019.” Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health, vol. 28, no. 1, 2022, pp. 65–81. https://doi.org/10.13031/jash.14615.
- Vredenberg, Imke, et al. “An Empirical Analysis on the Longevity of Dairy Cows in Relation to Economic Herd Performance”. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, vol. 8, 2021.
- Katie O’Brien Kelley, Rep. Talib and Environmental Groups Demand Changes to EGLE’s Public Participation Process, Michigan Advance, https://michiganadvance.com/2024/03/29/rep-tlaib-and-environmental-groups-demand-changes-to-egles-public-participation-process/#:~:text=Rashida%20Tlaib%20(D%2DDetroit),in%20the%20environmental%20permitting%20process.
- Gozia Wozniacka, I Was Coughing so Hard I Would Throw Up, Civil Eats, https://civileats.com/2022/11/15/animal-agriculture-workers-say-they-cant-breath-respiratory-health-cafos-ppe/
