Environmental and animal protection groups are decrying the EPA’s new
regulations intended to address factory farm pollution. Giant factory
animal farms, otherwise known as “confined animal feeding operations”
(CAFOs), raise thousands of animals in enclosed metal sheds and produce
around 220 billion gallons of liquefied manure each year. Stored in giant
cesspools, the liquefied waste is sprayed onto the surrounding land, where
it infiltrates the soil, seeps into groundwater supplies, and wreaks havoc
on the environment across the country.
The EPA itself has admitted that
“Improperly managed manure has caused serious acute and chronic water
quality problems throughout the United States,” yet the EPA’s newly-issued
CAFO regulations will do little to mitigate this. While environmental
groups denounced the regulations, large-scale farming industry officials
praised them as “workable and compatible” and expressed relief that they
will not be held financially liable for the waste their farms produce, as
was originally proposed.
Adding further insult to injury is the fact that
the new regulations allow factory farms to write their own plans and to
keep them secret from the public. The new regulations are disastrous for
animals because they allow factory farms— giant warehouses that crowd
animals into cages and crates, while using antibiotics to combat the
unsanitary, disease-ridden conditions — to continue business as usual.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Ask EPA Administrator Christine Whitman and USDA Agriculture Secretary Ann
Veneman to rewrite their terribly misguided CAFO waste regulation, which
betray public welfare for the sake of appeasing profit-minded factory
farming interests.
Christine T Whitman
1101A
USEPA Headquarters
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N. W.
Washington, DC 20460
phone: 202-564-4700
fax: 202-501-1450
email: public-access@epamail.epa.gov
Ann Veneman
1400 Independence Ave SW
Washington, DC 20250
phone: (202) 720-2791
fax: (202) 720-2166
email: agsec@usda.gov
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