CAFOs: Harming People Now, Later, and Forever
by Aika Mitchell
As early as 1997, the National Bar Association had understood CAFOs to be an environmental justice issue. CAFOs directly endanger members of the local community—the majority of whom are poorer or belong to racial minorities—by polluting the air and spreading disease. Furthermore, CAFOs continue to emit significant amounts of methane, which in turn increases the incidence of climate disasters. These climate disasters differentially affect the same lives who were directly harmed by CAFOs in the first place: poorer communities with less resources to cope with climate disasters, and livestock animals who are left to die and rot when a hurricane blows through. Americans’ continued reliance on CAFOs perpetuates injustice and cruelty, subject to little regulatory oversight.
The Environmental Protection Agency created the term “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation”, (CAFO) as part of a regulatory scheme for enforcing the Clean Water Act. CAFOs confine a large number of animals for at least 45 days in a given 12-month period. CAFOs dominate agriculture in the United States: in 2017, an estimated 99% of all meat sold in the U.S. came from animals confined in CAFOs. That’s 99% of an enormous industry—retail sales of beef alone represented 143 billion dollars in 2022. The value of broiler chicken sales (i.e. sales of chickens selective bred for maximum meat production) was about 42.6 billion dollars in 2023, and eggs brought in about 17.9 billion dollars in 2023. CAFOs are huge. They are huge in terms of dollars, animals confined, and negative effects on surrounding communities.
While data about CAFOs is hard to obtain because of EPA’s historic lack of oversight and inadequate recordkeeping, there is still evidence of the direct harm CAFOs do. Historically disenfranchised groups are harmed by a frequent proximity to CAFOs. For example, a study of CAFOs in North Carolina suggests that CAFOs tend to be sited in poorer communities with more Black people, increasing their exposure to CAFO-related pollutants. That same study also suggests that CAFO exposure is correlated with cardiovascular and kidney disease. A similar siting trend was observed in Ohio, where Black and Hispanic communities suffered higher exposure. In Pennsylvania, the 8th largest milk producing state, CAFO exposure was correlated with preterm birth; the correlation was stronger in Black mothers. Additionally, there is the everyday burden of living near a pig CAFO. Imagine the stench of thousands of pigs, miserable, covered in feces. Your porch is unusable—there are too many flies. You can’t cook outside because the smell taints everything.
CAFO workers themselves also suffer. While the exact nature of the harm is unknown, dust and ammonia from animal manure were correlated with worsened lung function after six years of working. Exposure to certain bacteria prevalent in CAFOs also impairs lung function. CAFOs also contribute to a wider industry that harms communities, including slaughterhouses. A 2023 Beacon blog highlighted the myriad ways slaughterhouses worsen uncountable human lives. Slaughterhouse workers are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, and engage in substance abuse to cope. The effects from CAFOs are wide ranging and concentrated on specific communities that are not valued as highly as others.
Mere proximity to a CAFO harms people, but CAFOs are also nefarious contributors to climate change—the effects of which are borne overwhelmingly by poor and minority communities. Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps heat more effectively than carbon dioxide. CAFOs are significant methane emitters through their manure.
A 2021 EPA report demonstrated that low income, minority, undereducated, and elderly people are disproportionately affected by climate change compared to people outside those groups. For example, Black Americans are 40% more likely than non-Black Americans to live in places where climate change-induced extreme temperatures will cause death. Low income Americans or those with no high school diploma are 25% more likely to live in places where projected higher temperatures will cause losses in labor hours. The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) paints a similarly bleak picture. Low income and minority neighborhoods tend to be less resilient to the effects of climate change. Low income neighborhoods suffer from hotter surface temperatures (up to 12 degrees hotter during a heatwave), which can cause a slew of severe health problems. Throughout the country, Black communities are predicted to suffer more flood damages than other racial groups. The NCA5 attributes this differential impact to past discriminatory practices such as redlining. Thus, climate change continues to reinforce climate-resilience disparities between class and racial groups.
Despite the tremendous harm that CAFOs do, the federal government does not effectively regulate methane emissions from CAFOs. The EPA had promulgated a rule exempting smaller farms from mandatory air emissions reporting requirements back in 2008. Then, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that rule in the case Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA in 2017. In response, Congress stepped in and passed the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act (“FARM Act”), which exempted CAFOs from needing to report their air emissions from manure to the EPA. While Congress has impeded the public’s awareness of the true extent of CAFOs’ emissions, the EPA has acknowledged, that greenhouse gas emissions (including methane emissions) have risen sharply with the proliferation of CAFOs between 1990 and 2017.
Greenhouse gases are major drivers of global climate change. Global climate change tends to disproportionately affect poor and minority communities. Nearly 20 years ago, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization wrote “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, which warned that the “livestock sector” is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems.” We did not heed that warning: livestock still contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions. CAFOs remain a neglected opportunity to mitigate climate change harms.
Though the sheer size and influence of the animal agriculture industry makes change difficult, there are multiple possible avenues. Citizens can pressure state legislatures to regulate CAFOs more strictly. Oregon can celebrate a victory here: in the 2023 legislative session, a new law prohibiting CAFOs from getting discharge permits in groundwater management areas was signed into law. This was a hard-earned win, and it was only possible because of a collective effort by organizations and community stakeholders. Similarly, building just policies for broadly transitioning away from industrial animal consumption can get ahead of the common concerns (e.g. how to transition when some people absolutely rely on industrial animal agriculture to survive.)
Another legislative strategy for reducing CAFO-caused harms is pushing legislators to refine right to farm laws so that they don’t protect CAFOs. This may allow private citizens to bring common law nuisance claims against CAFOs, hopefully suing them into better behavior. A less monumental—but perhaps more critical—strategy would be changing consumption patterns. Whether your priorities are environmental justice, climate change, animal welfare, or something else altogether, personally choosing to consume less animal products is an important way to oppose CAFOs, a highly entrenched industry that inflicts tremendous amounts of harm.