There seems to be no limit to the kinds of pollution society creates. One source that doesn’t get all that much attention is factory farm pollution. Factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs, produce enormous amounts of pollution and federal laws to regulate it are limited in scope and full of loopholes.
On the state level, there are major variations in how strict regulations are and how well they are enforced. California has some of the largest numbers of CAFOs in the country and ostensibly has stricter regulatory regimes than many other states. Nonetheless, many California farms dodge or even just decide not to comply with pollution regulations.
A study by Stanford researchers found that ten million tons of animal manure in California are unaccounted for, as a result of a combination of non-compliance, non-enforcement, and opaque disclosure laws. But lax regulation of CAFO pollution in the United States is by no means unique to California.
American livestock produce around 941 billion pounds of manure each year and it all has to go somewhere. Much of it is applied to fields as fertilizer, which can allow nitrogen to leach into groundwater and end up in lakes, rivers, streams, and more. Farm pollution can contaminate drinking water, cause harmful algal blooms, harm ecosystems, and can even contain antimicrobial-resistant bacteria that can threaten human lives.
This country has a generally lax attitude towards factory farm regulation and millions of tons of missing manure indicates that it is a big problem.
