Animal Confinement Waste

Fun facts from the recent Environmental Impact of Industrial Farm Animal Production (pdf) report issued for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production:

... By any estimate, the total amount of farm animal waste produced annually in the United States is substantial. In its report for the year 2001, the usda estimated the output of manure from farm animals at 920,000 US short tons of dry matter per day (usda ars 2002). This translates to greater than 300 million metric tons of dry mass or more than 660 billion pounds per year. Of this mass, 86% (788,000 tons per day) was projected to stem from animals held in confinement. In contrast, the American Society of Agricultural Engineers provides a higher estimate of 540 million metric tons of dry weight excreta per annum (American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 2005). Lower estimates of 133 million tons of manure per year on a dry weight basis also have been reported recently in the peer-reviewed literature using information contained in usda online databases (Burkholder et al., 2007). Reporting the volume of excreta based on the lifespan of the food animal results again in a different set of data.

Regardless of the exact amount generated, farm animal waste exceeds human sanitary waste production by at least one order of magnitude (Burkholder et al., 2007). Yet in comparison to the lesser amount of human waste, the management and disposal of animal wastes are poorly regulated. This lack of protection may have been without consequence in traditional agriculture, because animal wastes produced by traditional animal husbandry methods in rural locations did not usually present risks to local communities that relied on ecosystem services for attenuating pathogens and absorbing or diluting nutrients. However, similar to large human settlements, improper management of feces from ifap facilities can and does overwhelm natural cleansing processes. ...

It isn't just waste, it's duplicative waste. We manufacture fertilizer (its use has gone up six fold since the 1950s, according to the report) and put it on the fields to grow feed for animals who produce fertilizer that then becomes unmanageable garbage. Oh, but not just a lot of garbage, biohazardous garbage. From elsewhere in the report:

... Monitoring results showed 1.6 x 107 (16,000,000) colony forming units (cfu) /ml of total tetracycline-resistant bacteria and 2.1 x 105 (210,000) cfu /ml of tetracycline-resistant enterococci in swine waste (Haack and Andrews, 2000). Another study determined resistance to at least one antibiotic in 85% of Escherichia coli isolates recovered from a swine lagoon (Parveen et al., 2006). Other researchers detected up to eight known tetracycline resistance genes in total dna extracted from swine lagoon samples (Chee-Sanford et al., 2001). In the same study, a broad range of tetracycline resistance determinants were found in groundwater samples collected downstream of swine lagoons.

... Recent studies have found that the air inside large-scale swine feeding operations and downwind can also be contaminated with high levels of multidrug-resistant bacteria (Gibbs et al., 2004, 2006; Chapin et al., 2005). Airborne bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella spp., fecal coliforms, and total coliforms) collected inside and downwind of two large-scale swine operations were found to be resistant to two or more antibiotics, including ampicillin, penicillin, erythromycin, tylosin, tetracycline, and /or oxytetracycline (Gibbs et al., 2004). Airborne bacteria collected upwind of the swine operations were significantly more susceptible to all of the antibiotics evaluated, suggesting that releases from the swine facilities were the likely sources of airborne multidrug-resistant bacteria recovered downwind (Gibbs et al., 2004). One study involved the collection of air samples via liquid impingers in a swine cafo and analysis for viable isolates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (Chapin et al., 2005). Enterococci, staphylococci, and streptococci were analyzed for resistance to erythromycin, clindamycin, virginiamycin, tetracycline, and vancomycin. None of the isolates were resistant to vancomycin, which has never been approved for use in livestock in the United States. In contrast, 98% of these Gram-positive bacterial isolates were resistant to two or more, and 29% were resistant to all of the other four antibiotics that are commonly used as growth promoters in swine (Chapin et al., 2005).

The high prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in swine facility air is relevant to swine growers and workers, as well as to other individuals who live or work close to these facilities. In addition, airborne antibiotic-resistant bacteria found within and around large-scale swine feeding operations could contribute to environmental reservoirs of antibiotic-resistance genes, participating in the genetic exchange of these genes among bacterial populations in animals, humans, and the environment. ...

Oh yeah, and they feed arsenic to chickens. The breakdown compounds of the arsenic products they give them are carcinogenic to humans. And the excess nitrogen contamination of groundwater from the fertilizer and the waste, the excess nutrients that industrial agroecosystems can't capture and use, also makes people sick and kills fish. And ... oh, whatever. It's all just a damn, dirty shame.

This is a sick way to do agriculture. There's no way it's sustainable.