Michelle Stoll, ECON 4999, Essay 1 Final CAFOs: An Industrial-Sized Pollution Problem Abstract Today most meat Americans consume comes from factory farms known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). CAFOs house thousands to millions of animals in close quarters; this paradigm permits large-scale meat production, but pollutes soil, air, and groundwater. CAFOs do not bear the costs of their pollution: favorable government policies and lax environmental regulation allow them to externalize their costs to society. CAFO pollution represents a market failure as well as an unconscionable threat to human health and the environment. The government must stop subsidizing CAFOs and strictly regulate their pollution. Otherwise, their unabashed environmental harms will continue. The methods of livestock farming in the United States have changed dramatically over the past few decades. Starting with broiler chickens, raising animals for food has left the ambit of small farms for industrial-scale operations.i (Burkholder, 2007). Today the majority of our meat comes from industrial factory farms known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). CAFOs differ from traditional livestock rearing by their size, high-density confined animal population, and reliance upon grain for animal feed.ii (Osterberg, 2004). Compared to traditional farms, the CAFO industry is heavily concentrated: four companies produce 81 percent of our beef, 73 percent of our total sheep, 57 percent of our pigs, and 50 percent of our chickens in CAFOs.iii (Antitrust Enforcement Improvement Act of 2000). Three percent of America’s hog CAFOs produce more than fifty percent of our pork.iv CAFOs house animals from the thousands to the millions in very tight quarters. (Mallon, 2005). v (Stokstad, 2008). Mazes of corrals the size of a city block house tens of thousands of cattle; egg-laying chickens live packed in cages so tightly that they cannot stretch a wing.vi (Windham, 2007; Pollan, 2006). The dense, overcrowded conditions at CAFOs, combined with their frequent geographic co-location, pollute the environment and harm public health. However the impacts of industrial animal production are not borne by CAFOs themselves; they are externalized2 through water pollution, air pollution, increased pathogen resistance, and degraded health and quality of life for those in their vicinity. This paper will discuss the externalities surrounding CAFOs, the policies and regulations that entrench the CAFO paradigm, and the need to change the status quo. Externalities CAFOs exert negative external effects on society and the environment through their pollution. Negative external effects from CAFOs are properly classified as externalities because the private cost to CAFOs for these effects is less than the social cost, and the social cost is at an inefficient level.vii (Morey, 2008). An inefficient level of market allocation allows an actor to benefit at the expense of others, i.e. he enjoys a ‘free ride’ despite making others worse off in the process. (Id.). By shifting the hazards of their production methods onto society and the environment, CAFOs avoid paying for the harm they cause.viii (Gurian-Sherman, 2008). Indeed, CAFOs are getting the proverbial ‘free ride;’ they do not even offer parties that suffer from their pollution a choice to avoid it. Until CAFOs’ private cost of polluting increases to the social cost, this market failure will persist. Accordingly, to the extent that CAFOs reduce their pollution by absorbing its costs, their mistreatment of the commons and public health should diminish. Pollution Outputs High animal density lies at the heart of CAFO pollution. CAFOs generate prodigious amounts of manure. In the United States, the amount of manure CAFOs produce annually exceeds the amount of human waste produced in the same timeframe by three times.ix (Osterberg, 2004). Storage and disposal of such quantities of manure at CAFOs is problematic. Regional environmental health suffers because manure contaminants “readily move offsite in water and air.”x (Id.).3 Manure can be a valuable fertilizer when applied to crops at a concentration soil can absorb, as occurs on small and mid-sized farms.xviiixi But manure becomes a significant source of pollution if it is over-applied to fields, and if its components enter the air and water.xii (Gurian-Sherman, 2008). CAFOs routinely spray manure on nearby fields in amounts far beyond their capacity to absorb it, transforming what is ordinarily a source of fertility into toxic waste.xiii (Windham, 2007). It is impossible to completely dispense CAFO manure onto nearby fields; there is far too much of it. Nor can the manure cannot be economically transported for use at other locations due to its sheer quantity and weight. Instead, CAFOs store manure mixed with urine and water on site in open-air lagoons or underground containers.xiv (Gurian-Sherman, 2008). On-site storage invariably pollutes the environment through leakage, stormwater runoff, volatilization of nitrogen, and catastrophic failure of containment structures.xv (Burkholder, et al., 2007). As a result, populations who live in proximity to CAFOs are exposed to higher levels of water pollution, harmful airborne particulates, and pathogens.xvi (Gurian-Sherman, 2008). The most severe pollution from CAFOs occurs from manure entering surface and ground water. Manure contaminants include nitrogen, phosphorous, pathogens, veterinary pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and hormones.xvii (Burkholder, et al., 2007). Microbes in water from manure contamination have caused serious outbreaks of disease. America’s largest waterborne disease event to date involved runoff from dairy feedlots near Milwaukee, sickening over 400,000 people and killing 54. (Osterberg, 2004). The cost to aquatic ecosystems is also severe: between 1990 and 2000, water pollution from livestock agriculture caused more fish kills than municipal and industrial pollution combined.xix The effect of air emissions from CAFOs on workers and neighboring communities is a growing concern. (Stokstad, 2008). xx (Osterberg, 2004). Workers suffer ill effects from manure gasses, odors,4 dust, bacteria, and endotoxins.xxiiixxviixxviiixxi (Id.). According to the American Lung Association, 58 percent of all swine CAFO workers experience chronic bronchitis, and nearly 70 percent experience some form of respiratory