Regulate Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)

In many states, legislators with ties to agribusiness have passed laws to favor CAFO development and have dismantled provisions that give communities a voice in CAFO siting or that protect public health. For state policymakers wanting to slow or reverse this trend, perhaps the most important action is to be aware of any new or recent legislation proposing to exempt agriculture from regulation or tax – these are generally bills to promote CAFO development and should be opposed.

Lawmakers can push for stricter environmental protections to regulate air and water pollution from large-scale livestock operations; require setback distances from homes, schools, businesses. and roads; ensure that manure is responsibly managed; and increase public participation in CAFO permitting and siting.

In almost all states, responsibility for enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act has been delegated to the state’s environmental protection agency. The states should be issuing National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for CAFOs over a certain size.^[2] Permits should protect surface and groundwater, include agency monitoring and inspections, have mechanisms for enforcement, and include robust public input. Unfortunately, the CAFO permitting process is often simply pro forma, and state agency budgets are often too low for effective inspection and enforcement. State policymakers can support adequate funding for the agencies that oversee CAFO permitting to cover inspection, compliance, and enforcement, as well as ensuring they have the authority to issue penalties for bad actors and repeat violators. If policymakers think that the enforcement agency is not properly doing its job with regard to CAFOs, they can advance legislation to require the state agency to report on the number of permits, inspections, violations. and enforcement actions that have been taken against CAFOs in the state.

There are also animal welfare concerns with CAFOs. These include use of gestation crates for breeding female pigs that are too small for the pigs to turn around; battery cages for chickens that do not allow the hens to spread their wings; and the practice of docking the tails of dairy cows, which is painful and causes distress, as they are then unable to swat biting flies. There are no animal welfare regulations at the federal level, and because of this, some states have taken action to ban cruel farming practices.

Overall, the landscape of CAFO regulation in the states is bleak, in that community protections from CAFO pollution are inadequate at best. As a result, lawmakers in some states have proposed an outright moratorium on permitting of new and expanding CAFOs altogether.