How the Sickness Spreads

The waste from factory farms pollutes the air we breathe and the water we drink. The amount of excrement produced by animals who are used for food is 130 times the amount produced by the entire U.S. population.⁷ This means that the nation’s factory farms generate roughly 89,000 pounds of waste per second—all without the benefit of waste treatment systems.⁸ This is especially alarming because the excrement on these farms contains highly concentrated chemical and bacterial toxins. In fact, a contamination study conducted by Minnesota agricultural extension engineer John Chastain reports, “The data indicates that the pollution strength of raw manure is 160 times greater than raw municipal sewage.”⁹ Manure from factory farms is usually dumped into sprawling brown lagoons to rot or is sprayed over fields. The use of these disposal methods allows harmful chemicals and bacteria from the sewage to poison our air and water every day. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “[C]hemical and infectious compounds from swine and poultry waste are able to migrate into soil and water.”¹⁰ This untreated waste sickens the people who work on or live near factory farms.

Dirty Air

Greenhouse gases and bacteria from animal excrement enter the air and are distributed over a very wide area by the wind. Thus, the harmful effects of these toxins aren’t limited to the areas closest to the farms. As if that weren’t bad enough, the animal flesh and dairy industries often knowingly add to the air-quality crisis. When the cesspools that hold tons of animal urine and feces are full, factory farms frequently violate pollution limits by spraying liquid manure into the air, creating mists that are spread by the wind.¹¹ People for miles around are forced to inhale the toxins and pathogens from the sprayed manure and, as a result, can suffer health problems ranging from asthma and brain damage to birth defects and premature death.^12,13

Dirty Water

Dangerous air is not the only peril facing rural residents—they often find that their waterways have also been poisoned by factory farms. “The water in those areas is not in good shape, and the primary cause of the [pollution] is not septic tanks, treatment plants, or fertilizer—it’s manure, mainly from large farms,” said Robert Miltner, an aquatic biologist for the Environmental Protection Agency in Ohio. The pollution in Ohio was so bad that Miltner’s team could not “find a single small-mouth bass in the Wabash River.”¹⁴ People who use these polluted waterways are exposed to the same toxins that kill massive numbers of fish each year.

A recent study found that a major river in Colorado has high levels of three antibiotics that are used exclusively in farmed animals.¹⁵ Furthermore, outbreaks of E. coli closed half of Iowa’s beaches during the summer of 2001, and the water in Des Moines’ Raccoon River has nitrate levels that are almost double the limit allowed for drinking water. Large farms are implicated in both of these problems.¹⁶ In 2000, an E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ontario, left seven people dead—experts cite cow manure that seeped into the town’s water supply as a likely cause of the tragedy.¹⁷

Finally, scientists believe that 3.2 billion pounds of raw sewage from chicken farms on the Delmarva peninsula caused an outbreak of pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay in 1997. The contamination killed 30,000 fish and caused memory loss, skin lesions, and respiratory problems in people who were exposed to the water.¹⁸ Sadly, water contamination is all too common near factory farms. People who live in these areas face the constant threat that run-off from the farms will bring serious illness and even death to their communities.

Read more about how factory farms affect human health.