Factory FarmsAre they the best way to feed the nation?

Most U.S. meat, poultry, eggs and milk come

from so-called factory farms or CAFOs (con-

centrated animal feeding operations), where

thousands of animals are confined indoors.

While they efficiently produce abundant supplies of affordable food,

CAFOs also raise questions about animal welfare, public health and

environmental degradation. Large livestock farms create huge quan-

tities of animal waste, which produce noxious air emissions and

contaminate water supplies when storage facilities leak or over-

flow. Overuse of antibiotics to keep animals healthy in crowded

conditions helps generate drug-resistant bacteria and spread infec-

tions in humans. And many critics argue that long-term confine-

ment in small enclosures or cages harms farm animals. Organic

and free-range meat and eggs are increasingly popular, but they

are more expensive than conventional meat and dairy products,

and some organic suppliers are adopting industrial-style methods

to keep up with demand.

I

N

S

I

D

E

THE ISSUES..........................27

BACKGROUND ....................34

CHRONOLOGY ....................35

CURRENT SITUATION ............39

AT ISSUE ............................41

OUTLOOK ..........................43

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................46

THE NEXT STEP ..................47

THISREPORT

Hogs on U.S. factory farms are typically confinedindoors in narrow crates from birth until

they go to the slaughterhouse.

CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

www.cqresearcher.com

CQ Researcher • Jan. 12, 2007 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 17, Number 2 • Pages 25-48

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

26 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

27 • Do factory farms threatenpublic health?• Should pollution fromfactory farms be regulatedmore tightly?• Can environmentallyfriendly farming competewith factory farming?

BACKGROUND

34 Free RangeCattle and sheep grazed andpigs rooted on village com-mons well into the 1800s.

36 Federal RulesCongress passed the firstMeat Inspection Act in 1890.

37 New TechnologyBy 1945, only 16 percentof the U.S. workforce re-mained on farms.

38 New Food FearsMad cow disease outbreaksrevealed questionable feed-ing practices.

CURRENT SITUATION

39 Farm BillMany livestock issues areon the agenda as Congressprepares to reauthorizefarm programs.

39 Labels, MonopoliesOrganic advicates wantmandatory country-of-originlabeling (COOL) for organicfood.

42 Outside the BeltwayNine states have barred orrestricted corporate farming.

OUTLOOK

43 CAFOs Under PressureFactory farms are under stressfrom regulators, alternativesuppliers and home builders.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

28 Rise in Milk ProductionReflects TrendFactory farms produce morewith less.

29 How Much Manure DoAnimals Produce?A 1,400-pound dairy cowproduces 22 tons annually.

35 ChronologyKey events since 1862.

36 Ethicist Sees Possible Endto Factory FarmingPeter Singer cites change inpublic attitudes about animals.

38 What Is a CAFO?Size determines a factoryfarm’s classification.

40 Vermont Dairy Farm Harnesses Cow PowerBlue Spruce Farm generateselectricity from waste.

41 At IssueShould manure be regulatedunder the Superfund law?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

45 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

46 BibliographySelected sources used.

47 The Next StepAdditional articles.

47 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

FACTORY FARMS

Cover: Humane Society of the United States

MANAGING EDITOR: Thomas J. Colin

ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR: Kathy Koch

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Kenneth Jost

STAFF WRITERS: Marcia Clemmitt, Peter Katel

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Rachel S. Cox,Sarah Glazer, Alan Greenblatt,

Barbara Mantel, Patrick Marshall,Tom Price, Jennifer Weeks

DESIGN/PRODUCTION EDITOR: Olu B. Davis

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Melissa J. Hipolit

A Division ofCongressional Quarterly Inc.

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER:John A. Jenkins

DIRECTOR, LIBRARY PUBLISHING: Kathryn C. Suárez

DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL OPERATIONS:Ann Davies

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC.

CHAIRMAN: Paul C. Tash

VICE CHAIRMAN: Andrew P. Corty

PRESIDENT/EDITOR IN CHIEF: Robert W. Merry

Copyright © 2007 CQ Press, a division of Congres-

sional Quarterly Inc. (CQ). CQ reserves all copyright

and other rights herein, unless previously specified

in writing. No part of this publication may be re-

produced electronically or otherwise, without prior

written permission. Unauthorized reproduction or

transmission of CQ copyrighted material is a violation

of federal law carrying civil fines of up to $100,000.

CQ Researcher (ISSN 1056-2036) is printed on acid-

free paper. Published weekly, except March 23, July

6, July 13, Aug. 3, Aug. 10, Nov. 23, Dec. 21 and

Dec. 28, by CQ Press, a division of Congressional

Quarterly Inc. Annual full-service subscriptions for

institutions start at $667. For pricing, call 1-800-834-

9020, ext. 1906. To purchase a CQ Researcher re-

port in print or electronic format (PDF), visit

www.cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737. Single reports

start at $15. Bulk purchase discounts and electronic-

rights licensing are also available. Periodicals post-

age paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing

offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CQ

Researcher, 1255 22nd St., N.W., Suite 400, Washing-

ton, DC 20037.

Jan. 12, 2007Volume 17, Number 2

CQResearcher

Jan. 12, 2007 27Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Factory Farms

THE ISSUESI nside a gestation barn

on Rick Rehmeier’s hogfarm in Augusta, Mo., the

air is dusty, warm and thick.More than 400 sows arepenned in individual metalcrates, each with a watertrough and feed dispenser.The big animals can liedown but cannot turn around.Their excrement falls throughfloor slats into a pit, fromwhich it is periodicallyflushed outside into a so-called lagoon. Acrid whiffsof ammonia waft up fromthe decomposing manure.

Two employees movedown the rows, artificiallyinseminating sows withsemen collected from thefarm’s four stud boars. Eachsow will remain in its cratethroughout its four-monthpregnancy, and then givebirth in a farrowing cratewith an adjoining compart-ment for the piglets.

“In a loose pen, the sow will digout a bed for herself, and if the pigletsgo into it, she can roll over and crushthem,” explains Rehmeier.

When the piglets are weaned at three-to-four weeks of age, the sows will re-sume the breeding cycle, going outdoorsonly when being moved between barnsor shipped off to slaughter.

Such procedures are standard prac-tice on today’s industrialized hog farms.“Confinement is good for hogs,” saysJoy Philippi, president of the Nation-al Pork Producers Council, who runsa nursery with 2,000 pigs in Bruning,Neb. “The barns are climate-controlledand well-ventilated, so livestock areprotected from the weather. We candeliver feed and water to them 24hours a day.”

Farms that raise hundreds orthousands of animals in such closeconfinement are widely known asfactory farms, or concentrated ani-mal feeding operations (CAFOs).Large CAFOs are controlled underfederal and state water pollution reg-ulations because they produce mas-sive quantities of animal waste thatcan pose environmental and healthhazards if mishandled.

Whatever one calls them, factoryfarms represent the latest transfor-mation of U.S. agriculture. BeforeWorld War II, crops and livestockcame primarily from small family-owned farms that raised multiple prod-ucts. Today most come from fewer,larger farms that specialize in a singlecommodity. 1

“We used to have about 50hog farms in St. Charles Coun-ty,” says Rehmeier, whose fam-ily has raised hogs in Missourifor five generations. “Nowthere are five.” His 12-personoperation runs four sites withabout 10,000 hogs.

Such concentration has beenincreasing in the poultry andlivestock industries for decades.From 1982 through 1997, thenumber of farms with con-fined animals declined by 50percent, but the number ofmedium-size CAFOs increasedby 50 percent, and large farmsmore than doubled. 2

Large CAFOs — those withmore than 1,000 “animalunits” (1,000 beef cattle, 700mature dairy cattle, or 2,500hogs larger than 55 pounds)— represent only 10 percentof all factory farms but con-trol half or more of the totalanimal inventory in some sec-tors. Concentration is espe-cially high in the hog andpoultry industries. (See graph,p. 32.)

Although factory farms can producelarge quantities of food cheaply, ani-mal-welfare advocates call them inhu-mane, and environmentalists and localresidents say they generate pollutionand noxious odors and byproducts.Runoff can pollute streams and ground-water with antibiotics, insecticides andpathogens and emit poisonous gasesthat are hazardous or create offensiveodors. Some health experts argue thatbecause CAFO wastes threaten nearbycommunities, neighbors should havemore say in granting permits for CAFOs.

Groups such as the Sierra Club, theAmerican Public Health Association andthe Iowa Farmers Union — and evensome counties and states — havesought or imposed moratoriums or out-right bans on new CAFO construction

BY JENNIFER WEEKS

Get

ty I

mag

es/D

anie

l Pep

per

About 21,000 chickens are raised in this 500-foot-longPerdue Farms barn in Kentucky. Factory farms produce

massive quantities of animal waste that can poseenvironmental hazards. Animal-rights activists sayfactory farms are inhumane, but growers say they

provide climate-controlled, well-ventilated living conditions for the animals.

28 CQ Researcher

or tightened permitting requirementsfor new farms.

Scientific and technical advances havemade livestock farming much moreproductive in recent decades. Between1950 and 2000 dairy cows’ average an-nual milk yield more than tripled,thanks to milking machines, refrigerat-ed bulk trucks, nutrition research andnew breeding techniques. 3 Confininganimals lets farmers feed them indoors,saving labor and allowing farmers tomilk cows more often.

Animal production has also under-gone dramatic structural change as “ver-tical integration” has concentrated vir-tually every step of the process — frombreeding to slaughter and processing— in the hands of individual, big cor-porations. In the pork and poultry in-dustries — where vertical integration ismost pronounced — many farmersraise animals for major “integrators” likePerdue Farms or Tyson Foods, that pro-vide growers with everything from an-imals and feed to medications and de-tailed handling directions. The growersreceive a fee for each animal raised tomarket age. The arrangement allows

farmers to avoid large capital invest-ments for animals and feed and givesthem guaranteed markets.

But there are drawbacks. “Farmerswho produce on contract bear signif-icant risk and don’t get well com-pensated for it,” says Chuck Hasse-brook, executive director of the Centerfor Rural Affairs, in Lyons, Neb. “Undercontract, if you invest a million dol-lars in buildings and then the com-pany decides to locate somewhereelse or doesn’t want to work with you,you’re left holding the bag.”

Contract production also allows largecorporations to avoid environmental li-ability, says Ed Hopkins, director of en-vironmental-quality programs at theSierra Club. “They prescribe in detailthe conditions under which animals areto be raised and leave contract opera-tors to deal with the waste,” he says.

Food companies argue, however,that they provide consistent, afford-able products to Americans, who eatmore meat than any other nation: 218pounds per capita in 2004, up from190 pounds in 1980. Inflation-adjust-ed retail prices have held steady over

the past 25 years at roughly $1 to$1.50 per pound for poultry and $2.50per pound for pork. Beef prices havestayed below $4.50 per pound. 4

Americans’ high meat consumptionworries nutrition experts. The AmericanHeart Association recommends eatingno more than six ounces a day of leanmeat, poultry and seafood to reduce therisk of heart disease and stroke. 5 Andmany environmentalists argue that meat-based diets — especially of grain-fedanimals — consume more resourcesthan vegetarian diets. 6

Grain is resource-intensive, requir-ing large quantities of water and fos-sil fuel (a key ingredient of syntheticfertilizer) to grow corn feed for live-stock, noted writer and activist FrancesMoore Lappe. As early as 1972, shedubbed grain-fed beef “a protein fac-tory in reverse” in her bestseller Dietfor a Small Planet.

“The consequences of a grain-fedmeat diet may be as severe as thoseof a nation of Cadillac drivers,” shewarned. 7 A recent study indicates shewas right. University of Chicago geo-physical science professors Gideon Esheland Pamela Martin found that the typ-ical meat-heavy American diet gener-ates as many greenhouse-gas emissions— compared to a vegetarian diet —as driving a sport-utility vehicle vs. afuel-efficient sedan. 8 When all of itsimpacts are added together, from clear-ing land to growing feed with fertiliz-er and managing manure, the globallivestock industry generates more green-house gases than the transportationsector of the economy. 9

Meanwhile, meat consumption istrending upward around the world, es-pecially in developing countries likeChina. “Everyone likes meat. It’s thefirst dietary item that people choosewhen they start to make some money,”says Marion Nestle, a professor of nu-trition at New York University and au-thor of several books about nutritionand food policy. “We are omnivores,and meat has status.” To accommodate

FACTORY FARMS

Rise in Milk Production Reflects Trend

The number of dairy cows fell by more than half from 1950 to 2000, but overall U.S. milk production still rose because production per cow increased more than threefold. The increase was largely due to the trend toward factory farming. Before World War II, crops and livestock came primarily from small family-owned farms; today most output comes from fewer, larger farms that specialize in a single commodity, rather than multiple products.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, February 2001

Total U.S. production(in million pounds)

Milk production per cow(in pounds)

No. of cows(in millions)

0

5

10

15

20

25

200019500

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

200019500

50

100

150

200

20001950

21.9

9.25,314

18,204

116.6

167.6

Jan. 12, 2007 29Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

the rising demand, other countries areadopting the CAFO model.

Critics have long argued that manyconfined animal agriculture methods areinhumane. For example, poultry farmstrim the ends off of chickens’ beaks tokeep them from pecking each other intight quarters. To guarantee that vealcalves will have pale, tender meat,farmers raise them on liquid diets intiny stalls where they cannot exerciseand develop muscle tissue. 10

Many farmers argue that animals haveeasier lives indoors, where they are notexposed to blistering summers and freez-ing winters, and that CAFO practicesare essential for raising animals in closequarters. For example, Rehmeier notesthat his sows’ ears and tails are scar-free because they live in separate crates.“They’re very aggressive creatures, andif another sow gets in their way whenthey’re eating, they’ll fight,” he says.

Many consumers support humanetreatment of animals when they learnhow their meat, poultry and dairy prod-ucts are raised. In 2002 Florida votersbanned gestation crates for pigs, andin 2006 Arizona voters outlawed cratesfor breeding pigs and veal calves.Growing demand for grass-fed andhumanely raised meat also indicate ris-ing interest in farm-animal welfare.

As Americans ponder the ethicsand environmental implications of fac-tory farming, here are some issuesbeing debated:

Do factory farms threaten publichealth?

The U.S. food supply is safer andAmericans are better nourished todaythan a century ago, thanks largely to sci-entific and technical innovations such aspasteurized milk, enriched breads andcereals and advances in veterinary med-icine. Deaths from food-related illnessessuch as diarrhea, typhoid fever and dysen-tery have fallen dramatically since theearly 1900s, and nutritional deficiencieslike scurvy, rickets and pellagra havebeen brought under control. 11

But some innovations have causednew problems, including the spreadof antibiotic-resistant infectious agentsand the proliferation of hormones inmeat. 12 In addition, residents livingnear massive livestock operations saythey suffer from a variety of air- andwater-borne illnesses resulting fromCAFO-related pollution.

Many large farm operators routine-ly use antibiotics not just to treat sickanimals but also to promote growth.The Food and Drug Administration(FDA) has approved 18 antimicrobialdrugs for growth promotion in foodanimals. Half of these, including peni-cillin and erythromycin, are chemical-ly similar or identical to drugs usedby humans.

Swine, poultry and beef cattle pro-ducers use from 16 million to 27 mil-

lion pounds of non-therapeutic antibi-otics on animals every year. 13 “It’s abusiness decision,” says George Saper-stein, a professor of veterinary medi-cine at Tufts University. “The more ef-ficiently your animals grow and puton muscle, the more profitable yourbusiness is.”

Big livestock operations also giveanimals antibiotics as a preventative,because by raising only a few select-ed breeds their animals have less nat-ural genetic protection against disease,and sickness spreads easily in closequarters. Stress from overcrowding alsolowers animals’ resistance.

To prevent excessive antibiotics fromentering the food chain, animals treat-ed with antibiotics must be held fora withdrawal period before beingslaughtered so the drugs can clear

How Much Manure Do Animals Produce?

A 1,400-pound dairy cow produces about 22 tons of manure annu-ally, while a 375-pound sow and its litter produce about four tons.

Sources: Midwest Plan Service; University of Wisconsin-Extension

Approximate Annual Manure Production

Animal Type/Size Manure Production

Animal Size Manure Manure(Type) (lbs.) (lbs./day) (tons/year)

Cattle

Dairy cattle 500 43 7.81,400 120 21.9

Beef cattle 750 45 8.21,250 75 13.7

Swine

Finishing pig 150 8.8 1.8200 13.1 2.4

Sow and litter 375 22.5 4.1

Poultry

Layers 4 0.21 0.038Broilers 2 0.14 0.026

30 CQ Researcher

from their systems. But some developantibiotic-resistant bacterial strains thatcan pass to humans through either thefood supply, use of their manure asfertilizer or direct contact between an-imals and farmworkers.

Resistant organisms cause serious in-fections in humans, as Missouri pigfarmer Russ Kremer learned when hewas gored by one of his animals andhis leg swelled to twice its normal size.Doctors discovered the infection wascaused by antibiotic-resistant mutatedstaphylococcal bacteria. The most pow-erful antibiotic available finally knockedout the infection. 14

Kremer learned that the animal thatgored him had been given daily dosesof penicillin by its previous owner inorder to control a staph problem. Kre-mer stopped using antibiotics or growthhormones in his pigs and says his newmethods not only are safer for hu-mans but also save him $12,000 a yearon drug and vet bills. 15

The World Health Organization rec-ommended in 1994 that antibiotics usedin human medicine not be used topromote livestock growth. 16 In 1998the European Union (EU) banned suchantibiotics to promote animal growth,and in 2006 it barred any antibioticsfor growth promotion. Levels of drug-resistant bacteria in Europe fell fol-lowing the restrictions. 17

“If we’re going to preserve antibi-otics’ effectiveness, we should all stopusing them so much,” says David L.Smith, an epidemiologist and infec-tious-disease ecologist at the NationalInstitutes of Health (NIH). “There arealternatives to antibiotics in agricul-ture, just as there are in human med-icine. But drug companies benefitfrom selling agricultural antibiotics,and they issue scathing responses whenanyone calls for withdrawing them.”

U.S. regulators are beginning to re-strict non-therapeutic use of antibioticsin animals. In 2005 the FDA bannedBaytril in poultry because it maypromote drug-resistant Campylobacter

bacteria. Campylobacter afflicts some2 million Americans with diarrhea, feverand cramps and kills 50 every year.

Some large food purchasers haveheeded the warnings. Since Decem-ber 2005, McDonald’s has requiredthat suppliers not use antibiotics thatare important in human medicine forgrowth promotion. Over the pastdecade poultry producers represent-ing nearly 40 percent of the U.S. broil-er-chicken industry — Tyson Foods,Gold Kist, Perdue Farms and FosterFarms — have almost stopped usingantibiotics for growth promotion. 18

Treating dairy cows with the con-troversial recombinant bovine growthhormone (rBGH, also known asbovine somatotropin or rbST) to boostmilk production has also raisedhealth concerns. Using growth hor-mone increases production by 10 to15 percent, and Monsanto, whichmakes rbST, claims that it helps theenvironment by allowing farmers toproduce more milk with fewer cows,using less water and land and pro-ducing less manure. Farmers also useother hormones to promote muscledevelopment in beef cattle.

The FDA says hormone residues inmeat and milk are too minute to causeany health risks to humans and thatany traces remaining in meat are farsmaller than the levels humans producethemselves. But critics point out that noone has conducted large-scale healthstudies on whether hormones used inlivestock contribute to early onset ofpuberty in children and that rBGH hasnot been in use long enough to mea-sure suspected links between hormone-treated milk and breast cancer. 19

“It would be nice to know more,but if the government doesn’t fundthis research, it won’t be done,” saysnutrition expert Nestle.

The EU banned imports of meattreated with growth hormones in 1989and forbids treating dairy cows withit, arguing that the hormones threat-en public health, animal welfare and

beef quality. The United States arguesthat there is no scientific evidence thathormones in meat are a health threatand calls the EU ban an unfair traderestriction. The United Kingdom’s min-ister of agriculture has also supportedending the ban, and in 1999 the WorldTrade Organization ruled that the U.S.was entitled to impose trade penaltieson EU imports because the ban washurting U.S. beef exporters. The Unit-ed States and the EU are still arguingover what scientific evidence justifiesbanning growth hormones in beef. 20

U.S. cattlemen say science supportsgiving cattle hormones. “For about 50years, growth hormones have helpedus to safely meet growing demand forlean beef without impacts on humanhealth,” says Michele Rossman, direc-tor of safety research for the Nation-al Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA).“Our data show that this practice issafe and effective.”

Beef cattle are also a source of E. coli0157:H7, a rare but deadly strain ofharmless bacteria found in all humanand animal intestines. E. coli 0157:H7sickens about 73,000 Americans eachyear with stomach cramps and bloodydiarrhea, and in September 2006 itkilled three people and sickened 200others in 26 states — an outbreakeventually traced to tainted spinachfrom California’s Salinas Valley. Cattlemanure in fields adjoining the sus-pected spinach beds tested positive forthe bacteria. 21

The beef industry says it has workedto reduce the incidence of E. coli0157:H7 at farms, feedlots and pack-ing plants. “We have multiple inter-ventions in place, including carcasswashes and steam pasteurization,” saysRossman.

According to the Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention (CDC), estimatedannual E. coli 0157 infections in a 10-state sample decreased by about 29 per-cent from the 1996-1998 level through2005, possibly due to better monitor-ing of ground beef. 22

FACTORY FARMS

Jan. 12, 2007 31Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Nevertheless, some consumershave begun buying beef from cattleraised exclusively on grass, which areless likely than factory-produced ani-mals to contain E. coli 0157:H7. 23

People who live near large livestockfarms complain about many health is-sues, including headaches, runny noses,sore throats, diarrhea, burning eyes,coughing, bronchitis and shortness ofbreath. “Air polluted with ammonia, hy-drogen sulfide and dust from CAFOsis harming the healthof both workers andres idents l iv ingdownwind fromthese operations,”Robert Lawrence, as-sociate dean of JohnHopkins University’sSchool of PublicHealth, told theHouse Energy andCommerce Commit-tee in 2005. 24 Onerecent study foundelevated concentra-tions of antibiotic-re-sistant bacteria 150meters downwind ofa hog CAFO thathad stopped usingantibiotics four weeksearlier. 25

CAFO animal wastes also contami-nate water with bacteria and nitrates,which can cause “blue-baby” syndrome(a disorder in infants that prevents redblood cells from carrying enoughoxygen). 26 In May 2000, an estimated2,321 people became ill and seven diedfrom E. coli O157:H7 and Campylobacterinfections in Walkerton, Ontario, afterthey drank well water that had beencontaminated by livestock waste. 27

Agriculture groups contend thatmanure is not hazardous if it isproperly managed, and that they areworking with regulators to addresshealth and environmental issues.Farmers say that their operations arehighly regulated, and standards are

ratcheting upward. “Farm waste ismore strictly controlled than humanwaste,” says Cecelia Conway, whosefamily owns two large dairy farmsin Michigan and helps European dairyfarmers relocate to the Midwest. “Ourfarms are designed very differentlytoday than they were in 1997 —we’re implementing treatmentponds and multiple storage lagoonsso that we can manage nutrientsmore efficiently.”

Should pollution from factoryfarms be regulated more tightly?

A single dairy cow produces morethan 20 tons of manure annually, anda hog can produce more than two tons.According to the Sierra Club, livestockoperations generate 500 million tons ofanimal waste a year. 28

Farmers wash manure out of barnsand store it in tanks or “lagoons” untilit can be applied to nearby farms asfertilizer. The stored, liquefied manurecan leak or be washed away by bigstorms, contaminating nearby waterswith bacteria, hormones, nutrients, an-tibiotics and toxic chemicals.

Excess nutrients from manure spillscan cause large algae blooms in rivers

and lakes that deplete oxygen in thewater and kill fish. In 2005, a manurelagoon in Lowville, N.Y., spilled sev-eral million gallons into the Black River,killing some 250,000 fish. 29 Accord-ing to the Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA), hog, chicken and cat-tle waste has polluted 35,000 miles ofrivers in 22 states and contaminatedgroundwater in 17 states. 30

Nutrient pollution also occurs whenfarmers apply manure to land faster

than plants can take upits nitrogen and phos-phorus. In a North Car-olina study, the amountof nitrates in groundwa-ter beneath fields sprayedwith liquid manure wasfive times the humanhealth standard. Onesurvey found 10 percentof the wells near facto-ry farms had unsafe lev-els of nitrates. 31

The Clean Water Actrequires large concentrat-ed feeding operations toobtain permits before dis-charging pollution intobodies of water. Typically,discharges are allowedonly during unusuallyheavy and long-lasting

storms. Farms that discharge pollutantswithout permits or that violate their per-mits are subject to civil and criminalpenalties of up to $50,000 a day. In2003 the EPA directed all factory-farmoperations to apply for discharge per-mits unless they could show that theyhad no potential to discharge pollutants.The agency also required permittedfacilities to develop plans for handlingmanure and wastewater.

Environmental organizations calledthe new rules too lenient; farmers saidthey were too strict. In 2005 the Sec-ond U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struckdown several provisions and sent oth-ers back to the EPA for clarification.Specifically, the court held that the

Liquefied manure flushed from the main hog barn at a farm inFillmore, Ind., is stored in a large “lagoon” until it can be sprayed on

fields as fertilizer. Pollution occurs when lagoons leak into streams or groundwater, or farmers apply manure to land faster than

plants can take up its nitrogen and phosphorus, leaving excess that washes out of soils.

AP P

hoto

/Mic

hae

l C

onro

y

32 CQ Researcher

EPA could regulate only actual dis-charges, not potential discharges, sothe factory farms did not have to au-tomatically apply for permits. 32

In 2006 the EPA issued a new draftrule requiring CAFOs to apply for per-mits only if they plan to discharge pol-lutants, a rule environmentalists at-tacked as weak. The Sierra Club, NaturalResources Defense Council and theWaterkeeper Alliance — an environ-mental group dedicated to protectingrivers, lakes and bays — argued thatit “would allow CAFO operators to de-cide whether their situation posesenough of a risk of getting caught hav-ing a discharge to warrant the invest-ment of time and resources in ob-taining a permit.” 33

“EPA could have been more ag-gressive in writing the rule,” says theSierra Club’s Hopkins. “I don’t thinkthey really want to regulate CAFOsthat badly.”

But the EPA says its requirementsare clear. The proposed rule “outlines

several illustrative situations underwhich operators would have to applyfor permits,” says Allison Wiedemann,branch chief for rural issues in EPA’swastewater management office. Andwhile it leaves the determination upto the operator, she explains, “that’sthe way the entire program works forother industries.”

At big livestock operations, air pol-lution from decomposing manure, dustand gases produced by the animals cancontain up to 160 separate chemicalsubstances. 34 A recent study found un-safe airborne levels of hydrogen sul-fide five miles from a manure lagoon,and hydrogen sulfide levels from aMinnesota CAFO lagoon exceeded safelevels for human health 271 times intwo years. 35

Air emissions from factory farmscan have a worldwide impact. A 2003National Research Council study foundthat large-scale animal feeding opera-tions produce nitrous oxide andmethane — powerful “greenhouse

gases” that cause global warming. Othergases, like ammonia and hydrogensulfide, are primarily local hazards, thereport said. 36

But people who live near CAFOscomplain that hog farm odors deprivethem of the use of their own backyards. “They’re stealing our fresh airfrom us,” said Michigan farmer JohnZachel, who lives across the road froma hog farm. 37

The National Research Council con-cluded, however, that available emis-sion factors, rates and concentrationsare so uncertain that they “provide apoor basis for regulating or managingair emissions” from the big factoryfarms. The odors could be caused bya mix of hundreds of compounds, thereport said. 38

In response, the EPA offered factoryfarmers the option of installing up-to-date air-pollution control equipment andallowing the agency to monitor emis-sions. If the agency finds that factoryfarms are violating air-emission limits, itwill then publish methods for estimat-ing emissions. In exchange, the agencypledged not to sue the farms for pastviolations of the Clean Air Act or toxicand hazardous-waste laws.

Environmentalists complain this ap-proach was too deferential to the in-dustry. “EPA has authority under theClean Air Act to require farms to pro-duce this data. We don’t think it need-ed to give amnesty to these facilities,”says Hopkins. “And they’re not goingto monitor many sites, so we’re con-cerned that the information won’t bescientifically valid, and it will just bea long delaying game.”

But Jon Scholl, counselor to theEPA administrator, calls the plan an“innovative approach” that “will resultin more compliance than a tradition-al approach of addressing violationscase by case.”

Some regulators have tried to con-trol CAFO pollution by suing farmsfor water discharges under the so-calledSuperfund law, which makes polluters

FACTORY FARMS

Hog Farms Getting Bigger

The number of hog farms with 2,000 head or more accounted for nearly 75 percent of total U.S. hog and pig inventory in 2001 — twice the number in 1994. During the same period, the number of hog farms fell by more than 50 percent, from more than 200,000 farms to just over 80,000. The hog inventory, however, remained relatively stable, averaging about 60 million head.

Note: Operations with 5,000+ head were not reported before 1996.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Farms and Land in Farms”

Operations with 2,000+ head

Operations with 5,000+ head

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80%

20012000199919981997199619951994

Jan. 12, 2007 33Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

liable for the cost of cleaning up theirhazardous wastes. * Tulsa, Okla., set-tled a case against Tyson Foods forpollution from large chicken farms in2003, and Waco, Texas, settled a sim-ilar suit with 14 dairy operations in2004. Oklahoma is suing large poul-try producers in both Oklahoma andneighboring Arkansas for allegedly con-taminating Oklahoma rivers and lakes.

Industry groups say manure shouldnot be regulated by the Superfund law.“Manure issues are covered under theClean Water Act and the Clean Air Act,”says Tamara Thies, director of envi-ronmental issues for the National Cat-tlemen’s Beef Association. The groupis seeking legislation to exempt ani-mal-feeding operations from both theSuperfund law and another law thatrequires companies to immediately re-port hazardous-waste releases. (See “AtIssue,” p. 41.)

Environmentalists counter that it’slegitimate to hold agricultural pollutersliable for damages and that talk ofturning farms into Superfund sites isa scare tactic. “Not a single farm hasbeen put on the Superfund list be-cause of manure,” says the Sierra Club’sHopkins. “We’re talking about cost re-covery for cleaning up contaminatedwater supplies.”

Can environmentally friendlyfarming methods compete withfactory farming?

Debates about food safety, chemicaladditives, animal welfare and farm pol-lution are driving many Americans tolook for healthier, more natural eatingoptions, such as organic foods. SinceCongress required national standards in1990 for labeling products as organic,the market for food produced withoutsynthetic pesticides or chemical additiveshas been one of the fastest-growingsectors in American agriculture.

U.S. organic food sales totaled $12billion in 2004 — about 2.5 percentof retail grocery sales — and are ris-ing by 14 percent annually. 39 Morethan half of organic sales are for dairy,egg, meat and poultry products, pre-sumably representing consumer con-cern about conventional methods ofproducing animal products. 40 The num-ber of animals raised on organic poul-try and livestock farms increased fromabout 73,000 in 1992 to nearly 9 mil-lion in 2003. 41

But because organic farming is morelabor-intensive and yields are gener-ally lower, organic food usually costsabout 25 percent more than conven-tional products. Organic milk costseven more — about $3.60 per halfgallon, roughly double the price ofconventional milk.

Converting to organic productionrequires a costly, multi-year certifica-tion process. But more and more farm-ers are switching to organic produc-tion because they can get higher pricesfor their commodities. Conventionalfarmers’ profits are low due to manyfactors, including overproduction, glob-al competition and rising energy andfertilizer costs.

“Farmers are getting astoundinglyhigher prices for organics,” says RonnieCummins, executive director of the Min-nesota-based Organic Consumers Asso-ciation. “Why wouldn’t they switch?”

Booming sales are also drawingbig chains into organics. Since 2000,more organic foods have been soldat conventional grocery stores thanat so-called natural-food stores. Nowmega-retailers like Target and Costcoare entering the market, and in 2006Wal-Mart — which began selling or-ganic milk and produce in 2001 —announced that it would double thenumber of organic products in its4,000 stores.

The trend sounds good for U.S. or-ganic farmers: Big, new buyers woulddramatically increase demand for or-ganic products. But organic farmers

fear the new buyers will use their cloutto push suppliers to adopt large-scaleproduction methods to drive downcosts. Industrialization of the U.S. or-ganic-food market could trigger a weak-ening of organic-production standardsand hasten the globalization of the or-ganic market, they argue. Indeed, Wal-Mart vowed to offer organic foods atno more than 10 percent above con-ventional food prices.

“Because of its scale and efficiencyand notorious ruthlessness, Wal-Martwill force down the price of organics,”wrote Michael Pollan, author of TheOmnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural Histo-ry of Four Meals. While that’s good newsfor consumers and the world’s envi-ronment, he added, unless consumersare vigilant, “the drive to make the priceof organic goods competitive with thatof conventional foods will hollow outthe word and kill the organic goose,just when her golden eggs are luringso many big players into the water.” 42

Already some farmers have set up“organic CAFOs” — farms with thou-sands of dairy cows being housed inindoor feedlots and fed organic grain.Two companies, Horizon and Aurora,supply organic milk from several suchfarms in Texas, Colorado, Idaho andMaryland to Wal-Mart, Costco, Safe-way and other chains. The CornucopiaInstitute, a Wisconsin-based watchdogorganization, has filed complaints withthe U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) charging Aurora and Horizonwith violating federal organic stan-dards by not providing dairy cows ad-equate access to the outdoors, as re-quired in federal organic regulations.

Cornucopia also has filed a complaintagainst Wal-Mart for allegedly misiden-tifying conventional items as organic. 43

In response, a company spokesman said,“We believe strongly that USDA stan-dards for organic products must not becompromised. Our customers who buyorganic products expect them to meetthose standards, so we feel they mustbe maintained.” 44

* The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts levyfines on polluters but do not require them topay for cleanup.

34 CQ Researcher

The USDA is clarifying its access-to-outdoors regulation, and many or-ganic food advocates — includingHorizon — say it should be stricter.Executives from the Whole Foods re-tail chain visited Horizon’s Idaho dairyfarm in 2006 and concluded the com-pany was upgrading conditions for itscows. (Horizon is adding more than3,000 acres of pasture to its Idahofarm.) But company President JohnMackey agreed that some organic dairyfarms “have no real commitment toeither animal welfare or pasture ac-cess” but are merely “commercialdairies using organic feed.” 45

Whole Foods representatives visit-ed Aurora’s Colorado farm in May2006 and found it “unacceptable,” ac-cording to a Whole Foods spokesper-son. Aurora is reducing the numberof cows at the site to allow more graz-ing, but it also defends its practices.“Our record of animal welfare is cer-tified by an independent third-partyexpert,” said marketing head Clark F.Driftmier. “Our animals are outside allyear long; they’re never locked intobarns.” 46

Raising animals in confinement isespecially problematic for organic farms,critics say, because diseases spread eas-ily in close quarters, and organic farm-ers cannot use antibiotics to treat sickanimals.

Demand is also growing for “nat-ural” meats, grass-fed beef and prod-ucts from humanely raised animals,such as eggs from “cage-free” hens.“The market is increasingly seg-menting into different niches — onefor the lowest-cost product, whereindustrial producers compete againsteach other, and different markets fornatural producers,” says Hassebrook,at the Center for Rural Affairs. “Thebiggest opportunities today for smallfarmers are in niche markets wherefamily farms have a competitive ad-vantage. Consumers care about healthand the environment, and they trustsmall farmers to produce safe food

in an environmentally responsiblemanner.”

But that assumption isn’t automat-ically correct, says Tufts veterinary pro-fessor Saperstein. “Treatment of ani-mals varies widely, and small farmersdon’t always meet the best standards,”he says, noting labels like “Humane-ly Raised” or Cruelty-Free” are not reg-ulated like organic standards.

But major suppliers of such productsare enjoying strong growth. Niman Ranch,a leading natural-meat producer, is grow-ing by 35 percent annually with rev-enues near $100 million in 2006. 47 Re-search by industry groups indicates thatnatural pork could win up to 25 per-cent of the fresh pork market. 48

“The demand is there, and the mar-ket will continue to grow. People arerealizing that it makes sense to spendmoney on good food because it’s bet-ter for them,” says Scott Sechler, pres-ident of Bell & Evans, a Pennsylva-nia company that raises uncagedpoultry using all-natural feed and noantibiotics.

But even with demand rising, nichesuppliers face big challenges. It takestime to develop natural productionmethods, says Sechler. “Some peoplethink there’s big money and a quickbuck in it, but on the farm things don’tmove that quickly. Almost nobody outthere has the patience to build thingsup and do it for the right reasons.”

Structural barriers also exist. Manydistributors pay higher rates to pro-ducers who can guarantee delivery oflarge quantities on schedule. And smallfarmers have less access to slaughter-houses and milk processors, whichoften focus on large-volume cus-tomers. Processing services are im-portant even for farmers who sell di-rectly to consumers, because meatproducts from livestock must be pack-aged in a facility that is federally orstate-inspected, and many states for-bid sale of unpasteurized milk.

Some retailers are working to raisestandards for animal agriculture. Whole

Foods already sells meat from animalsraised humanely and without antibioticsor hormones but plans to introducenew, more stringent animal-treatmentstandards in 2008. Wild Oats, anotherlarge natural-food chain, buys only hu-manely raised beef produced withouthormones or antibiotics. Both compa-nies sell only cage-free eggs.

Conventional stores focus moreclosely on profit margins than on pro-duction standards, says Sechler, whohas turned down requests to supplyBell & Evans poultry to large retailchains. “They have no passion fordoing anything right. They just wantto drive costs down, and they don’tcare how you do it,” he says.

BACKGROUNDFree Range

I n early America, animal agriculturewas all about open space. Cattle and

sheep grazed and pigs rooted on vil-lage commons — land owned jointlyby all town residents — well into the1800s. Livestock ranching had developedon a larger scale by the late 1700s inSpanish-settled regions of what are nowTexas, New Mexico and California.

In the 19th century, settlers tooktheir animals along as they pushedwest across the Great Plains. Farmersraised cows, pigs or chickens alongwith their crops and slaughtered themwhen forage grew scarce in winter.

Cincinnati, located at the intersec-tion of fertile Midwest lands and majornavigable rivers, became an early meat-packing center, nicknamed “Porkopo-lis.” During the Civil War, Chicago be-came the industry hub, as largecompanies like Swift and Armour builtup extensive packing and processingcomplexes near railroad lines.

FACTORY FARMS

Continued on p. 36

Jan. 12, 2007 35Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Chronology1900-1930sGovernment begins to regulatemeat industry.

1906Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle revealsfilthy conditions in the meatpackingindustry. . . . Congress passes thePure Food and Drug Act, givingthe government power to regulatefood safety.

1921Congress passes the Packers andStockyards Act to maintain compe-tition and prevent unfair pricing inthe livestock industry.

1933-34President Franklin D. Rooseveltcreates price supports to shore upfarm income and orders surplushogs and cattle slaughtered.

•

1940s-1970sAdvances in science and tech-nology increase agriculturalyields; major environmentallaws adopted.

1945Farm productivity rises with mecha-nization, rural electrification and ad-vent of inexpensive nitrogen fertilizer.

1951Food and Drug Administration ap-proves use of antibiotics as feedadditives for farm animals.

1954U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) approves hormone treat-ments for farm animals.

1970Environmentalists organize the firstEarth Day celebration.

1972Clean Water Act creates a nationalpermitting system for pollution dis-charges into U.S. waters, includingconcentrated animal feeding opera-tions (CAFOs).

1973Minnesota passes legislation re-stricting corporate farms.

•

1980-PresentVertical integration of agricultur-al production increases. Con-cerns about large-scale farmingfoster alternative options.

1982Nebraska voters ban corporatefarming.

1988Great Britain bans the feeding ofmeat and bone meal from cows,sheep and goats to other rumi-nant, or grazing, animals to limitthe spread of mad cow disease.

1989European Union bans importedmeat treated with hormones, set-ting off a trade dispute with theUnited States.

1990Organic Foods Production Act autho-rizes national organic standards, cre-ating base for a new food industry.

1993Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) approves use of bovinegrowth hormone in dairy cows.

1995A manure-storage lagoon rupturesin North Carolina spilling 25 milliongallons of hog waste into the NewRiver.

2001Wal-Mart starts selling organic milk.

2003The first U.S. case of mad cow dis-ease is detected in a dairy cow im-ported from Canada. . . . Legislationproposed by then-Rep. (now Sen.)Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen.Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., callsfor banning the non-therapeutic useof seven classes of antibiotics asfeed additives unless producersshow using the drugs would notpromote human resistance.

2005FDA withdraws the antibiotic Baytrilfrom use in poultry because of in-creases in resistant Campylobacterbacteria. . . . Whole Foods andWild Oats grocery stores pledge tosell only cage-free eggs. . . . A sec-ond case of mad cow disease isconfirmed in the United States.

2006Wal-Mart expands sales of organicproducts. . . . Whole Foods sets agoal of selling only humanely raisedmeats by 2008. . . . An outbreak ofE. coli 0157:H7 poisoning that killsthree people and sickens 200 istraced to spinach grown in Califor-nia, with cattle manure as a possiblecontamination source. . . . A thirdU.S. case of mad cow disease isconfirmed. . . . Eighth U.S. CircuitCourt of Appeals rules Nebraska’sban on corporate farms is unconsti-tutional; nine states — Oklahoma,Nebraska, South Dakota, NorthDakota, Wisconsin, MinnesotaKansas, Missouri and Iowa — haveanti-corporate farming laws.

2007Reauthorization of the farm bill isexpected, with industry groups hop-ing for increased funding for conser-vation initiatives, such as improvedhandling of manure on CAFOs.

36 CQ Researcher

Grazing flourished after the war, asU.S. troops pushed Indian tribes ontoreservations, and open-range ranchingexpanded onto unsettled federallands. 49 But ranchers overgrazed manyWestern lands, and when a series ofhard winters struck from 1885 through1890, up to half of the cattle on theNorthern Plains died. 50

Those losses and steady en-croachment from homesteaders forcedranchers to settle down on privateholdings, although they still grazedlivestock on public lands. Conserva-tionists denounced the visible scarsleft across many Western states bygrazing: Naturalist John Muir calleddomestic sheep “hoofed locusts,sweeping over the ground like a fireand trampling down every rod thatescapes the plow as completely asif the whole plain were a cottage-garden without a fence.” 51

In the 1890s, the federal govern-ment began carving out national forestsand restricting their use — an earlyskirmish between livestock farmers andenvironmental regulators.

Federal Rules

T he growing meat industry sooncame under other federal con-

trols. After some European countrieslimited imports of U.S. meat, Congresspassed the first Meat Inspection Act in1890 and strengthened inspectionstandards in 1891 and 1895. Muck-raking journalist Upton Sinclair’s 1905book The Jungle exposed filthy anddangerous conditions in the meat-packing industry, galvanizing publicsupport for national regulation of thefood supply. In 1906 Congress passedthe Pure Food and Drug Act — bar-ring interstate sales of mislabeled or

adulterated food products — and theMeat Inspection Act, which createdsanitation standards for meat slaugh-tering and processing plants and man-dated USDA inspection of livestockbefore and after slaughter.

Reformers also challenged the mar-ket power of large meatpacking com-panies. In 1905 the Supreme Courtruled that Congress had the power toregulate anti-competitive practices suchas price-fixing in the meat industry. 52

After further investigation the FederalTrade Commission charged the fivebiggest meatpacking companies withcollusion, and they agreed to divestthemselves of stockyards, railroadsand cold-storage facilities and not toparticipate in retail markets. In 1921Congress passed the Packers and Stock-yards Act, which sought to maintaincompetition in the livestock industryby banning price discrimination andother unfair and deceptive practices.

FACTORY FARMS

Continued from p. 34

Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer has argued for morethan 30 years that animals can feel pain and suffering andthat we should treat them as fellow beings, not material

resources to be exploited. With debate over factory farming grow-ing in intensity, public opinion may be moving in his direction.

Singer’s 1975 book Animal Liberation, which opened with theproposition that “All Animals are Equal,” condemned so-called fac-tory farming and the use of animals in scientific experiments. In1980 Singer and attorney Jim Mason coauthored Animal Facto-ries, a grisly tour of large-scale animal farms that shocked manyreaders with descriptions of practices like debeaking chickens. Intheir new book, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter,Singer and Mason show what has and hasn’t changed on largeanimal farms and look at what foods people buy, why they maketheir choices and the impacts of their decisions.

“There’s huge interest now in animal agriculture,” says Singer.“A lot of people are concerned about animal welfare, a sig-nificant number are worried about health and many others careabout supporting local farmers.”

Comparing U.S. animal-welfare policies to steps already takenin the European Union (EU), such as banning hog gestationcrates, Singer says the United States would rate a zero or a 1on a 10-point scale, while the EU might be a 5. But he does-

n’t think public attitudes on the issue in the United States arevery different from those in Europe.

“There are significant differences in the political systems. Pub-lic attitudes in the EU have more influence on legislation,” Singerargues. “Florida and Arizona voters have both given thumbs-down to hog gestation crates, and those are not terribly liberalstates. American politicians are the ones lagging behind Europe,not American voters.”

Although he’s a vegetarian, Singer does not believe that re-nouncing meat is the only moral way to eat. Nor does he thinkthat all food animals should be raised outdoors. “Europe isn’tabandoning confinement, but they are outlawing sow crates,and we could do better without moving all the way to open-range grazing,” he says. As an example, he notes that NimanRanch — a major producer of natural, humanely raised meatbased in Marin County, Calif. — lets its farmers raise pigs in-doors, but they have to give the animals outdoor access, moreindoor space than pigs have in CAFOs (concentrated animal-feeding operations), and deep straw for bedding.

In The Way We Eat, Singer and Mason shop and eat with threeAmerican families. One household eats the “standard Americandiet,” buying lots of conventional meat, dairy and processed foodsat Wal-Mart. The second family, described as “conscientious

‘If You’re Going to Eat Meat’Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer offers alternatives

Jan. 12, 2007 37Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Food prices were high throughmost of this period, but exports fellafter World War I, reducing farm in-come. Farmers responded by boost-ing productivity, aided by tractors andother new technologies. As the needfor hands-on farm laborers declined,Americans began migrating from ruralareas to cities. Commodity prices col-lapsed, however, during the Great De-pression and worldwide recession ofthe 1930s, and farmers were left with-out markets for their products.

The Roosevelt administration creat-ed commodity price supports for pork,beef and milk to curb overproductionand raise prices. It also ordered theslaughter of more than 6 million hogsin 1933 and thousands of beef cattlein 1934, distributing the meat to reliefprograms.

“Some people may object to killingpigs at any age . . . but we have tothink about farmers as well as hogs,”

declared Agriculture Secretary Henry A.Wallace. “And we must think aboutconsumers and try to get a uniformsupply of pork from year to year at aprice which is fair to farmer and con-sumer alike.” 53

The USDA created nationwideschool lunch and milk programs touse up the surplus food. Land-grantuniversities and the USDA’s Agricul-tural Extension Service taught farmfamilies home gardening and poultryproduction, marketing and other skillsto help them survive the Depressionyears.

To supply U.S. troops and alliednations during World War II, the gov-ernment subsidized production ofmeat, milk and other commoditiesdeemed essential. Price supports forhogs and poultry were not endeduntil 1950, however, when the econ-omy was growing and farming wasback on its feet.

New Technology

I n 1900, agriculture employed 41percent of the workforce. By 1945

only 16 percent of workers remainedon farms. Productivity continued toskyrocket after the war, however, asmechanization, rural electrification andsynthetic chemical fertilizers enabledfewer farmers to manage more acresand animals. By 1954 the number oftractors surpassed the number of hors-es and mules on farms. With fewerwork animals, there was less demandfor feed crops like oats, so farmsbegan specializing in high-value cropsor livestock breeds.

Other advances helped transform live-stock farming from an art into a sci-ence. In 1951 the FDA approved addingthe antibiotic tetracycline to animal feed,and three years later the first hormonetreatments for cattle were authorized.

omnivores,” tries to buy organic and hu-manely raised products that also pro-vide fair returns to workers. The thirdfamily eats a vegan diet, avoiding meat,poultry, fish and dairy products. Com-paring how each approach affects ani-mals and the environment, Singer andMason conclude that the standard Amer-ican diet is cheapest and easiest but notan ethical choice, especially since alter-natives are available nationwide.

“If you’re going to eat meat anddairy foods, you should avoid factoryfarm products,” says Singer. “Find asource that doesn’t get them from large,confined systems. It’s more expensive, but spend the same amountof money on better-quality products made from animals that havehad better lives, and make up the difference with grains andother substitutes. You’ll consume less animal protein, so you’ll doyourself a favor healthwise as well.”

Singer believes that growing concerns about animal agricul-ture could reshape the U.S. food system in the coming decades.“It’s quite possible that within 20 years, raising animals in per-

manent, close confinement could becomeillegal,” he predicts. “Eliminating systemsthat concentrate large numbers of animalsand feed them on grain would takelonger, because that would cause signif-icant price hikes. But we might decide,for example, that raising cattle on grainis too wasteful of fossil fuel and con-tributes too much to global warming.”

Not everyone is willing to spend morefor alternative meat and dairy products, asSinger urges. But Singer and Mason arguethat while conventional products seemcheap, they impose hidden costs outsideof the production chain — like water pol-

lution from CAFO discharges and increased risks of antibiotic-resistant infections. “It is understandable that people on low in-comes should seek to stretch their dollars by buying the lowest-pricedfood, but when we look at the larger picture, the food producedby factory farming is not really cheap at all,” they write. 1

1 Peter Singer and Jim Mason, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food ChoicesMatter (2006), p. 222.

Ethicist Peter Singer believes growingconcerns about animal agriculturecould reshape the U.S. food system.

Der

ek G

oodw

in

38 CQ Researcher

Advances in genetics produced new an-imal strains that maximized profits —broiler chickens that grew faster, hensthat produced more eggs and cows thatgave more milk. Agricultural extensionagents and land-grant universitiesspread these ideas nationwide.

Vertical integration hit the poultryindustry first. Because chickens andturkeys mature within a few monthsof hatching, poultry genetics could bealtered quickly so companies thatcontrolled the entire process fromhatching to distribution could easilycreate and market new products. By1990 more than 82 percent of the na-tion’s poultry and eggs were pro-duced by farmers under contract forlarge integrators. 54

Dairy farmers also pursued economiesof scale, aided by new techniques suchas artificial insemination. The beef in-dustry was more segmented: Many small-scale ranches in the West bred calves,

but growing numbers of ranchersshipped young steers to large feedlotsthat cropped up in the 1950s near majorgrain fields and at collection points inKansas and Texas. The facilities fattenedthe cattle on grain, then handled theslaughter, processing and shipment.

New Food Fears

T he revolution in animal agriculturefilled U.S. stores with thousands of

new products. As Americans becamemore health conscious and demandedconvenient options, food producers re-sponded with innovations like boneless,skinless chicken breasts and lean pork— “the other white meat.”

Meanwhile, a modest natural-foodmovement was also developing, spurredby environmentalists promoting organicfarming. 55 In the 1950s and ’60s or-ganic food was a small-scale trend. But

it gained support from a growing envi-ronmental movement after the first EarthDay in 1970 and from consumer advo-cates lobbying to reduce the use of pes-ticides, dyes and food additives. 56

In the late 1980s and early ’90s, whenbovine spongiform encephalopathy(BSE), or mad cow disease, killed dozensof Europeans, consumers were shockedto learn that the disease was caused bycows being fed ground-up cattle parts— including brain and spinal tissue frominfected cows. 57

Regulators in Europe and North Amer-ica barred feeding ruminants (cattle, sheepor goats) supplements containing meatand bone meal from other ruminantsand banned potentially unsafe cattle prod-ucts from human food and medicine.But once consumers learned that cattleroutinely ate animal parts — along withother cheap protein such as poultry lit-ter and feces — many either stoppedeating beef or turned to alternatives suchas naturally raised meat.

CAFOs began to draw attention in the1990s as their number increased, espe-cially in the Midwest and Southeasternstates. In North Carolina, heavy rains in1995 and ’99 caused flooding that rup-tured dozens of hog-waste lagoons, con-taminating rivers and creating public healththreats. In response, the state adopted a10-year moratorium on new hog CAFOsin 1997. Other towns and counties acrossthe nation passed similar bans or tight-ened their permitting requirements.

Then in 2003 and ’04, a deadly strainof avian flu (H5N1) spread widelythroughout poultry flocks in Asia andkilled more than 75 people, spurringfears of a worldwide pandemic. 58 U.S.poultry farmers began testing birds forthe H5N1 virus in 2006.

Many critics and some experts ar-gued that poultry CAFOs were themain route for spreading H5N1. “[F]armore likely to be perpetuating thespread of the virus is the movementof poultry, poultry products or infectedmaterial from poultry farms,” the Britishmedical journal Lancet editorialized in

FACTORY FARMS

What Is a CAFO?

Concentrated animal feeding operations are defined under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. An operation is a CAFO if it confines at least the number of animals in any of the following categories:

Source: Environmental Protection Agency

Animal Sector Large CAFOs Medium CAFOs (No. of animals) (No. of animals)

Cattle or cow/calf pairs 1,000 or more 300-999

Mature dairy cattle 700 or more 200-699

Veal calves 1,000 or more 300-999

Swine (over 55 pounds) 2,500 or more 750-2,499

Swine (under 55 pounds) 10,000 or more 3,000-9,999

Horses 500 or more 150-499

Sheep or lambs 10,000 or more 3,000-9,999

Turkeys 55,000 or more 16,500-54,999

Laying hens or broilers 30,000 or more 9,000-29,999 (with liquid manure handling system)

Chickens other than laying hens (with 125,000 or more 37,500-124,999 non-liquid manure handling system)

Laying hens (with non-liquid manure 82,000 or more 25,000-81,999 handling system)

Jan. 12, 2007 39Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

2006. “This mode of transmission hasbeen down-played by internationalagencies, who admit that migratory birdsare an easy target since nobody is toblame.” 59 Like mad cow, avian flushowed that animal-borne diseases couldspread readily through a centralizednational food industry.

CURRENTSITUATION

Farm Bill

S everal livestock issues are on theagenda as Congress prepares to

reauthorize farm programs in 2007.With the prospect oftighter water-qualityand air-pollution reg-ulations, livestockproducers supportmore federal fund-ing for conservationprograms, such asimproved manure-management sys-tems at CAFOs.

Under the 1996Environmental Qual-ity Incentive Pro-gram (EQIP), theUSDA shares the costof conservation up-grades with farmers.From 2003 through2005, EQIP paid $1.2billion to livestockproducers, of which two-thirds wentto beef-cattle producers. Before 2002,EQIP funds went to small farmers, butthe 2002 farm bill removed size re-strictions.

Environmentalists oppose payingCAFOs to clean up their pollution.“These are public subsidies to an in-herently polluting industry, and we

shouldn’t continue to underwrite coststo large companies,” says the SierraClub’s Hopkins.

But other groups disagree. The Amer-ican Farmland Trust — a nonprofit thatworks to protect farm and ranch landand preserve the environment — pro-poses converting existing price supportsinto “green payments” to help guar-antee farm income and reward all farms,regardless of size, for good environ-mental performance. 60

Public-health advocates may try touse the farm bill to address theoveruse of antibiotics. The Preserva-tion of Antibiotics for Medical Treat-ment Act — first introduced in 2003by then-Rep. (now Sen.) SherrodBrown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Edward M.Kennedy, D-Mass. — would havebanned within two years the non-therapeutic use of seven classes of

antibiotics as feed additives unlessproducers show using the drugswould not promote human resistance.Nearly 400 organizations endorsedthe bill, including the American Med-ical Association, Consumers Unionand the Humane Society.

Organic-farming advocates wantmore funding for research, education

and extension services focused on or-ganic issues. In 2005, the USDA’s Agri-cultural Research Service spent about0.35 percent of its $1 billion budget— or about $3 million — on organ-ic projects, and Congress provided lessthan $2 million per year in 2004 and2005 to support farmers transitioningto organic production.

“The European Union understandsthat preserving family-scale farms is im-portant and that the future of agricul-ture is organic,” says Cummins of theOrganic Consumers Association, “sothey use a large part of their subsidiesto help farmers convert.” Farmers con-verting to organic should receive pricesupports while making the transition,Cummins argues, because they mustadopt lower-yield methods but cannotsell their products until they are certi-fied as organic.

More funding of re-search on alternativemethods could help di-versify U.S. agriculture,says Hassebrook of theCenter for Rural Affairs.“We’ve spent hundredsof millions of dollars onresearch to refine theseconfined-production sys-tems, and you can stillraise hogs almost as ef-ficiently in an old shed,”he argues. “If we’d hada balanced research port-folio that also focusedon improving the effi-ciency of smaller farms,the industry would lookvery different today.”

Labels, Monopolies

O rganic and small-farm advocatesalso want Congress to imple-

ment a provision of the 2002 farm billrequiring mandatory country-of-originlabeling (COOL) for beef, lamb, porkand other agricultural commodities.

Hogs on a typical factory farm are raised in two-foot-by-seven-foot crates that allow them to lie down but not turn around.

Manure is collected in pits under the cages.

Hum

ane

Soci

ety

of

the

United

Sta

tes

40 CQ Researcher

FACTORY FARMS

COOL has been required for most otherU.S. imports since the 1930s, but live-stock and meat products do not haveto carry COOL after slaughter or pro-cessing in the United States. 61 The2002 labeling requirement was de-

layed under two subsequent laws (forall food products except seafood), andis currently scheduled to start in Oc-tober 2008.

Organic advocates argue that COOLwill show consumers which retailers are

importing organic foods from abroad,where standards may be lower. Indus-try groups say COOL would increasemarketing costs by billions of dollarsper year, but economists say the costs

Continued on p. 42

The approximately 1,000 milking cows at Blue SpruceFarm in Bridgport, Vt., produce about 24 millionpounds of milk a year. Along with several hundred

other cows, they also generate roughly 10 million gallons ofmanure, an unwelcome threat to Vermont’s air and waterquality. But in 2005, brothers Ernest, Earl and Eugene Audetstarted generating a new non-dairy product — electricity fromcow manure.

Inside an anaerobic digester installed at the farm by the localelectricity provider, Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS), bac-teria break down manure inan airless environment. Theprocess generates methane,a principal component ofnatural gas that can beburned to generate electric-ity. The process also yieldsodorless solids that makegood bedding for cows,plus waste heat that can beused to heat water or build-ings. Use of the byproductfor animal bedding alonecould save Blue Spruce Farmup to $60,000 annually.

The Audets expect to pro-duce about 1.7 million kilo-watt-hours (kWh) of energyper year. CVPS sells theelectricity at a premium priceto customers who sign up for Cow Power, then passes thepremium back to the farmers. Subscribing costs an extra 4 centsper kWh, which works out to between $5 and $20 per monthfor residential customers, depending on whether they get allor part of their electricity from the program. “Cow Power hasdone everything we’d hoped it would do for us, and more,”said Earl. “It’s given us a new income stream, reduced ourcosts, provided us options for handling our manure and virtu-ally eliminated the odor of manure spreading.” 1

Basic anaerobic digester (AD) systems have existed sincethe 1850s, but they are attracting new interest as a way togenerate renewable energy and turn farm waste back into an

asset. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 82digesters were operating at dairy, swine, and poultry farms in23 states at the end of 2006, with another 19 projects planned.State and national renewable-energy incentives, including aDepartment of Agriculture grant program created in the 2002farm bill, have helped to more than double the number ofprojects since 2004. 2 Hundreds of farm digesters are operat-ing in Europe.

The AD isn’t a cure-all for manure management: It worksbest when it can be designed into a new facility, and it is

not economical for farms withfewer than several hundredcows or pigs. In states that haveset ambitious renewable-ener-gy generation goals, greenpower typically sells for a pre-mium, and public and privatefunding is available to installdigesters. More than one-thirdof planned and operating ADprojects are in three such states— California, New York andWisconsin. Effective marketingalso helps: CVPS lets CowPower subscribers advertisetheir participation to show thatthey support Vermont farmersand the environment, and of-fers bright yellow “EnergyHappens” T-shirts for $15. More

than 1,000 CVPS customers have signed up for Cow Power,which is also supplied by three other Vermont farms.

“Many of our customers want to vote for renewable energywith their wallets,” CVPS spokesman Steve Costello said. “Sup-port of farmers, the environment and renewable energy are keyfactors. People seem to like that it’s local, it’s practical and it’sbenefiting people who work the land and help keep Vermontlooking like Vermont.”

1 Quoted in “Grants Fund Cow Power Generators at Four Vermont Farms,”Renewable Energy Access, April 6, 2006, www.renewableenergyaccess.com.2 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, AgSTAR Digest, winter 2006,www.epa.gov/agstar.

Vermont Dairy Farm Harnesses Cow PowerGreen farmers turn manure into electricity and extra profits

An anaerobic digester at the Blue Spruce Farm inBridgport, Vt., turns manure into odorless solids that

can be used for cow bedding, as well as methane that can be burned to generate electricity.

© J

. Ral

off

no

Jan. 12, 2007 41Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

At Issue:Should manure be regulated under the Superfund law?Yes

yesKELLY HUNTER-BURCHCHIEF, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION UNIT,OKLAHOMA ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE

FROM TESTIMONY BEFORE THE HOUSE ENERGY ANDCOMMERCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT ANDHAZARDOUS MATERIALS, NOV. 16, 2005

t he animal agriculture industry should be held responsiblefor the release of hazardous substances, such as arsenicand phosphorus, to the same extent that every other in-

dustry is held responsible. CERCLA already provides an exemp-tion for the normal application of fertilizer, but it does not pro-vide an exemption for massive disposal of animal waste far inexcess of crop needs and the resulting releases of hazardoussubstances. . . .

In considering this issue, it is important to understand thatthe waste produced by today’s animal feeding operation issubstantially different from the waste produced by the familyfarmer in the past. It is not “naturally occurring” and it is notcomposed of only ammonia, phosphorus and hydrogen sul-fide. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, theprimary pollutants most commonly associated with animalwaste are phosphorus, nitrogen, ammonia, organic matter,solids, pathogens, odorous compounds, trace metals, pesti-cides, antibiotics and hormones. Trace elements in manurethat are of environmental concern include arsenic, copper, se-lenium, zinc, cadmium, molybdenum, nickel, lead, iron, man-ganese, aluminum and boron.

In order to achieve the growth rates [that] make it possiblefor a single poultry house to raise 5.5 flocks in a year, broilerfeed has been carefully engineered. Arsenic, copper, seleniumand zinc have all been added to the feed to promote growthand inhibit parasites. As a result, the waste which comes outof the birds and goes into the waste stream coming out ofthese poultry houses is laden with these metals. . . .

In the first half of the 20th century, a farm might have achicken coop or brooder house that might hold 500 chickens; alarge one might hold 1,400 birds. A “smaller” modern poultryhouse can house a 25,000-bird flock at a time producing an av-erage of 5.5 flocks per year and 125 tons of poultry waste. . . .

The amendment you are considering is not an effort toprotect the family farmer, as is so often claimed by poultryindustry public-relations efforts. It is a blatant attempt by amultibillion-dollar industry to protect its practice of dumpingwaste in an environmentally damaging manner. No other in-dustry in the country has that kind of protection. Since adop-tion of the federal clean water and air legislation, no otherindustry has so callously polluted our land and waters.No

ROBERT T. CONNERYNATIONAL CATTLEMEN’S BEEF ASSOCIATION

FROM TESTIMONY BEFORE THE HOUSE ENERGY ANDCOMMERCE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT ANDHAZARDOUS MATERIALS, NOV. 16, 2005

C ERCLA [the Comprehensive Environmental Response,Compensation, and Liability Act, or Superfund law],was passed in the wake of Love Canal for the pur-

pose of dealing with the “legacy of hazardous substances andwastes which pose a serious threat to human health and theenvironment,” and “to clean the worst, abandoned hazardous-waste sites in the country.” The legislative history contains alitany of references to “synthetic,” “manmade” chemicals, “chemi-cal contamination” and the results of “modern chemical technol-ogy” as the problems CERCLA intended to address. It containsno reference to an intention to clean up manure or urea, ortheir byproducts, from cattle or any other animal agriculturaloperations. . . .

Congress also indicated the scope of the activities it intendedto cover in the provision it made for funding the “Superfund”to pay for cleanup. The tax it imposed focused on “the typeof industries and practices that have caused the problems thatare addressed by Superfund”; Congress chose to impose thetax “on the relatively few, basic building blocks used to makeall hazardous products and wastes.” These building blocks, orchemical “feedstocks,” are comprised of petrochemicals, inorgan-ic raw materials and petroleum oil because “virtually all haz-ardous wastes and substances are generated from these. . . .Manure, urea and their byproducts, are clearly not amongthese materials.

Cattle and other animal agriculture operations are subject toa vast array of federal, state and local environmental laws andauthority to deal with every conceivable environmental prob-lem presented by them. They include the Clean Air Act, CleanWater Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, ToxicSubstances Control Act [and] soil conservation, dust and odorcontrol, as well as nuisance laws. . . .

The Superfund laws, by contrast, were adopted for the mostserious and drastic environmental problems, where all of theenvironmental laws had proved inadequate, and extraordinaryremedies were called for. . . .

Could Congress have intended to impose such liability onthe hundreds of cattle operations across America’s heartlandwithout even mentioning them? Of course not. In fact, in everyinstance where possible application of Superfund laws to bio-logic and natural processes was discussed, Congress was clearto exclude those processes.

42 CQ Researcher

FACTORY FARMS

would be much lower. A roughly 5percent jump in demand for beef andpork over 10 years would offset theadded costs of implementing COOL, astudy found. 62 In fact, USDA currentlyprojects that U.S. per capita meat con-sumption will rise by about 5 percentfrom 2005 through 2015. 63

Questions about market concentrationcould also resurface in the farm bill. Crit-ics argue that a few large meatpackingcompanies dominate the industry anddistort markets because the Packers andStockyards Act is poorly enforced. Somequestion whether meatpackers should beallowed to own livestock, because theyare less inclined to offer competitive pricesto independent producers if they owntheir own herds. The Senate version ofthe 2002 farm bill initially banned pack-ers from “owning, feeding or controlling”livestock more than 14 days before slaugh-ter, but the provision was dropped fromthe final bill.

Not surprisingly, industry groups op-pose restrictions on packer ownership.“Government intervention must not in-hibit producers’ ability to take advantageof new marketing opportunities and strate-gies geared toward capturing more valuefrom our beef,” National Cattlemen’sBeef Association President Mike Johntold the House Agriculture Committeein September 2006. 64 But Sen. Tom

Harkin, D-Iowa, the new chair of theSenate Agriculture Committee, stronglysupports a ban on packer ownership.

Harkin and Sen. Charles E. Grass-ley, R-Iowa, have asked the Justice De-partment to investigate a proposed merg-er between the nation’s two largest porkproducers, Smithfield Foods and Pre-mium Standard Farms (PSF). Together,

they would own more than 1 millionsows — 20 percent of U.S. hog pro-duction. “Very openly, CEOs of majorcorporations have told farm groups thatif you want to know why we own live-stock for slaughter, it’s because we canbutcher our own stuff when prices arehigh, and when prices are low we canbuy from farmers,” Grassley told Jus-tice’s Antitrust Division. 65

Outside the Beltway

T o limit the economic impact oflarge-scale farms and make small-

er producers more competitive, ninestates have barred or restricted cor-porate-owned farms. South Dakota andNebraska went so far as to write thebans into their constitutions. Most ofthese policies exempt existing farmsand make exceptions for family-owned corporations, cooperatives andnonprofit corporations.

In 2005, a federal district courtruled that Nebraska’s ban on corpo-rate farms violated the CommerceClause of the Constitution. In December2006 Nebraska’s appeal was rejectedby a three-judge panel of the EighthU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Manystates with similar bans filed briefssupporting Nebraska, as did dozensof farmers’ associations. Nebraska At-torney General Jon Bruning said hewould appeal the decision to the U.S.Supreme Court.

“Corporate-farming bans don’t keeppeople out of farming,” says the Cen-ter for Rural Affairs’ Hassebrook, “butthey make them take personal liabilityfor their operations, which corporationsdon’t want to do. The point is to levelthe playing field, because family farm-ers assume liability and pay taxes asindividuals. Bans don’t drive all largefarms out, but they make family farmsstronger competitors.”

But there are mixed views on theban in Nebraska. “The state does notneed this misguided and legally du-bious attempt to insulate the ag econ-omy against reality,” commented theOmaha World-Herald after the ap-peals court ruling. 66

CAFOS are under pressure in sev-eral states — including Iowa, Indiana,Michigan and Ohio — where criticismfrom neighbors is drawing unfavorablepress coverage and prompting local of-ficials to consider new limits on largefarms. In September, a Jackson Coun-ty, Mo., jury awarded $4.5 million indamages to three families who suedPSF over smells from one of its CAFOswith 350,000 hogs. Other lawsuits arepending against more than 20 otherPSF hog farms in Missouri. 67

But CAFO-related jobs and tax rev-enues still speak powerfully to manypoliticians, especially in economicallystruggling regions. Hog CAFOs expand-ed in North Carolina in the 1980s and’90s because contraction in the tobaccoindustry made lots of cheap agricultur-al land available. Today, although many

Continued from p. 40

“Some people in other states, including North Carolina,

are proposing hog projects in Indiana. We think

that is a good thing.”

— Thomas W. Easterly,Commissioner

Indiana Department of Environmental Management

Jan. 12, 2007 43Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Indiana communities are concerned aboutCAFO impacts, Republican Gov. MitchDaniels’ economic-growth initiativesinclude doubling hog production in thestate by 2025.

“Some people from other states, in-cluding North Carolina, are proposinghog projects in Indiana. We think thatis a good thing,” said state Environ-mental Management CommissionerThomas W. Easterly, who is expeditinghog farm permits. 68

Categories can be misleading, how-ever: Not all CAFOs are corporate-owned, and not all family businessesare small. “Just because you have tohire other people doesn’t mean it’s nota family business,” says Missouri hogfarmer Rehmeier. “Most hogs are stillraised on family farms.”

Michigan dairy farmer Conwayechoes this view. “There’s a miscon-ception that because your operationis big, you’re a corporation,” says Con-way. “There’s room in the market forall different types of farming.”

Organic-food advocates don’t see itthis way, especially when it comes towhat they view as industrial organicfarms. The Organic Consumers Asso-ciation in Minnesota has organized aboycott against Horizon organic dairyproducts, creating a public-relationsheadache for Horizon. 69 “Green-minded consumers are starting to getpolitical,” says the group’s Cummins.“In the absence of a decent USDA,we have to rely on consumer powerto enforce standards.”

On a positive note, many organiza-tions are promoting goods raised local-ly using small-scale methods. Examplesinclude Slow Food, an international or-ganization that works to protect “the her-itage of food, tradition and culture,” andChefs Collaborative, a national networkof professional chefs that promotes localand sustainable foods, including sus-tainably raised meat.

Some consumers are joining Com-munity Supported Agriculture pro-grams, in which they pay a local farm

for a “share” of its output and receiveweekly deliveries of whatever is inseason. The concept was introducedin the United States in the 1980s andhad grown to more than 300 farmsby 2000. 70

“People who think seriously aboutfood have come to realize that ‘local’is at least as important a word as ‘or-ganic,’ The New York Times commentedrecently. 71

OUTLOOKCAFOs Under Pressure

CAFOs produce large shares of manymeat and dairy products, but they

are under stress from regulators, al-ternative suppliers and residential de-velopments that put farms in closecontact with exurban neighbors. Inthis environment, bad practices in theindustry can have impacts far beyondone farm.

“Large farms are more visible, soyou’re always in the spotlight,” saysMichigan dairy farmer Conway.

Rehmeier, who has never had anuisance complaint filed against hishog farm near St. Louis but worriesabout development spreading westfrom the city, seconds this view. “Beinghere first just doesn’t matter any more.You have to do things right,” he says.

New air-emission limits and banson breeding crates could cut into pro-ducers’ already-narrow profit margins,although large farms may be better-positioned to adapt than small oper-ators who cannot afford major facili-ty upgrades. If Congress increasessupport for organic farming and localmarkets in the 2007 farm bill, morefarmers may seize the opportunity toswitch from conventional production.Conversely, if support for alternativeproducers remains a tiny fraction of

U.S. agriculture spending, alternativemeat and dairy products will remainhigh-priced specialty goods availableon a limited scale.

Public concern about antibiotics andhormones in food is also squeezing fac-tory livestock farmers, who use suchadditives to increase their output at lowcost. “A lot of farmers were reluctant touse rBST but did it to stay in business,”says Tufts University veterinary Profes-sor Saperstein. “Now they’re financiallyexposed if their customers tell them tochange. Eventually all of these productsare going to be banned or fall out ofuse because of consumer perceptionsthat manufactured foods are unnatural.But it’s all economically driven, and theFDA has approved these products foranimal use, so market forces will haveto change the regulatory field.”

If more big purchasers like Mc-Donald’s require meat and dairy sup-pliers to use humane and environ-mentally friendly methods, farmersand large food companies will haveto adapt. But large-scale change is un-likely as long as U.S. agricultural pol-icy emphasizes the cheapest possiblefood supply. Unless advocates canpersuade Congress and the USDA toenforce food-quality standards morevigorously and invest more money inalternative methods, CAFOs will re-main part of the system.

Change could come with the Demo-cratic takeover of Congress. Democratsare less supportive than Republicans ofproposals like exempting manure fromSuperfund requirements and may be morewilling to spend money on alternativeagriculture methods.

But changing the U.S. food industryis like turning around an ocean liner.And as long as most Americans eat alot of mass-produced food from con-ventional suppliers, there will be onlylimited demand for change. As writerPollan observes, “Many people todayseem perfectly content eating at the endof an industrial-food chain, without athought in the world.” 72

44 CQ Researcher

Notes1 For background, see Brian Hansen, “Crisison the Plains,” CQ Researcher, May 9, 2003,pp. 417-448.2 Noel Gollehon, et al., Confined Animal Pro-duction and Manure Nutrients (Washington,DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, June 2001),p. 10.3 Don P. Blayney, “The Changing Landscapeof U.S. Milk Production,” U.S. Department ofAgriculture, Economic Research Service, Statis-tical Bulletin, June 2002, p. 2.4 Clement E. Ward, “Twenty-Five Year MeatConsumption and Price Trends,” OklahomaCooperative Extension Service, OklahomaState University, http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2859/F-603web.pdf.5 www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?iden-tifier=3040349.6 See Michael Brower and Warren Leon, TheConsumer’s Guide to Effective EnvironmentalChoices (1999), pp. 58-64.7 Frances Moore Lappe, Diet For a SmallPlanet (1982), pp. 66, 70.8 Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin, “Diet, En-ergy, and Global Warming,” Earth Interactions,April 2006, pp. 1-17. For background, see Mar-cia Clemmitt, “Climate Change,” CQ Researcher,Jan. 27, 2006, pp. 73-96.9 Henning Steinfeld, et al., Livestock’s LongShadow: Environmental Issues and Options,United Nations Food and Agricultural Orga-nization (2006), pp. xxi, 112-114.10 For background, see David Masci, “Fight-ing Over Animal Rights,” CQ Researcher, Aug.2, 1996, pp. 673-696.11 D. J. Wagstaff, “Public Health and Food Safe-ty: A Historical Association,” Public Health Re-ports, November-December 1986, pp. 624-31.

12 For background, see Adriel Bettelheim,“Drug-Resistant Bacteria,” CQ Researcher, June4, 1999, pp. 473-496.13 Katherine M. Shea, “Antibiotic Resistance:What Is the Impact of Agricultural Uses ofAntibiotics on Children’s Health?” Pediatrics,July 2003, p. 254.14 Christian L. Wright, “Many Little Piggies,Handled With Care,” The New York Times,May 17, 2006, p. G10.15 Ibid.16 World Health Organization, “The MedicalImpact of Antimicrobial Use in Food Ani-mals,” October 1997.17 David L. Smith, Jonathan Dushoff and J.Glenn Morris, Jr., “Agricultural Antibiotics andHuman Health,” PLoS Medicine, August 2005,pp. 731-735.18 Elizabeth Weise, “ ‘Natural’ Chickens TakeFlight,” USA Today, Jan. 23, 2006.19 “Consumer Concerns About Hormones inFood,” Cornell University, Program on BreastCancer and Environmental Risks, June 2000,http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/factsheet/diet/fs37.hormones.pdf.20 “WTO Hormone Case,” Foreign Agricul-tural Service, U.S. Mission to the EuropeanUnion, updated July 13, 2006, http://useu.us-mission.gov/agri/ban.html#Opinion.21 Sabin Russell, “Spinach E. Coli Linked toCattle,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 13,2006, p. A1. See also “Feeding Beef Cattle,”Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences,2001, http://agalternatives.aers.psu.edu.22 U.S. Centers for Disease Control, “Prelim-inary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of In-fection with Pathogens Transmitted CommonlyThrough Food — 10 States, United States,2005,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,April 14, 2006, pp. 392-395.23 Margot Roosevelt, “The Grass-Fed Revolu-tion,” Time, June 11, 2006.

24 Testimony of Robert Lawrence before theSubcommittee on Environment and HazardousMaterials, House Energy and CommerceCommittee, November 16, 2005.25 Shawn G. Gibbs et al., “Isolation of Antibi-otic-Resistant Bacteria from the Air Plume Down-wind of a Swine Confined or Concentrated An-imal Feeding Operation,” Environmental HealthPerspectives, July 2006, pp. 1032-1037.26 “Drinking Water: Nitrate and Methemo-globinemia,” University of Nebraska, NebraskaCooperative Extension G98-1369 (July 1995),www.p2pays.org/ref/20/19714.htm.27 Clifford G. Clark, et al., “Characterization ofWaterborne Outbreak-associated Campylobacterjejuni, Walkerton, Ontario,” Emerging InfectiousDiseases, Vol. 9, No. 10, October 2003, pp. 1232-1241.28 Environmentally Concerned Citizens ofSouth Central Michigan, http://nocafos.org;www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms.29 New York Department of EnvironmentalConservation, “DEC Issues Violations for Ma-nure Spill and Fish Kill,” Environment DEC,September 2005.30 “Keep Animal Waste Out of Our Waters— Stop Factory Farm Pollution,” www.sier-raclub.org/factoryfarms/.31 www.sierraclub.org/cleanwater/that_stinks.32 Waterkeeper Alliance et al., v. EPA, 399 F.3d 486, Feb. 28, 2005.33 Natural Resources Defense Council, SierraClub and Waterkeeper Alliance, “Comments onthe Revised NPDES Permit Regulation and Ef-fluent Limitation Guidelines for CAFOs in Re-sponse to Waterkeeper Decision,” Docket No.EPA-HQ-OW-2005-0037, Aug. 29, 2006, p. 9.34 Lawrence, op. cit.35 www.sierraclub.org/cleanwater/that_stinks.36 National Research Council, Air Emissionsfrom Animal Feeding Operations: CurrentKnowledge, Future Needs (2003), p. 6.37 Tom Henry, “Ohio, Michigan MegafarmsSpur Clashes Over Air, Water Pollution,” TheBlade (Toledo), Aug. 13, 2006, p. 1.38 National Research Council, Air Emissionsfrom Animal Feeding Operations: CurrentKnowledge, Future Needs (2003), p. 6.39 Food Marketing Institute, “Natural and Or-ganic Foods,” www.fmi.org/media/bg/natur-al_organic_foods.pdf.40 For background, see Kathy Koch, “FoodSafety Battle: Organic vs. Biotech,” CQ Re-searcher, Sept. 4, 1998, pp. 761-784.41 U.S. Department of Agriculture, EconomicResearch Service, “U.S. Certified Organic

FACTORY FARMS

About the AuthorJennifer Weeks is a CQ Researcher contributing writer inWatertown, Mass., who specializes in energy and environ-mental issues. She has written for The Washington Post,The Boston Globe Magazine and other publications, andhas 15 years’ experience as a public-policy analyst, lob-byist and congressional staffer. She has an A.B. degreefrom Williams College and master’s degrees from the Uni-versity of North Carolina and Harvard

Jan. 12, 2007 45Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Farmland Acreage, Livestock Numbers, andFarm Operations, 1992-2003,” www.ers.usda.gov/data/organic/.42 Quoted in Michael Pollan, “Mass Natural,”The New York Times, June 4, 2006.43 For the texts of all three complaints, seehttp://cornucopia.org/index.php/category/news/.44 Stephen Foley, “‘Green’ Wal-Mart Stirs Or-ganic Protests,” Independent (London), Oc-tober 1, 2006, p. 2.45 John Mackey, posting to “John Mack-ey’s Blog,” July 16, 2006, www.whole-foods.com/blogs/jm/archives/2006/06/de-tailed_reply.html.46 Melanie Warner, “A Milk War Over MoreThan Price,” The New York Times, Sept. 16,2005, p. C1.47 Paul Kaihla, “Marketing Designer Meat,”Business 2.0, April 1, 2006.48 Gary Huber, “Specialty Pork Marketing Op-portunities,” Iowa Pork Producers Associa-tion, www.iowapork.org/newsroom/special-tyi.html.49 For background, see Hansen, op. cit.50 U.S. National Park Service, “The Grant-Kohrs Ranch: History and Culture,”www.nps.gov/grko/historyculture/index.htm.51 John Muir, The Mountains of California(1894), www.yosemite.ca.us/johnmuirwritings.52 Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U.S. 375(1905).53 Henry A. Wallace, “Pigs and Pig Iron,”speech, Nov. 12, 1935, http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw10.htm.54 James McDonald, et al., “Contracts, Mar-kets, and Prices: Organizing the Productionand Use of Agricultural Commodities,” U.S.Department of Agriculture, Economic ResearchService, November 2004, p. 15.55 For background, see Koch, op. cit.56 Marian Burros, “Image of An Industry,”The Washington Post, May 11, 1978, p. E1.57 For background, see Mary H. Cooper, “MadCow Disease,” CQ Researcher, March 2, 2001,pp. 161-184.58 For background, see Sarah Glazer, “AvianFlu Threat,” CQ Researcher, Jan. 13, 2006,pp. 25-48.59 Quoted in Jonathan Brown, “Bird Flu: Fac-tory Farms in Asia Blamed For Pandemic,”The Independent, April 8, 2006, p. 4.60 American Farmland Trust, “Healthy Farms,Healthy Food, Healthy People: AFT’s 2007 FarmPolicy Campaign,” May 8, 2006, pp. 15-16.61 Barry Krissof, et al., “Country-of-OriginLabeling: Theory and Observation,” U.S. De-

partment of Agriculture, Economic ResearchService, January 2004, p. 4.62 Gary W. Brester, John M. Marsh and JosephAtwood, “Who Will Bear the Costs of Country-of-Origin Labeling?” Choices, American Agricul-tural Economics Association, 4th Quarter 2004,pp. 7-10.63 USDA, Economic Research Service, “Agricul-tural Baseline Projections: U.S.A Livestock, 2006-2015,” Feb. 10, 2006, www.ers.usda.gov/Brief-ing/Baseline/livstk.htm.64 Hearings, House Committee on Agricul-ture, Review of Federal Farm Policy, Sept.13 and 20, 2006, p. 169.65 Marlene Lucas, “Merger of Top Two PorkProducers Draws Criticism,” The Gazette(Cedar Rapids, Iowa), Sept. 20, 2006.66 “Strike Two,” editorial, Omaha World-Herald,

Dec. 15, 2006.67 Joe Lambe, “Pork Producer Loses LawsuitOver Stench,” Kansas City Star, Sept. 23, 2006.68 Joe Vansickle, “Hoosier State EmbracesHog Growth,” National Hog Farmer, May 15,2006, p. 44.69 Steve Karnowski, “OCA Boycott of BogusOrganic Milk Brands Putting Pressure on Na-tion’s Largest Dairies & Retailers,” The Asso-ciated Press, June 27, 2006.70 Daniel Lass, et al., “CSA Across the Na-tion: Findings from the 1999 CSA Survey,”Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems,University of Wisconsin, October 2003, p. 2.71 “When Wal-Mart Goes Organic,” The NewYork Times, May 14, 2006, Sec. 4, p. 11.72 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma:A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), p. 11.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONCenter for Rural Affairs, 145 Main St., P.O. Box 136, Lyons, NE 68038; (402)687-2100; www.cfra.org. An advocacy group that works to strengthen rural com-munities and family farms and opposes measures that promote corporate concen-tration in agriculture.

Humane Farming Association, P.O. Box 3577, San Rafael, CA 94912; (415) 771-CALF; www.hfa.org. An advocacy group that publicizes the impacts of factoryfarming and opposes inhumane treatment of farm animals.

Keep Antibiotics Working, P.O. Box 14590, Chicago, IL 60614; (773) 525-4952;www.keepantibioticsworking.com. An alliance of health, consumer, environmental,agriculture and other organizations working to end overuse and misuse of antibi-otics in animal agriculture.

National Agriculture Compliance Assistance Center, U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency, 901 North 5th St., Kansas City, KS 66101; (888) 663-2155; www.epa.gov/agri-culture. Provides information about environmental laws and regulations that affectfarmers, including air and water pollution, pesticides and animal waste.

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, 9110 E. Nichols Ave., Suite 300, Centen-nial, CO 80112; (303) 694-0305; www.beef.org. A trade association for the beefcattle industry.

National Pork Producers Council, 10664 Justin Dr., Urbandale, IA 50322; (515)278-8012; www.nppc.org. The trade association representing the U.S. pork industry.

Organic Consumers Association, 6771 South Silver Hill Dr., Finland, MN 55603;(218) 226-4164; www.organicconsumers.org. Campaigns for strong organic-foodstandards and increased federal support for organic farming.

Sierra Club, 85 Second St., Second Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 977-5500; www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms. A national environmental-advocacy groupthat supports tighter environmental restrictions on CAFOs.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 1800 M St., N.W.,Washington, DC 20036; (202) 694-5050; www.ers.usda.gov. Collects data on U.S.agriculture, including production trends, farm practices and organic agriculture.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

46 CQ Researcher

Books

Fromartz, Samuel, Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and HowThey Grew, Harcourt, 2006.Business writer and food lover Fromartz traces the devel-

opment of organic foods from counterculture movement toretail phenomenon and assesses splits among advocates overwhat organic food should be.

Pollan, Michael, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A NaturalHistory of Four Meals, Penguin, 2006.Nature writer Pollan traces the food chains that underlie

four types of meals — industrial food, large-scale organic,locally grown and one in which he raises or shoots every-thing himself.

Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D., and Robert H. Yolken, M.D., Beastsof the Earth: Animals, Humans, and Disease, RutgersUniversity Press, 2005.Two physicians describe the history of animal-human inter-

actions and the spread of illnesses from animals to people.

Willett, Walter C., M.D., Eat, Drink and Be Healthy: TheHarvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, Simon& Schuster, 2001.The chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard’s

School of Public Health explains why the nation’s food guide-lines are wrong (including an overemphasis on red meat),and lays out a balanced plan for healthy eating.

Articles

Berton, Valerie, “A Model for the Future,” AmericanFarmland, fall 2005, p. 8.Four case studies show how to raise crops and livestock

sustainably.

Brady, Diane, “The Organic Myth,” Business Week, Oct. 16,2001, p. 51.As the organic-food industry grows, it risks leaving its alter-

native values behind.

Cone, Marla, “Foul State of Affairs Found in Feedlots,”Los Angeles Times, Nov. 17, 2006.Large animal farms pose serious environmental and public

health threats in spite of existing regulations, according tonew scientific studies.

Gray, Steven, “Natural Competitor,” The Wall Street Journal,Dec. 4, 2006, p. B1.Whole Foods Chair and CEO John Mackey discusses the

future of natural and organic food.

Major, Meg, “Natural Meat: Stampede!” ProgressiveGrocer, July 1, 2006.Demand is growing for naturally raised meats, but the flood

of labels and certifications could baffle consumers.

Johnson, Nathanael, “Swine of the Times,” Harper’s,May 2006, p. 47.Johnson takes a close-up look at the modern pork industry,

including concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Ribaudo, Marc, and Marca Weinberg, “Improving Air andWater Quality Can Be Two Sides of the Same Coin,”Amber Waves, July 2006, p. 39.A coordinated approach to regulating agricultural air and

water emissions could produce better results at lower costthan controlling each medium separately, the authors writein a Department of Agriculture publication.

Severson, Kim, “Why Roots Matter More,” The New YorkTimes, Nov. 15, 2006, p. E1.Consumers are buying more locally produced food because they

like to know where it came from and connect with producers.

Smith, David L., Jonathan Dushoff and J. Glenn Morris,Jr., “Agricultural Antibiotics and Human Health,” PLoSMedicine, August 2005, p. e232.Although it’s hard to connect antibiotic use in farm animals

directly to increases in antibiotic resistance, the potential costsand complexity of the issue justify limiting antibiotic use evenwithout proof in hand, the authors write.

Reports and Studies

The Future of Animal Agriculture in North America,Farm Foundation, 2006.This survey of opportunities and challenges facing livestock

producers in the United States, Canada and Mexico is based ondiscussions with industry, government and academic leaders.

Becker, Geoffrey, “Humane Treatment of Farm Animals:Overview and Issues,” CRS Report RS21978, Congres-sional Research Service, Nov. 18, 2005, http://ncseon-line.org/NLE/CRS/.An agricultural-policy specialist summarizes the few recent

legislative actions affecting farm-animal welfare.

Nierenberg, Danielle, “Happier Meals: Rethinking theGlobal Meat Industry,” Worldwatch Paper 171, World-watch Institute, September 2005.Worldwatch researcher Nierenberg examines the health and

environmental impacts of CAFOs around the world, especiallyin developing countries where demand for meat is rising.

Selected Sources

Bibliography

Jan. 12, 2007 47Available online: www.cqresearcher.com

Animal Welfare

Goldberg, Marni, “ ‘Cage-free’ eggs take flight; Someshoppers like that birds can roam,” Chicago Tribune,June 11, 2006, p. C3.Animal-welfare activists are pressuring grocery chains to

stop selling eggs from caged hens. The campaign appearsto be having some success. In 2005, Whole Foods Market,Wild Oats Natural Marketplace, Earth Fare and Jimbo’s Nat-urally agreed to sell only cage-free eggs

Stewart, Nikita, “Graham Wants Stores to Label Eggs FromCaged Hens,” The Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2006, p. B4.District of Columbia Councilman Jim Graham (D) proposed

a law that would require stores to label eggs produced bycaged hens.

York, Michelle, “Hen Activist Says the War On Cages WillGo On,” The New York Times, May 7, 2006, p. 40.An animal-rights activist acquitted of burglary and other

charges after sneaking onto the Wegmann’s commercial eggfarm in Wolcott, N.Y., to film conditions where 750,000 hensare caged said his group would continue to pressure thepopular regional supermarket chain to stop caging hens.

Environmental Dangers

Eilperin, Juliet, “Pollution in the Water, Lawsuits in theAir; With Damage to Ecosystem Jeopardizing Tourist In-dustry, Oklahoma Fights Back,” The Washington Post,Aug. 28, 2006, p. A3.Oklahoma is suing eight firms on the grounds that chicken

waste applied to crops near the Illinois River contains hazardouschemicals that are damaging the ecosystem and jeopardizingthe region’s tourist industry.

Jones, Tim, and Andrew Martin, “Hog Wars; Missouri-ans raise stink over giant operations,” Chicago Tribune,March 12, 2006, p. C4.Residents of sparsely populated northern Missouri counties

where hogs have been part of everyday life for generations saythe odor from manure has become too much. Fourteen coun-ties say they want no more operations with thousands of hogs,and at least nine more counties are exploring similar bans.

Health Issues

Deardorff, Julie, “All is not well with antibiotics in thefood chain,” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 6, 2006, Sec. Q, p. 8.Three types of Asian vultures are teetering on extinction, pri-

marily because of the use of antibiotics in cattle. The decline ofSouth Asia’s vultures is the latest side effect of what medicalgroups say is a growing global health threat: the unbridled useof antibiotics in food animals.

Meyer, Ann, “A growing market for natural foods; Demandfor organic goods creates room for some alternatives,”Chicago Tribune, July 17, 2006, p. 3.Some old-world foods are cutting edge again, as consumers

clamor for organics and other natural products.

Organic Factory Farms

The Associated Press, “USDA Considers Grazing Mandatefor Certified Organic Milk,” Los Angeles Times, July 2,2006, p. C2.Small organic farms are feeling threatened by new, industrial-

size organic feedlot operations with thousands of cows thatare fed organic grain but get little chance to graze. The smallfarmers have organized a boycott against the country’s biggestorganic milk producer, Horizon.

Martin, Andrew, “Critics say dairy tests the boundariesand spirit of what ‘organic’ means,” Chicago Tribune,Aug. 20, 2006, p. C1.Critics say the new management at the Horizon organic

dairy company is so obsessed with increasing milk pro-duction it prevents its cows from grazing, in violation ofDepartment of Agriculture requirements. Horizon denies theallegation.

Warner, Melanie, “A Milk War Over More Than Price,”The New York Times, Sept. 16, 2006, p. C1.As Wal-Mart rolls out its own brand of organic milk, critics

worry consumers will be getting less nutritious, “greenwashed”organic milk produced by mostly grain-fed cows that onlyspent two-to-three months a year grazing.

The Next Step:Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

CITING CQ RESEARCHER

Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography

include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats

vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.

MLA STYLEJost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher

16 Nov. 2001: 945-68.

APA STYLE

Jost, K. (2001, November 16). Rethinking the death penalty.

CQ Researcher, 11, 945-968.

CHICAGO STYLE

Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher,

November 16, 2001, 945-968.

?Are you writing a paper?

Need backup for a debate?

Want to become an expert on an issue?

For 80 years, students have turned to CQ Researcher for in-depth reporting on issues in the news. Reports on afull range of political and social issues are now available. Following is a selection of recent reports:

ACCESSCQ Researcher is available in print and online. For access,visit your library or www.cqresearcher.com.

STAY CURRENTTo receive notice of upcoming CQ Researcher reports, orlearn more about CQ Researcher products, subscribe to thefree e-mail newsletters, CQ Researcher Alert! and CQ ResearcherNews: www.cqpress.com/newsletters.

PURCHASETo purchase a CQ Researcher report in print or electronicformat (PDF), visit www.cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737.Single reports start at $15. Bulk purchase discounts andelectronic-rights licensing are also available.

SUBSCRIBEA full-service CQ Researcher print subscription—including44 reports a year, monthly index updates, and a boundvolume—is $688 for academic and public libraries, $667for high school libraries, and $827 for media libraries.Add $25 for domestic postage.

CQ Researcher Online offers a backfile from 1991 and anumber of tools to simplify research. For pricing in-formation, call 800-834-9020, ext. 1906, or e-maillibrarysales@cqpress.com.

Upcoming ReportsThe Catholic Church, 1/19/07

Slow Food, 1/26/07

U.S. Foreign Policy, 2/2/07

Treating Addiction, 2/9/07

Future of Television, 2/16/07

In-depth Reports on Issues in the News

Civil LibertiesVoting Controversies, 9/06Right to Die, 5/05Immigration Reform, 4/05

Crime/LawPatent Disputes, 12/06Sex Offenders, 9/06Treatment of Detainees, 8/06War on Drugs, 6/06Domestic Violence, 1/06Death Penalty Controversies, 9/05

EducationAcademic Freedom, 10/05Intelligent Design, 7/05No Child Left Behind, 5/05

EnvironmentThe New Environmentalism, 12/06Biofuels Boom, 9/06Nuclear Energy, 3/06Climate Change, 1/06Saving the Oceans, 11/05Endangered Species Act, 6/05

Health/SafetyRising Health Costs, 4/06Pension Crisis, 2/06Avian Flu Threat, 1/06Domestic Violence, 1/06

International Affairs/PoliticsUnderstanding Islam, 11/06Change in Latin America, 7/06Pork Barrel Politics, 6/06Future of European Union, 10/05War in Iraq, 10/05

Social TrendsPhilanthropy in America, 12/06Privacy in Peril, 11/06Video Games, 11/06

Terrorism/DefensePort Security, 4/06Presidential Power, 2/06

YouthDrinking on Campus, 8/06National Service, 6/06Teen Spending, 5/06

CQ RESEARCHER PLUS ARCHIVE

Get Online Access to VitalIssues From 1923 to the Present

For a free trial, visit http://library.cqpress.com/trials.

For pricing information, call 1-800-834-9020, ext. 1906 or e-mail librarymarketing@cqpress.com.

*Editorial Research Reports, the predecessor to CQ Researcher, provides the same expert, nonpartisan reporting on the vital issues that have shaped our society.

CQ Press • 1255 22nd Street, NW, Suite 400 • Washington, DC 20037

CQ Researcher Plus Archive delivers fast, online access to ev- ery CQ Researcher report from 1991 to the present, PLUS lets you ex- plore the complete archive of Editorial Research Reports* from 1923-1990. Search and browse over 3,600 in-depth reports.

Loaded with handy online features, CQ Researcher Plus Archive provides the trustworthy reporting and the advanced online functionality today’s research-ers demand. The new “Issue Tracker” feature pro-vides quick links to past and present reports on the specific topics you need.

New!