Big farms have big impacts—and solutions?

A working group reports on environmental and human health effects linked to factory farms.

Farms that raise poultry, swine, and cattle at an industrial scale also have industrial kinds of environmental impacts. Newly published results from a workshop convened in 2004, cosponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, address the major issues of such operations.

USDA

Large farms for pigs and other animals pose future environmental and human health threats for which solutions can be planned, researchers say.

Known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), the farms can affect air quality, contaminate local water sources, and create other environmental and human health concerns. The authors forecast future problems from CAFOs and suggest solutions in an overview article and five papers published in Environmental Health Perspectives online November 14.

The scientists and policy makers highlight the possibility of infectious-disease epidemics from the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in CAFOs. They suggest phasing out antimicrobial growth compounds in poultry and fish and physically separating swine and poultry to control influenza.