Environmental impacts of pig farming

Introduction
Industrial pig farming, also known as a subset of poses numerous threats to environmental justice. CAFOs house thousands of swine and other farm animals in confined areas, where feces and waste often spread to surrounding neighborhoods, polluting air and water with toxic waste particles. Waste from these farms have the potential to carry pathogens, bacteria (often antibiotic resistant), and heavy metals that can be toxic when ingested. respiratory ailment, increased stress, decreased quality of life, and higher blood pressure. Minority communities, which tend to include people of color and people with low income, often suffer the most adverse side effects from this pollution, as they lack the political advantage to deter or fight large industrial CAFOs. This improper way to get rid of waste is an attempt for CAFOs to be cost efficient. This presents an environmental injustice problem, since the communities do not receive any benefit from the operations, and instead, suffer negative externalities, such as pollution and health problems.
Environmental justice
The Midwest has traditionally been home to many hog CAFOs and was heavily populated with them during the mid 1980s to mid 1990s. Many of the hog CAFOs were notably known to be in the Black Belt US region, which included many African American slaves working on plantations. Even after the slaves were emancipated, most of them still worked in the area as sharecroppers or as tenant farmers. Even today, many black residents in the Black Belt region face high levels of poverty, poor living conditions, and low quality of education, employment, and health care. The high density of CAFOs and the corresponding negative externalities in these minority communities calls a need to investigate the environmental injustices in the region. In this particular region, it is likely that the industry took the path of least resistance in situating the CAFOs in these areas, as the residents of this area do not have high political or economic power within their society, and also because the land is cheap. Residents that can afford to move away from these CAFOs are most likely do so, but those that cannot have little to no choice to live by them, where face the consequences that come from these sites, including pollution. In 2000, Sociology Professor Bob Edwards from East Carolina University conducted a study and discovered that larger minority populations were surrounded by higher density of hog populations as opposed to urbanized counties with a higher population of whites, and therefore, were exposed to higher concentrations of hog waste. Furthermore, in communities that face higher rates of poverty and a lack of political advantage, there are few resources to fight against environmental injustices.
This area has become known as the Stroke Belt because the death rate has become so high resulting from cerebrovascular diseases and high blood pressure with increased exposure to hydrogen sulfide. The hydrogen sulfide particles in the waste have been found to cause breathing difficulties, sore throats, skin/eye irritation, nausea, stress, and anxiety.
North Carolina
In 2014, National Geographic wrote a piece on the extent of the contamination in North Carolina. Swine sales in the state (second largest pork producer in the nation) were nearly $3 billion in 2012, and the state received alarming attention in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd caused waste pods on the swine ponds to overflow, polluting the water supply. National Geographic suggested that despite the execution of a $17 million research project on waste in the area, no one in the state seemed to know what to do with the pig waste, which as a huge issue considering that there are nearly as many pigs as people. Swine have been estimated to produce 15.5 million tons of manure in one year, and in order to deal with that wast, farmers turn to the dreaded lagoon and spray field system, which essentially covers the easter part of the state in a layer of feces. Though there are regulations in place, such as forbidding farmers from spraying waste on the fields when it is raining or when it is misty, there are not enough active regulators to monitor for this activity and this is also not a sure way to prevent the sprayed waste from drifting into neighboring communities and onto bodies of water nearby. Regulation will become even more crucial as the number of hog operations will continue to increase (Iowa's hog population for example has increased from 15.3 million in 2000 to 20.7 million in 2014 In October 2014 a lagoon filled with 100,000 gallons of feces water spilled from a hog farm in Greene County, North Carolina contaminating nearby water with a host of potential parasites, viruses, hormones, pharmaceuticals and antibiotic resistant bacteria. Further, this feces, full of nitrogen and phosphorus, has the dangerous potential of creating harmful algal blooms. After the passage of Murphy’s Laws and other similar bills, there was a rapid increase in industry in North Carolina, where the population of swine was estimated around 9-10 million. Each of those hogs produces eight times the feces as a human, causing a crucial need for regulation and maintenance for that waste.
Regulation and laws could not keep up with the rapid explosion of the hog farming and spread of CAFOs in the early 2000s, which has caused severe harm and health impacts over time. Furthermore, agencies with jurisdiction over CAFOs are typically environmental or natural resource state-run agencies, as opposed to local health departments. This is an advantage for addressing environmental impacts but a disadvantage for human health concerns. Additionally, although there are laws and regulations in place, such as the Swine Farm Environmental Performance Standards Act, which prohibits new waste lagoons and mandates that new CAFOs must use technology that will prevent discharge of waste, these regulations did not mandate for existing CAFOs to clean up or regulate the pollutants within their lagoons, making it more costly to clean up these wastes and other consequential harms.
Effects on water contamination
Many of these CAFOS store the swine waste in giant vats often referred to as lagoons. These lagoons often contain pathogens such as salmonella, pharmaceuticals like antibiotics and antimicrobials, as well as nitrogen and phosphorous. This can lead to widespread pollution within the watershed that the CAFO is located within. The water from these lagoons leaches out into the soil and trickles down into the water table beneath. Unlike human sewage, which is always treated with chemical and mechanical filtration, the waste from these lagoons is untreated when it is released back to the environment. Spills are the most common contributor to pollution, but regardless of spills, toxic nutrients like nitrates and ammonia can seep into the water table that lies just below the surface, infecting the groundwater that nearby communities drink.
Lithuania has 24 operating pig-breeding complexes which contribute to environmental pollution, such as water waste. Some of the causes for the environmental problems are inadequate sewage treatment and developing technologies. Farms lack adequate wastewater treatment systems, which release untreated wastewater to release into the environment in the form of contamination.
Surface water surrounding the perimeters of pig farms is collected through rain sewage drains.
In 2014, Mark Devries used spy drones to expose pig farms in North Carolina that were spraying untreated fecal waste into the surrounding areas. This causes the waste to dissipate to far-off communities. Smithfield Foods, the company responsible for one such factory, claimed this was a tactic used to fertilize its fields. It is true that historically hog feces have been used as fertilizer and can be done safely and without runoff, but the magnitude was described by Dan Whittle, a former senior policy associate at the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources as a "mass imbalance", with far too great a magnitude of fecal matter being sprayed for the crops being generated to not have significant spill off into neighboring plots of land. Furthermore, many residents of the surrounding areas of such farms complained that the industrially concentrated fecal matter creates an unbearable oder of a different magnitude than typical farm manure. Charlotte Savage, a resident who lives on a property separated from the Smithfield farm by an 80-foot path of forest, reported seeing her husband Julian faint at one point due to the smell, and that there house was also once surrounded by a three foot deep puddle of fecal matter. This described this as not an uncommon occurrence in this community.
Communities located near CAFOs experience negative health and environmental effects due to several factors associated with industrial pig farming. One main issue that arises out of intensive animal agriculture is the waste that the huge amount of animals in a small space produce. In the pig farming industry, there are huge amounts of waste and farmers are pressed to find somewhere to put it and dispose of it. Pig waste is similar to human waste, filled with bacteria, and has high amounts of ammonia. Pig waste is often kept in huge pools near the farm and often, although illegal, sprayed into the air to get rid of it. The waste then reaches neighboring towns, resulting in civilians not being able to even leave their house in order to avoid pig waste filled air. People living in nearby towns have suffered a variety of adverse health effects including respiratory diseases, infections, increased risk of cancer, and other health risks. (sources to be added)
Disease spread
There are many documented incidences of disease outbreaks occurring in communities where many work on pig farms, particularly industrial pig farms. MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a type of anti-biotic resistant bacteria) outbreaks have been correlated to pig farm workers, likely attributed to the strong antibiotics often used in industrialized pig farms. Other diseases can also spread in pig farms such as Salmonella.

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