CREDO: SNAP is one of the most effective and efficient ways to reduce poverty and boost the economy from the bottom. Currently, states have the leeway to allow people to access SNAP benefits (i.e., food stamps) while still building up some small savings for the future. But President Trump’s Department of Agriculture has a new proposal that would eliminate that flexibility and rip SNAP benefits away from more than 3 million people who rely on them for food security. In addition to robbing families and single adults of food security, changing who is eligible for SNAP benefits would also take school lunches off the trays of more than 500,000 children. This is unacceptable. >>>Tell the Department of Agriculture: Don’t cut SNAP benefits.
Humane Society of the United States: Shark populations are in crisis due to the global trade in shark fins. Every year, fins from as many as 73 million sharks are traded throughout the world to satisfy the demand for shark fin soup. To provide these fins, fishermen often engage in shark finning—a horrific practice in which they cut off sharks’ fins, then toss the mutilated animals back into the ocean where they drown, bleed to death, or are eaten alive by other fish. The shark fin trade has also played a major role in the steep decline of shark species worldwide, some populations of which have dropped by as much as 90 percent in recent decades. Although shark finning is prohibited in American waters, the U.S. still has a bustling market for shark fins. Consumers in most states can buy them, and the U.S. is one of the world’s top importers of shark fins as well as a transit point for international shark fin shipments. That means the U.S. contributes to shark finning and dwindling shark populations elsewhere in the world. The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act, H.R. 737 and S. 877, will help reduce this trade by prohibiting the import, export, possession, trade and distribution of shark fins and products containing shark fins—saving these animals from a devastating fate. >>>Urge your representatives and senators to support H.R. 737 and S. 877 to stop the trade of shark fins in the United States.
Care2: Foie gras, which is French for “fatty liver,” involves force-feeding restrained ducks, or geese, by shoving metal pipes down their throats multiple times a day, called gavage, and pumping them full of grain, or corn and fat, which leads to acute hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease. As a result, ducks suffer from malfunctioning livers that are ten times their normal size, among other health problems that leave many unable to even breathe normally, or just stand and move around. Fortunately, the practice is considered so inhumane that it’s already been banned in a dozen countries, while several others have a ban on force-feeding. Now, New York City may be next to act. Following a major win in California with the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the state’s ban, Councilwoman Carlina Rivera has just introduced a bill that would ban the sale of foie gras in New York City over concerns about the cruelty involved in its production. If it’s passed, anyone found breaking the law will be facing fines of up to $1,000, up to a year in jail, or both. >>>Urge the NYC Council to ban foie gras.
The EFL article “10 Ways Andrew Wheeler Has Decimated EPA Protections in Just One Year,” by Elliott Negin (Truthout, July 11, 2019), incorrectly stated that “the design improvements automakers have made so far to meet the [fuel efficiency] standards have already saved drivers more than $86 trillion at the pump since 2012.” The correct figure is $86 billion. Sorry. It has been corrected. Thanks to EFL reader RexBC from Dallas for letting us know.
Parting thought…
“Almost every single major environmental problem could be solved by a global shift toward plant-based eating.” —James Cameron, foreword to “Food Is the Solution: What to Eat to Save the World,” by Matthew Prescott (Flatiron Books, 2018)
Care2: Our planet is losing species at a rate faster than any time since the dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the earth 65 million years ago. And yet in the face of this extinction crisis, Republicans in the U.S. Congress are working to dismantle the law that gives species on the brink a fighting chance. In the last 10 years, more than 300 bills have been introduced that take aim at the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the vast majority by Republican legislators. They’ve attempted to limit authorities from listing new endangered species based on the economic costs of protecting that given species, and whether or not it is native to the U.S. They’ve even tried to force wildlife experts to get Congress’s permission for every single listing decision. The ESA is an environmental success story. It’s helped save wolves, crocodiles, whooping cranes and many more species from annihilation. In the face of climate change and human development putting more species at risk, we need to strengthen—not weaken—every tool we have to fight back. >>>Urge Republican lawmakers to oppose any bill that weakens the Endangered Species Act.
Pacific Environment: Our oceans are drowning in plastic. Around the world, it suffocates sea turtles, starves seabirds, destroys marine habitat, and clogs local rivers. In fact, we’re on track to have more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans. Zero waste grassroots campaigners have promoted the concept of zero waste in Vietnam, which helped inspire Vietnam’s prime minister to commit to banning single-use plastic nationwide by 2025. But if we’re going to win the battle against the plastic pollution crisis, we have to fight it at home, too. The U.S. produces more waste per person than any other country in the world, and instead of working to stem the tide of pollution, American plastic manufacturers want to dramatically increase production over the next decade. Over 270 organizations from across the country are demanding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency do its job and stop Big Plastic from polluting our oceans and communities. >>>Urge the EPA to protect communities and oceans from the rising tide of plastic pollution.
Fur Free Minneapolis: The fur trade is a brutal industry where millions of animals such as foxes, minks, rabbits, dogs, cats, raccoons, and chinchillas are killed every year. Most of these animals are raised on fur farms, where they are confined to a life of misery in cages that are barely bigger than their bodies. They live through intense stress and engage in psychotic behaviors like repetitive pacing, self-mutilation and cannibalism. These animals endure this life only to be killed in some of the most inhumane ways. They are electrocuted and stunned, and some are still alive as they are beaten and skinned. They are submitted to this suffering solely for the sake of their fur. Fur farms pollute our water systems with phosphorus, causing algae to grow faster than ecosystems can handle, which in turn leads to the death of fish and plants and reduces the use of the water for human purposes such as consumption and swimming. Fur farms also use at least four times the amount of resources (water and feed) as farms producing plant-based fabrics. In this day of countless eco and animal-friendly fabrics, there is no need for this violent industry. >>>Urge the Minneapolis City Council to pass an ordinance that bans the sale of new fur products within the city.
Organic Consumers Association: Glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is the most widely used herbicide in the world. Its residues are found in water and soil. It’s sprayed along roadsides, sidewalks, parks and playgrounds, gardens, and on school grounds. Testing shows a variety of foods contain glyphosate. It has been detected in the urine of the majority of people who have submitted samples for testing, and has been found in breast milk. Not only does it damage the placenta, it crosses the placenta, which may result in birth defects. In March 2015, the World Health Organization classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, based on numerous scientific studies linking glyphosate to a range of cancers, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, renal cancers, skin cancers and pancreatic cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently reviewing glyphosate and is accepting public comments until September 3, 2019. >>>Urge the EPA to ban glyphosate.
Care2: Bumblebees have suffered immensely in the 21st century. Since the 1990s, scientists estimate that 90 percent of the bumblebee population has been lost. Many factors have contributed to their decline, but chief among them is that bumblebee habitat has dropped by 87 percent. Yet despite these shocking numbers, it took the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) until 2017 to add the rusty patched bumblebee to the Endangered Species List. It was supposed to be a new beginning. But since then, USFWS has missed its legal deadlines to protect bumblebee habitat. When the agency was granted an extension, it missed the new deadline, too. Among the most important pollinators, bumblebees are essential to keeping our environment healthy and keeping people fed. We need them to keep our crops growing and sustain healthy environments. Bumblebees help keep us alive. The least we can do is hold our government accountable to do what is required to save them. >>>Urge USFWS to take immediate action to protect bumblebee habitat and save these critical pollinators from extinction.
Lady Freethinker: In a devastating assault on protected whale populations, Japan announced its withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and has resumed killing whales commercially as of July 1, 2019. The slaughter of the whales is brutal and horrific. Whalers attack them with a harpoon loaded with explosives. When it makes contact with the animal, shrapnel is propelled into their bodies and the prongs of the harpoon spread open to stop the whale from escaping. Death is slow and excruciating. Japan has continued to kill whales under the guise of scientific research over the last 30 years. This year, 122 of 333 minke whales murdered for “research” were pregnant and 53 were youths. Japan plans to hunt minke, sei and Bryde’s whales along the Pacific coast, devastating these protected species. >>>Urge the Japanese government to reverse their cruel and short-sighted decision to bring back commercial whale hunting.
Change agent: In his latest book, “Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press, 2018, 2nd ed.), Joseph Romm, founding editor of the blog Climate Progress, argues that energy conservation has the potential to be the largest source of reductions in greenhouse gases (GHG). He asks, “For the majority of the biggest GHG emitters in the world, especially those in the developed countries, how many energy-intensive activities we do every week and every year are truly vital, something we could not live without? How big a house is vital? How much driving discretionary? How much flying? These are not questions that can be easily answered today.” Romm wonders about how motivated people will be in 2030 to change their emitting ways, “as it becomes more and more painfully clear that not changing behavior will have catastrophic impacts for billions of people, including their own children and grandchildren.”
Ticking time bomb: Investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer started writing about Lyme disease in 2012 for Poughkeepsie Journal, but as she soon found out, it “proved to be a story far beyond what I’d envisioned … a minefield of controversy with patients caught in the middle.” In her recent book, “Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change” (Island Press, 2018), Pfeiffer sheds new light on another creeping menace of a warming world. “[W]hile Lyme is firmly rooted in thousands of locales, it is surely not confined there are climate changes, ticks move, and cases mount,” she writes, pointing out that the disease is found in at least 30 countries and yields up to 400,000 new cases each year in the U.S. alone. “Lyme disease is moving, breaking out, spreading like an epidemic.”
Keeping it simple: In her book “Simple Acts to Save Our Planet: 500 Ways to Make a Difference” (Simon and Schuster, 2018), Michelle Neff makes the case that “little acts really do add up to big change,” offering a reminder that big global scourges like plastic trash and food waste are just the cumulative effects of small bad decisions made by billions of people every single day. Neff, a writer for the environmental website One Green Planet, offers many easy ways to reduce our personal impact on the planet, from obvious techniques like buying detergent and dish soap in boxes instead of plastic bottles, to more innovative ideas, like creating rain gardens, which help to reduce stormwater runoff and prevent pollutants from entering local streams and lakes.
Parting thought…
“To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.” —Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Environmental Advocates of New York: Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency found there were no safe levels of the pesticide chlorpyrifos and proposed a national ban. The proposal was later rejected by the Trump administration. Chlorpyrifos is extremely toxic. It has been linked to neurodevelopmental defects—like ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and lower IQ. It also significantly impacts wildlife. The Trump administration suppressed a U.S. Fish and Wildlife analysis from being published that found chlorpyrifos threatens more than 1,200 endangered species. Dow Chemical—chlorpyrifos’ main manufacturer—has strong ties to this administration and even gave Trump’s inaugural committee one million dollars right before it reversed the ban on chlorpyrifos. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has the ability to be a leader on this issue and protect New York public health and the environment from this toxic pesticide. >>>Tell Governor Cuomo to fight Trump’s anti-science and anti-environment agenda and sign the bill banning chlorpyrifos in New York.
Change: If the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act is passed, the United States will have its first-ever general federal animal cruelty law. The PACT Act will allow the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to crack down on malicious cruelty and the sexual exploitation of innocent animals. The legislation will build on the federal “animal crush” video law that was enacted in 2010, which banned the creation, sale and distribution of obscene videos that show animals being crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled or subjected to other forms of heinous cruelty. The PACT Act will also enable the federal government to prosecute malicious acts of animal cruelty on federal property such as military bases, federal prisons, airports and national parks. Additionally, it will enable federal authorities to crack down on the practice of bestiality, which often involves a subculture where animals are moved across state lines and information is exchanged on websites that enable the exploitation to happen. The legislation, which has broad bipartisan support, is endorsed by more than 200 law enforcement agencies across the country. >>>Urge Congress to pass the Preventing Animal Cruelty (PACT) Act.
PETA: Air France is the only major airline in the world that transports monkeys—either bred in captivity on squalid farms or snatched from the wild, torn away from their homes and families—to laboratories in the United States. Once in the U.S., they’re transported to dealers such as Primate Products and to laboratories—including Covance, one of the largest importers of monkeys in the U.S.—where they’re imprisoned and tormented in experiments. During an 11-month investigation at a Covance laboratory in Vienna, Virginia, a PETA investigator uncovered many horrors. For instance, workers struck, choked and screamed obscenities at frightened and “uncooperative” monkeys. As a result of the investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited and fined Covance for serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act and the laboratory eventually shut down. >>>Tell Air France that you refuse to fly with them until they adopt and adhere to a formal policy prohibiting the transport of monkeys to laboratories.
“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. … We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.” —Wallace Stegner
Pew Charitable Trusts: Central Montana’s Russell Country is characterized by varied, rugged landscapes. Pristine prairie, sliced by the Musselshell River, transforms to rough and craggy breaks approaching the Missouri River. One of the last places to be settled in the West, this sparsely populated section of the country remains almost as remote and wild as it was over 200 years ago. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has just published for public comment the long-awaited draft plan for managing some of this wild country. Unfortunately, the BLM’s recommendation continues the Trump administration’s unprecedented pattern of eliminating conservation protections for special areas in the region, opening up these special places to oil and gas development. >>>Urge the BLM to take a balanced approach and protect some of these wild remote public lands from future development.
“Keep close to Nature’s heart … and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” —John Muir
Defenders of Wildlife: The Department of the Interior is trying to prematurely strip Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections from nearly all gray wolves in the lower 48 states. This—as Idaho’s tragic example proves—could be a death sentence for wolves, who are intelligent, closely bonded animals who play a vital role in nature. We need them more than ever to preserve biodiversity, strengthen ecosystems and reduce disease. They deserve our compassion, respect and legitimate efforts to coexist with them in the remaining places wild enough for wolves to roam. There is still time to speak out against national wolf delisting by adding your public comments by July 15. >>>Tell the Department of the Interior to protect America’s wolves by keeping them on the ESA list.
Lady Freethinker: For a dog, the gruesome dog meat industry is Hell on Earth. The animals are bound, crammed into tiny, rusty cages with dozens of other dogs, and transported to meat markets or slaughterhouses. Hungry, thirsty and suffering disease and broken bones, these terrified animals must then watch their cage mates tortured and killed as they wait for their turn. Because many people believe dog meat is more tender and provides more health benefits if the animal suffers during death, dogs are often hung, beaten or electrocuted by the butchers. While some countries have laws barring killing dogs and selling them for food, many of these regulations are unenforced. A new resolution introduced by the Los Angeles City Council aims to pressure governments throughout Southeast Asia to end the brutally cruel dog meat industry, in which tens of millions of dogs are tortured and killed for food in Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, Cambodia, China and other nations. >>>Urge Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to support and work to pass Councilmember Bob Blumenfield’s resolution CF 19-0002-S101 urging governments listed to ban the sale of dog meat and enforce animal cruelty laws.
Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research and Experimentation: Tucked away in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Montana, a government laboratory is carrying out painful and sickening experiments, infecting animals’ brains with deadly prions to study Chronic Wasting Disease, which causes great suffering to infected animals and is characterized by emaciation, abnormal behavior, loss of bodily functions and death. In one study, 19 monkeys had holes drilled into their skulls through which infected deer/elk tissue was injected into their brains, while 21 monkeys were force-fed the infected tissue. Most of the monkeys used for the CWD experiments were captured from the wild before they were infected more than 13 years ago, and kept alone in cages, isolated from each other and from the world before they died. After years of misery, the results of these grotesque animal experiments are vague and mixed, summarized by a published scientific review that concluded a “high level of uncertainty” regarding possible transmission of CWD to humans. These atrocious experiments are not only cruel and inconclusive, they are unnecessary. In a new study conducted at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a cerebral organoid model made from human cells, or a “mini-brain,” was used to study a deadly prion disease that affects humans known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). >>>Urge the National Institutes of Health to replace these inconclusive and cruel experiments on animals with cerebral organoids.
Amazon Frontlines: On April 26, the Waorani people of Ecuador won a historic court ruling protecting half a million acres of their territory in the Amazon rainforest from being earmarked for oil drilling. The ruling voids the consultation process with the Waorani undertaken by the Ecuadorian government in 2012, indefinitely suspending the auctioning of their lands to oil companies. The verdict also disrupts the contemplated auctioning of 16 oil blocks that cover over 7 million acres of indigenous territory, providing an invaluable legal precedent for other indigenous nations fighting to protect their lands from development. But the government’s appeal threatens this historic verdict and the land that it aims to protect. >>>Tell the Ecuadorian government to respect the court’s ruling and the Waorani’s decision to not sell their land.
Farmworker Justice: Farmworkers and their families are regularly exposed to high levels of pesticides in the fields where they work and in the communities where they live. Their exposure results in thousands of reported pesticide poisonings, illnesses and injuries each year. Unfortunately, farmworkers’ children cannot avoid exposure due to the proximity of their homes, schools and playgrounds to the fields where pesticides are applied, and are exposed to chlorpyrifos through airborne drift, water contamination and residues on their parents’ work clothes. In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos in residential settings because it posed unacceptable risks to young children. But farmworkers and their children across the country are still exposed to chlorpyrifos due to its use on apples, strawberries, broccoli, cherries, corn, almonds, citrus fruit, Christmas trees and other products. The EPA’s double standard on the health of farmworkers and their children must end. >>>Urge the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress to ban all agricultural uses of the highly toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos.
PETA: Breaking eyewitness footage shows elephants who were forced to participate in the cruel Chitwan Elephant Festival in Nepal being repeatedly struck and gouged with bullhooks—spear-like weapons with a sharp hook on one end—and their ears being violently yanked. Mahouts (handlers) also beat frightened elephants with other weapons, such as sticks and makeshift wooden knives. One mahout can be seen repeatedly jabbing a baby elephant behind the ear to force her to “play” football. Right after the match, eyewitnesses saw that she was suffering from several fresh, painful and bloody wounds. Since hearing from activists, Renault, MINISO, Carlsberg Group, United Beverage, Kumari Bank, Mega Bank, JGI, Chaudhary Group, Everest Insurance and Hotel Seven Star have cut ties with the event. However, Mount Everest Group and NRNA, which sponsored or advertised at the festival last year, have no plans to stop supporting it. >>>Tell Mount Everest Group and NRNA to stop supporting the cruel Chitwan Elephant Festival.
Care2: In four U.S. states, animal shelters have a special way to dispose of unwanted pets. They cram the animals into gas chambers, where they spend their last moments slowly asphyxiating to death. The process is terrifying, filled with panic and can take 30 minutes or even longer. This inhumane practice is almost universally condemned by animal welfare experts, who agree that the only appropriate option is euthanasia by injection. This alternative, while still extremely upsetting and tragic, is at least fast and minimally traumatic when performed by someone who has received humane euthanasia training. But in the states of Utah, Missouri, Ohio and Wyoming, that final kindness is not guaranteed for any shelter animal. Twenty-eight U.S. states have already banned the use of gas chambers in animal shelters. That’s not enough. >>>Tell Congress to make sure every animal is provided with a humane, dignified death by banning the use of asphyxiant gases to kill shelter animals.
Shark Stewards: Shark finning is the unsustainable and inhumane practice of cutting off a shark’s fins, often while the shark is still alive, and discarding the body into the ocean. The fins are used in shark fin soup and other dishes. Once an expensive dish limited to the nobility, shark fin soup is now widely sold to millions of consumers. As economies grow in Asia, a dish once reserved for the elite is now available to the middle class, and is in huge demand among many communities in China and around the world, including across the United States. Although shark finning is illegal in the U.S., the sale and trade of fins is still allowed in most states and shark fins are imported and re-exported, contributing to shark finning and other illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of sharks. The shark fin trade is increasing shark catch, placing more pressure on threatened species and driving overfishing of many shark species. >>>Urge Congress to pass HR 737 The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act of 2019.
Rainforest Rescue: The Caribbean: the name conjures up images of pristine white beaches, deep blue water and breathtaking coral reefs. Yet a local government seems oblivious to the ecological treasure just off its coast: The Cayman Islands want to ramp up mass tourism by building a new port for mega cruise ships—on top of a reef. The project would destroy twelve hectares of coral and other seabed forever. The sand and other solids disturbed by the dredging work would turn crystal-clear waters into an opaque soup, choking stationary underwater life forms as the sediment settles on them. The coral reef that has grown and thrived for centuries as a highly biodiverse ecosystem would be replaced by concrete. >>>Urge the Cayman Islands government to protect the Caribbean marine environment from the cruise industry.
Humane Society International: Right now across China, pets are being stolen, roaming dogs—owned and unowned—are violently grabbed from the streets and slaughterhouses are filled with terrified dogs. This cruelty supplies the country’s dog meat markets and the annual dog meat “festival” happening this week in Yulin. But this is only the beginning of their suffering. The journey to Yulin is a ruthless and appalling one. Crammed on top of each other and transported in trucks for days without food or water, some won’t make it alive. For those who do, they’ll wait, frightened and helpless, until it’s their turn to be pulled by the neck with iron tongs and beaten to death for someone’s meal. >>>Urge Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang to end Yulin and the dog and cat meat trade once and for all.
Environmental Advocates of New York: New York is on the verge of passing the strongest climate legislation in the country. The Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA) would rapidly transition the state’s economy off of fossil fuels, invest 40 percent of the state’s climate fund into low-income communities and communities of color, and set high wage standards to make green jobs. >>>New Yorkers, tell your legislators to pass the CCPA.
Factory farms are exempt from reporting requirements under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Now a new tool can provide solid evidence of the environmental harm they can cause.
By Tia Schwab, Independent Media Institute
It has been almost a year since Hurricane Florence slammed the Carolinas, dumping a record 30 inches of rainfall in some parts of the states. At least 52 people died, and property and economic losses reached $24 billion, with nearly $17 billion in North Carolina alone. Flood waters also killed an estimated 3.5 million chickens and 5,500 hogs.
A lesser-known impact of the devastating hurricane was revealed through satellite photos released after the storm. Excessive rainfall flooded concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in low-lying areas, carrying riverbed sediment and animal waste previously stored in open-air lagoons into nearby waterways and then into the Atlantic. The difference between the photos, taken just five months apart before and after the storm, is striking.
Generally, CAFOs dispose of animal waste by spraying it as fertilizer and storing the excess in massive underground pits or open-air lagoons, where sulfur-eating bacteria often turn the mixture bright pink. Given that cropland can absorb only so much, a good deal of the waste ends up in groundwater, rivers, streams, and the ocean. In fact, agriculture is the leading cause of pollution in the nation’s rivers and lakes, according to the EPA, much of it emanating from large-scale factory farms.
Floods can have even more devastating consequences for water quality. The risk is particularly pressing for North Carolina, a state regularly smacked by hurricanes, because it houses more than 2,200 hog CAFOs and 3,900 poultry CAFOs, and produces up to 10 billion gallons of animal waste a year. These estimates come from the Environmental Working Group.
One problem is that they are just that –– estimates.
The truth is no one really knows how much factory farm waste is escaping into our environment because no federal agency collects consistent and reliable information on the number, size, and location of large-scale agricultural operations, nor the pollution they’re emitting. This means there is considerable variation on how thoroughly states track and monitor CAFOs. Without this information, no one can monitor and hold CAFOS accountable for mismanaged waste and related health and environmental damage.
Stanford Law Professor Daniel Ho and Ph.D. student Cassandra Handan-Nader are hoping to change that. In a paper published in Nature Sustainability in April, they show how a new algorithm can help put CAFOs on the map. Their research focused on hog and poultry operations. The latter can contribute as much nutrient runoff to watersheds as pig operations but are largely unpermitted in North Carolina and therefore much harder to detect.
The Clean Water Act requires permits for CAFOs that discharge pollutants directly into federally regulated waters. However, permits are not required for facilities that may discharge pollutants, say, if there was a break in the manure storage tank or a hurricane. An estimated 60 percent of CAFOs do not hold permits, reported the EPA in 2011, and so monitoring these facilities for unintentional pollution is nearly impossible.
Due to the lack of information about CAFOs and the failure of the government to provide oversight, several environmental and public interest groups have conducted their own studies of the issue. Several of these organizations have hired contractors to manually scan satellite images or physically identify facilities by plane or car. But this process is time- and resource-intensive. For North Carolina alone, contractors need about six weeks to manually scan satellite images on Google Maps, according to the Environmental Working Group.
Ho and Handan-Nader’s automated approach could accomplish the same task in less than two days.
The development is a welcome one in an industry notoriously lacking in transparency. Around 25 states have pushed for “ag-gag” laws, which criminalize undercover filming or photography at factory farms without the consent of the owner. Nine states have passed these laws, and legislation is pending in two additional states, Kansas and North Carolina. In Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming, ag-gag laws were later struck down in higher courts as a violation of free speech and equal protection.
Proponents of ag-gag laws argue that they protect the animal agriculture industry, and farm owners’ privacy. Critics say it gives factory farmers license to continue practices that are dirty, unsafe, and cruel. “This project helps mitigate a dangerous dearth of information about CAFOs,” says Katie Cantrell, executive director of the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition. “Because CAFOs are exempt from reporting requirements under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, many communities across the United States are subjected to contaminated drinking water and dangerous levels of air pollutants, with little political recourse.”
The Public Health Menace No One Knows About
The health and environmental impact of CAFOs is indeed enormous. “CAFOs are large-scale facilities that house thousands if not tens of thousands of animals in very small spaces,” says Ho. “One CAFO can produce as much manure as a medium-size city in the United States”—with one critical difference: A medium-size city in the United States is required under the Clean Water Act to have a municipal wastewater treatment plant. CAFOs have no such treatment plant.
When animal manure escapes from CAFOs into nearby water sources, it can have devastating health consequences for people and ecosystems. Manure can contain nitrogen and phosphorus, pathogens such as E. coli, growth hormones, antibiotics, chemicals used as additives to the manure or to clean equipment, animal blood, and silage leachate from corn feed, reports the National Association of Local Boards of Health. Ammonia is also often found in surface waters surrounding CAFOs. When exposed to air, ammonium converts into nitrate, and elevated nitrate levels in drinking water have been connected to poor general health, birth defects, and miscarriages. For infants, it can mean blue baby syndrome and even death.
The New York Times recently exposed the devastating effects of nitrate contamination from animal manure in low-income farmworker communities in California’s Central Valley. The widespread application of chemical fertilizers and dairy cow manure has made the water unsafe for drinking, cooking, and even showering. Camille Pannu, the director of the Aoki Water Justice Clinic at the University of California, Davis, likens the situation to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. “Flint is everywhere here.”
Tying Data Patterns to Factory Farms
To put factory farms on the map, the Stanford team figured out how to teach a computer algorithm to analyze data patterns. They got help from Google’s advances in image learning, the USDA’s National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP), and the Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance.
The environmental groups supplied locations of CAFOs they had collected manually. The researchers matched those locations to NAIP satellite images, hand-validating the presence of CAFOs using these same processes. Once CAFOs were confirmed, the team combined this information with open-source image-recognition tools released by Google, which were already trained to identify different types of objects, buildings, people and animals in photos.
In receiving this information, the algorithm was retrained to identify CAFOs by looking for certain visual cues. “Swine farms were identifiable by compact rectangular barns abutted by large liquid manure pits, and poultry by long rectangular barns and dry manure storage,” note the researchers in their report. The algorithm could then be applied to unscanned locations to identify unseen CAFOs.
Handan-Nader explains this process as the retraining of an existing technology. “Instead of working with a baby, we got a toddler, who knows what an arm is, but maybe doesn’t know what an entire person looks like,” says Handan-Nader. In this case, the arm is a building, and an entire person is a CAFO.
To improve the tool’s accuracy, the team also fed the algorithm photos of stadium bleachers, airplane hangars, and mobile home parks, which only appear to match the CAFO visual cues. “Just as humans learn from being tricked, so does a computer,” says Handan-Nader.
There’s another way to look at the research effort, she added. They were “very unglamorously looking at poop for months and months.”
It paid off. Ho and Handan-Nader identified 15 percent more poultry farms than what was found through a manual census. The researchers estimated their algorithm could identify 95 percent of existing large-scale facilities using fewer than 10 percent of the resources required for a manual census.
“Dr. Ho’s work makes my job much easier,” says Soren Rundquist, the director of spatial analysis at the Environmental Working Group. “While humans will always need to validate and quality check computer-generated results, any innovation for locating CAFOs will make the process much more efficient. This is paramount when keeping up with an industry that can grow quickly, having an immediate impact on the environment and public health.”
Replacing Guesswork With Evidence
The tool works with conventional satellite imagery, but future iterations could be trained to identify new spectral signatures, like building materials, lagoons, or actual discharges into waterways. The tool could also help detect other forms of environmental degradation, like oil spills. Stephen Luby, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, is already using a similar technology to track brick kilns, a huge source of air pollution.
Katie Cantrell envisions using the tool to provide solid evidence of the harm done by factory farming. “This mapping project provides an invaluable resource for advocates at the local, state, and national level,” she says. “They can use it to document correlations between the location and density of CAFOs and socioeconomic data, health data such as asthma and mortality rates, and air and water pollution data, that can hopefully help drive better regulation and protection of front-line communities.” Adds EWG’s Rundquist, “The need for this utility is becoming more important as public information around these operations becomes more opaque and unavailable.”
In the meantime, Missouri voted last month to prevent counties from passing more stringent laws regulating CAFOs. Now, local standards for health and environmental protection cannot be tougher than those of the state. In doing so, Missouri joins seven other states this year who have considered strengthening protections for CAFOs, which raises the question: Who is strengthening protections for our environment and local communities?
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Tia Schwab is a news fellow for Stone Pier Press, a San Francisco-based environmental publishing company with a food focus. She recently graduated from Stanford University, where she studied human biology with a concentration in food systems and public health. She was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and she is passionate about using storytelling to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system.
This article was produced as part of a partnership between Stone Pier Press and Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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