The CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) industry raises large numbers of pigs, chickens, and turkeys in poor conditions. Hundreds of pigs or thousands of birds are raised in warehouses in close proximity to one another. Liquid hog waste flows into open air pits called lagoons and birds create solid waste called litter. Facilities that produce liquid waste fill the air of surrounding communities with gases mainly made up of methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO₂), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), water vapor and more. These gases make life near CAFOs unbearable, and can be toxic and highly flammable. (More on this in the biogas section) There is not enough research on the environmental and health impact of animal facilities that produce dry waste.

Impacts to Our Watersheds

Animal waste contaminates water with disease causing microbes, and veterinary pharmaceuticals (antibiotics and other drugs) that seriously impact the environment and public health.

These operations also add too many nutrients to soil, surface water and groundwater (including wells). Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), fatty acids, phenols and indoles, and sometimes trace amounts of heavy metals like copper, zinc, and iron from animal waste cause hypoxia (low oxygen levels), algal blooms, and harm to aquatic life.

Impacts to Human Health

Long exposure to CAFO chemicals, while working in or living near CAFOs, causes infections, respiratory problems, such as coughing, and affects neurological functions, causing headaches, dizziness, and sometimes permanent central nervous system damage. The presence of CAFOs in the community also increases the risk of many types of health conditions including anemia, kidney disease, septicemia, tuberculosis, infant mortality, low birth weight, and a number of cancers.

The Biogas industry, an offshoot of the swine CAFO industry, captures and transports foul-smelling gases for fuel. The gases are collected by capping the waste lagoons at a swine CAFO. The exact proportion of each gas can change depending on the anaerobic (without oxygen) digestion of the animal waste in the lagoons. Some of these gases, such as hydrogen sulfide, are toxic. Another gas, methane, is not toxic, but it can cause asphyxiation, or suffocation, by pushing out oxygen in confined spaces.

Biogas, especially the methane content, is extremely flammable and is a serious safety hazard because it is produced and transported so close to where communities live. In addition, biogas companies frequently rely on eminent domain to annex the land necessary for pipeline infrastructure. Eminent domain means that the government can take someone’s land even if they don’t want to sell for “public use” projects, in this case related to energy, as long as they pay the original owner a fair price for the land. These pipelines criss-cross North Carolina, above ground, underground and sometimes over bodies of water.