The Mitigation of Pollution Induced by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)

Abstract

Through hazardous agricultural practices and waste mismanagement, America’s Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) emit a significant amount of water and air pollution that causes a myriad of environmental and human health problems. This is an issue that can be largely mitigated through the implementation of technical, legislative, and holistic solutions. The following technical solutions will be discussed: editing pollutant diets, deploying air cleansing within CAFO structures, sprinkling vegetable oil on CAFO grounds, converting methane to energy, binding waste lagoons with geosynthetic clay liners, and installing riparian buffers. Furthermore, legislative solutions entail revising and enforcing existing regulations, imposing reflexive law, mandating nutrient management plans, offering federal credits, and revisiting the Farm System Reform Act. Finally, holistic alternatives regard hog hoop barns, free-range grazing, and changing consumer preferences. 
 This paper will examine the issue of CAFOs and the specifics of the pollution they emit and will primarily focus on practical solutions to it. The methods used to contextualize the problem and discover possible solutions will be content and meta analysis research. Ultimately, the final take away was that combining technical and legal solutions–forcing physical change through legislative mandates–will cause the most significant reduction of CAFO pollution.