EPA WANTS TO REGULATE FACTORY FARMS AS INDUSTRIAL POLLUTERS
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:
WASHINGTON D.C.– – Environ-
mental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner
on March 5 personally announced an EPA plan
to regulate livestock feedlots, hog barns, and
poultry sheds like industrial plants.
For the first time invoking the Clean
Water Act against agricultural polluters, the
EPA will require about 6,600 of the biggest
factory-style farms in the U.S. to obtain pollution
permits and undergo routine federal
inspection. Anyone keeping more than 1,000
animal units, defined as 1,000 cattle, 2,500
swine, or 100,000 hens, would fall under the
new rules, to be phased in over seven years.
Not long ago, such a notion would
have been politically decried as a bureaucratic
assault on God, Mom, fried chicken, and
hamburgers, possibly thought up by animal
rights activists.