Last summer, the spread of dangerous
phosphorus algal blooms in Lake Erie left hundreds of thousands of Ohio
residents without safe drinking water. Not surprisingly, agricultural pollution
from factory farms was the primary source of the contamination.
In fact, animal excrement and other agricultural runoff from
large-scale farms has polluted nearly one-third of rivers in the U.S.
A solution proposed at the time was treating farm waste in
the same way as human waste: through a sewage treatment facility. Unfortunately,
according to a new article from In
These Times, this would be less of a solution and more of a problem:
Establishing sewers for CAFO waste would only make it easier for agribusiness to add more animals to a bad system while concentrating the nutrient load and pharmaceuticals (such as antibiotics widely used in industrial animal operations) to then put back into the lake after expensive and ineffectual “treatment.
With the drought in California reaching epic proportion, the
Great Lakes, which provide 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, have become
an even more precious resource.
Want to withdraw your support of factory farms and protect
our vital natural resources? Check out ChooseVeg.com
for meal ideas, recipes, and more.