Frequently Asked Environmental
Questions About Livestock Production
- What is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation?
- What is the difference between an "animal unit" and "animal threshold numbers"?
- Are hogs raised in industrial warehouses or factories representing cruel and inhumane treatment of animals?
- Does a farm with 10,000 hogs produce as much waste as a city of 40,000 people?
- Are livestock farms destroying our environment?
- Are livestock owners and growers doing everything they can to protect our environment?
- What is the function of waste treatment lagoons?
- Are waste treatment lagoons the same as "cess pools"?
- Do lagoons ever leak?
- Are lagoons deliberately designed to maximize the emission of ammonia into the air?
- Is there a routine recommendation that lime be added to lagoons to volatilize more ammonia?
- Have waste treatment lagoon research and design criteria considered odor emissions and water quality?
- Do emergency spillways in lagoon embankments encourage illegal discharges?
- Did one lagoon failure in North Carolina release 35 million gallons of stored swine manure into the Neuse River and kill 10 million fish?
- Has technology for livestock production and waste treatment only been developed for the large contract farms while ignoring the small independent farms?
- Do waste treatment processes cause organic matter and nutrients to disappear?
- Can municipal & industrial waste treatment technology simply be transferred off-the-shelf to the farm?
- Is the application of livestock and poultry manure an appropriate use of land resources?
- Is hog manure defined as a toxic and hazardous waste?
- Should all animal manure and wastewater be soil incorporated when land applied?
- What are agronomic rates?
- What is a 25-year, 24-hour rainfall event?
- What are perennial streams and how are they defined?
- Does the estimate of manure nutrient surpluses in some North Carolina counties imply existing water quality or other environmental problems in those counties?
- Should a new livestock farm siting consider only the individual farm-to-farm-edge guidelines and standards?
- Does the majority of potential odor from a hog farm originate during irrigation?
- Are unpleasant odors always associated with harmful health effects?
- Since adoption of North Carolina's odor rules, have odor complaints against hog farms been verified?
- Does the production of livestock contribute 50% of all ammonia emissions into the atmosphere?
- How are these ammonia emissions from livestock estimated?
- How much of a problem are these ammonia emissions?
- Have livestock farm gas emissions been proven to have caused large impacts on our environment?
- Is there a direct linkage between livestock production and outbreaks of Pfiesteria?
- Has the incidence of hog-related infectious diseases increased during the recent growth pork production in North Carolina in the 1990's?
- Are the incidence of the protozoan parasites, Giardia and Cryptosporidium, in streams and surface waters always linked to the presence of livestock?
- Can waste treatment and land utilization of organic nutrients be regulated with exact science?
- Is it reasonable to expect livestock farmers to achieve a zero-tolerance, i.e., absolutely no discharge of pollutants?
- What is the Smithfield Agreement?
- What is an ISO 14000 Environmental Management System?
- What is the Premium Standard Farms Environmental Trust ?
- Which treatment technology(ies) would you recommend today to completely replace manure treatment lagoons and spray irrigation systems on swine farms?
- Must we wait until everything has been researched and studied completely before we act or recommend anything?
