Animal Animals : Animal Waste

Concentrated animal feeding operations have industrialized a once natural process. Designed as large-scale agricultural and livestock operations, CAFOs seek to maximize production of meat, dairy, and eggs through low cost and larger profit margins. CAFOs are defined as animal feeding operations that confine a certain number of animals to a small space for up to or over forty-five days. Vegetation is minimal and the waste must be controlled into a lagoon or separate water supply. Farmers find benefits in the technological innovations and advancements provided by these farming practices that increase efficiency in overall livestock production. However, the large-scale confinement and mechanization pose large environmental hazards and public

Eutrophication is a concern in the Chesapeake Bay. Eutrophication is caused by excessive amounts of nutrients. Excessive nutrients in the bay have negative effects on the bay's ecosystem. The extra nutrients make the environment unbalanced. The extra nutrients cause a chain reaction that eventually kills most of the organisms in that area. This is what is known as a dead zone.

Did you ever wonder how things you do everyday effect the Chesapeake Bay watershed and Its tributaries? Well, It turns out to be not so good. One of the main causes for the Bay’s bad health are nutrients which are caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the air and water. Plants and animals need nutrients to survive but when too many nutrients are in the water they fuel the growth of algae blooms and create conditions that are harmful for aquatic creatures.

Industrial agriculture is currently the predominant food production system in the United States. It is distinguished by large-scale monoculture, abundant use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and meat production in CAFOs. CAFOs are ‘Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations’, otherwise known as factory farms, which aim to cram as many animals in one space to boost efficiency and profit at the expense of animal suffering and environmental hazards.

Back to the history, the eutrophication problem was first time concerned by public on Great lakes at the 1960s, the Lake Erie was covered by algae as a result of over dumped phosphorus from the sewage and other waste water, at that time, the Lake Erie was known as the “Dead Sea of North America”(Fitzpatrick, J. J., and Di Toro 1999). The reason cause this problem can be concluded in 2 points, 1. the stresses of overfishing, 2. development of phosphorus-based detergents. At the end of 1960, the Canada and the United States have realized the penetrance of this problem and finally sit on the table to sign an agreement that limiting phosphorus dumps to the Lake Erie, and plan to control existing unstoppable algal growth. Because of the awareness of Canada and US government, the concentration of phosphorus got a significant success. And this problem happened again during the 1990s, but this time the reason why this happen is more complexly.

A concentrated animal feeding operation, also known as CAFOs, is an animal feeding operation (CAFO) where animals are held in horrid conditions to be brutally slaughtered after over 45 days of torture. According to cafo.org, an informational website on everything there is to know about CAFOs, animals held in CAFOs are not able to breathe fresh air, are crammed together with hundreds of other animals, and don’t live the life they should. Animal welfare should be of the utmost importance, since eventually people will be buying pounds of them in supermarkets. Though they are slaughtered eventually, these food animals are put through such bad conditions that they have to be pumped and filled with antibiotics and hormones to keep them going and make them bigger for when they’re slaughtered. All those antibiotics could be extremely dangerous to the public health when it comes to consuming the product. Not only that, CAFOs are harmful to the environment as well. These animals are affected by these horrible conditions and in the long run, the environment and humans are too. Recently, there has been some major changes in the animal food policies throughout the states that have

Let me go all APES here. Water contamination has been an issue across the country. Nutrients like phosphorous, which are found in many fertilizers, can runoff into streams and rivers causing eutrophication. Eutrophication is just a fancy word for these organic nutrients causing a reduction in dissolved oxygen in

The exponential growth of human population, caused an unprecedented problem for the global ecosystem. (Carolina EcoKits, 2012) The increase in pollution brought upon great fear and concern about what types of contaminants were in the foods and water supply for citizens. In 1977, the Clean Water Act was passed, the act ensured that any release of pollutants at toxic levels into any water source was forbidden. (Carolina EcoKits, 2012) It allowed for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set guidelines and standards for how pollutants were emptied in navigable waters. (Carolina EcoKits, 2012)

Sewage treatment plants, air pollution, animal feed lots, and polluted runoff from cropland are four major sources to this issue. All of these forms of pollution create an overabundance of nitrogen and phosphorous in the water. According to The Chesapeake Bay Foundation,“The largest source of pollution to the Bay comes from agricultural runoff, which contributes roughly 40 percent of the nitrogen and 50 percent of the phosphorus entering the Chesapeake Bay.” Although nitrogen and phosphorous are beneficial in moderation for the organisms living in the Chesapeake Bay, they cause a notable amount of damage in excess. Excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous cause algal blooms. There are many different types of algae, some are good for the ecosystem, and some are dangerous and can cause “dead zones” where aquatic life no longer flourishes. Too much or too little of both good and bad algae can be extremely harmful to the marine

All of these articles offer distinct perspective on the eutrophication and anoxia in the Chesapeake Bay. Growing up in Washington, DC the Chesapeake bay holds a lot of cultural and environmental significance for myself and my community. Through these multiple perspectives one is better able to understand the anthropogenic change that has occurred and continues to persist in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. And most importantly, one can lean what we as scientists and citizens can do to ensure the health and longevity of a very important

In the course of the past year or so, the world has under gone immense natural disasters. Including but not limited to: hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires, blizzards, and more. These unfortunate events all have a source of which they occurred. At the same time, the world’s oceans have under gone less noticeable but apparent changes as well. These changes include temperature variations, heightened acidification, intensified salinity, and more. However, a specific issue is the effect of Indiana’s activities impacting ocean life through nutrient and sediment pollution. There is a multifarious number of reasons that could affect ocean life, even in Indiana, which one will discuss throughout this report. One will describe sediment runoff, the

Factory farms cause a lot of waste in fact, a place called Delmarva Peninsula has 600 million chickens which together all create a whopping 400 tons of manure in a single year but that is nothing compared to the US’ crazy 61 million tons of animal waste alone in a year. That is 130 times the amount of human waste! According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and cow manure has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in just twenty-two states! The amount of animals bred in Factory Farms will make these numbers rise dramatically too.

The cows would roam freely on the hillside and chickens look for food around the red, wooden barn. If you step back into the present you may realize that most farms today are very different than that of the past or what we would see in a painting. According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) there are more than 20,000 factory farms nationwide. This is a 30 percent increase from 2003. These farms are industrial-scale facilities where animals are treated as a product rather than a living creature. Thousands of animals are kept in these factories resulting in disease and contamination. In the widely acclaimed documentary Food Inc., directed by Robert Kenner, Carole Morison declared that “This isn’t farming. This is just mass production like an assembly line in a factory.” In fact there are so many animals that workers cannot even process the 1.3 billion tons of waste that is produced annually. To solve this problem, waste is piled into large open pools and sprayed onto the land resulting in health problems for not only the workers but the people who live nearby. Rivers, streams and groundwater may also get polluted from this process.

On Thursday, October 6th, 2016 I studied the Conodoguinet Creek in Cumberland County, PA. I went to the creek to study the health of the creek itself (Phosphate levels, Nitrate levels, Dissolved Oxygen levels, pH levels, and Alkalinity levels). My hypothesis was: If I test the Conodoguinet Creek for signs of acid rain, eutrophication, or other types of pollution, then the tests will reveal that the creek is healthy and has very low levels of pollution. Eutrophication, is the excessive richness of nutrients in a lake or other bodies of water, frequently due to runoff from the land, which causes a dense growth of plant life and death of animal life due to lack of dissolved oxygen. Dissolved Oxygen (or DO), is the microscopic bubbles

The concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), it is also called the animal feeding operation, it is the process to keep and take care of the animals in a confined place. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identify CAFO as the farm that take care and grow up the animals in a confined place for at least 45 days in a year without the presence of any grass during their growing (Frumkin, 2016). The waste results from growing the animals could have environmental health hazards, CAFO helps to confine the animals in an isolated space and ensure waste disposal in the proper way by following the EPA regulations. The operation is necessary to avoid any air pollution by the animal wastes that could release harmful gases like ammonia and