EPA and Bush Administration Finally Busted for Gutting Factory Farm

October 9, 2008

Duh, what a surprise. Not.

In 2007, Organic Bytes reported that the Bush Administration had eliminated pollution laws that required factory farm pollutants to be monitored and documented. In place of the old regulations, a new program was created that invited factory farms, which are more specifically known as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations ), to monitor their own pollution and voluntarily submit those reports to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Not surprisingly, last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report indicating the new factory farm pollution policies aren't really working very well. According to the report, the EPA "is responsible for regulating CAFOs and requires CAFOs that discharge certain pollutants to obtain a permit." Yet according to the report, the EPA isn't effectively regulating factory farm pollution, because the agency currently has little data on how

much and what type of pollution these CAFOs are putting out. Even more embarrassing, the EPA's data is so weak, they don't even know how many CAFOs there are. Given the fact that one of these factory farms can put out as much raw sewage as a U.S. city, the GAO report suggests it might be a good if the EPA considered restarting that whole monitoring and enforcing thing it used to do.EPA and Bush Administration Finally Busted for Gutting Factory Farm Pollution Laws _ http://gao.gov/ products/ GAO-08-944_ (http://gao.gov/ products/ GAO-08-944)