The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision means the current administration does not intend to regulate air emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), according to Heinzen. However, the Clean Air Act still requires permits for facilities whose emissions exceed applicable thresholds, and the amnesty previously granted to some facilities is no longer valid now that the agreement has been signed.
Rob Brenneman, president of the National Pork Producers Council, which has long supported the decision, said in a statement: “This move confirms what farmers have known for years: every farm is different and there is no one-size-fits-all model that will work for them.”
Uncertainty over emissions estimates
“There is no methodology published by the EPA to estimate emissions,” Heinzen said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t good research available on emissions from different types of animal feeding operations.”
California has developed a livestock-emissions model that it uses to enforce its own air-quality regulations, Heinzen noted. “We don’t have a single set of national emission factors from the EPA,” she said. “This does not exempt these factory farms from the obligation to comply with federal law.”
Still, under the current administration, air emissions from factory farms are likely to go unmeasured and unmonitored for some time. “No one can estimate anything,” Heinzen said. “As EPA stated in a press release, we are in no way trying to enforce the law.”
Methane reporting remains restricted
Air-compliance agreements did not apply to methane. The US livestock industry is the nation’s largest source of methane, but Congress effectively blocked livestock facilities from reporting methane emissions in annual spending bills.
Georgina Gustin covers agriculture for Inside Climate News and has spent much of her journalism career reporting on the intersection of agriculture, food systems, and the environment. Her work has earned her numerous awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism. She has twice been named Glenn Cunningham Agriculture Journalist of the Year, once with colleagues at ICN. She has worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Connecticut, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and CQ Roll Call. Her articles have also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Geographic’s The Plate, among other publications. She is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Colorado Boulder.
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News.
Source: arstechnica.com
