Co-Sponsored by the Environmental Law Section.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
Factory farms generate and dispose of enormous quantities of animal waste. This waste contains nutrients responsible for dead zones and harmful algal blooms, pathogens like E. coli, antibiotics, and heavy metals. These industrial-scale operations are a leading source of water pollution nationally—posing a major threat to drinking water supplies and aquatic ecosystems—and “point sources” of pollution subject to regulation through Clean Water Act permits. Yet more than 50 years after the Act’s passage, EPA estimates that only about 30% of the largest factory farms are regulated. Even where Clean Water Act permits are in place, they often fail to adequately protect waterways. Emily Miller from Food & Water Watch will discuss legal efforts aimed at reining in factory farm water pollution.

Industrial animal agriculture, with subsidies from captured government agencies at the federal and state levels, has also transformed liquified manure (and the methane it produces) into a cash cow that greenwashes both factory farming and the fossil fuel industry.

Thousands of factory farms across the country profit from using methane digesters—which are largely funded by public money—to produce factory farm biogas. These digesters purport to capture methane from the manure that factory farms liquefy and store in massive cesspools. Factory farms profit from trading the environmental attributes of that purportedly captured methane in pollution trading schemes like California’s lucrative Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Christine Ball-Blakely from the Animal Legal Defense Fund will be speaking about the environmental and legal issues surrounding factory farm biogas.

SPEAKERS:
Christine Ball-Blakely | Animal Legal Defense Fund
Emily Miller | Food and Water Watch
Sarah A. Thompson | Ryther Law Group, LLP