Five Takeaways from the Right To Harm Documentary

Last week, Eleanor discussed the path of least resistance in regards to environmental justice. Near the end of her article she suggested the documentary Right to Harm to learn more. As a sucker for a riveting documentary, I decided to watch it, and what I learned astounded me.

Here are five things I learned from the 2019 documentary Right to Harm.

90 to 95 percent of our animal products come from concentrated animal feeding operations.

Visuals of mom and pop farms with red barns and cows grazing across rolling hills are rooted in an outdated perception of agriculture. Agricultural behemoths boast these myths while funding nostalgia-centric campaigns that omit the changing face of American farming. In doing so, elected politicians write lenient environmental regulations on the behalf of Big Agriculture while alluding to old-fashioned, self-sufficient farmers.

Since the 1950’s, the livestock sector has undergone a major shift from free range farms to intensive animal feeding operations. These production facilities, commonly known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are landless farms that house more than 1,000 animal units in a single facility, equivalent to 125,000 laying hens, 700 dairy cows, and 2,500 swine. Instead of allowing the animals to feed on open pastures, they are confined to windowless barns with open feedlots that encourage rapid muscle gain.

These operations have been vertically integrated by agribusiness conglomerates, meaning they control all of the steps in the supply chain, from the breeding hatchery to the slaughterhouse. As a result, it is economically challenging for independent farmers to enter the market and make a living. The rise of corporate consolidation has allowed for four companies to control 85 percent of the beef packing industry, 66 percent of pork packing, and 51 percent of broiler chicken processing. These industrial farms are far from hog heaven.

Where there is livestock, there is waste.

CAFOs produce an enormous amount of waste– 369 million gallons a year, to be exact. CAFO operators dispose of animal urine and feces by storing it in pink hued lagoons where it undergoes anaerobic digestion and decomposes into fertilizer, at which point it can be sprayed onto crop fields for soil nutrition.

This sounds all fine and dandy, right? Wrong– the sheer enormity of waste overwhelms the absorptive capacity of the soil, leading to runoff and groundwater contamination. In Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, nearly 26,000 gallons of liquid manure is applied per acre. This would equate to 1,000 cows on one acre of land all defecating at the same time – an unimaginable occurrence in nature.

As the waste breaks down, the putrid smell of rotten eggs is a clear indicator of volatile organic compounds such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide floating through the air. Not only does the smell travel, particulate matter comprised of dry manure and feed end up ingrained in the brick and mortar of nearby homes. Elsie Herring, a Duplin County resident in North Carolina, spoke about her experience living a third of a mile away from a hog operation and a mere eight feet from a spray field. She recounts the first time she had animal manure sprayed on her and asks the camera, “why would you feel like you have a right to blow animal waste on me?” For those lucky enough to avoid showers of waste, they face an abundance of other nuisances.

Residents living near CAFOs are exposed to air and water pollutants that adversely affect their health.

The documentary traverses America, visiting five rural communities plagued by CAFOs. While geographical differences set each community a part, every resident tells a unique story about the deterioration of their health.

At a public health meeting in Tonopah, Arizona, men and women from the crowd exclaim their newfound ailments, ranging from sores and lesions to asthma that is so debilitating it requires an inhaler. Mothers and fathers across state lines point to stock piled medicine cabinets as they recall stories of their children experiencing high temperatures, headaches, nausea, vomiting, and more.

Dr. Steve Wing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied industrial hog operations in Eastern North Carolina during the late 2000’s. His findings revealed that homes exposed to plumes of pollution suffered from respiratory issues, stress and anxiety, and limited leisure and social interactions. Not only is their physical health impaired, but their mental health is as well.   

In a desperate attempt to escape the toxic surroundings, families have chosen to uproot their lives to relocate away from CAFOs. To their demise, their home property values near these industries plummet to the point that either a) no one buys the land or b) they can’t pay off what they own, forcing them to move back. Additionally, these communities are frequently unincorporated, meaning many families operate their own private wells and sewer systems. The dispersal of manure on cracked bedrock in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin led 31% of the county’s private wells to be contaminated. Subsequently, in 2004, a family was poisoned and their infant was hospitalized.

CAFOs are loosely regulated and are protected under the guise of agriculture.

All fifty states in America have enacted some version of a right-to-farm law to shield farmers from nuisance claims. When these statutes first came about, they intended to protect traditional farming operations from an influx of urban dwellers complaining about odor and noise. With the rise of chicken and pork “McMansions,” right-to-farm bills, or as the documentary implies “right to harm” bills, have extended coverage to these industrial operations, thereby insulating Big Ag from lawsuits and scrutiny.

In 2014 and 2015, 500 North Carolinians filed 26 nuisance claims against Murphy-Brown, a subsidiary of pork producer Smithfield Foods. The suits were consolidated into five cases, all of which resulted in a victory for the plaintiffs, awarding them $94 million in punitive and compensatory damages. The cases sparked enormous backlash and the North Carolina General Assembly was quick to act. They passed an amendment to the 2018 Right to Farm Act that further restricted plaintiffs’ right to sue by stipulating that a plaintiff’s property must reside within one half of a mile from the alleged nuisance and must be filed within one year of the CAFO being established or fundamentally changed (which excludes a change in ownership or size.) It is important to note the immense grip Big Pork has over the regulatory schemes of CAFOs, and this is no coincidence, for the biggest beneficiaries of the industry’s generosity are also the most adamant about reducing the people’s capacity to sue.  

Currently, CAFOs are not regulated for air pollutants by any specific standards in the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). In 2018, CAFOS were exempted from reporting discharges of hazardous waste to federal agencies under the Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act. Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rolled back a section of the EPCRA requiring farms to report air emissions from waste to local and state regulators. Both of these initiatives were introduced by legislators with ties to agribusiness. 

Additionally, in 2004, the EPA launched a $15 million study funded by the livestock industry to evaluate air emissions from CAFOs and develop reliable emission estimating methodologies (EEMs). Over 90 percent of the largest CAFO operators in the U.S. bought into the study, and in return they were granted protection from enforcement actions until the EPA established EEMs. Sixteen years later, the EPA still has not finalized methods to monitor air quality, and on top of that the original participants continue to receive immunity. 

CAFOs pose an environmental justice issue.

Factory farms litter the countryside and pose a myriad of threats to their communities. They are the epitome of un-neighborly neighbors, for they pollute the air and water on an industrial level, blow out manure-infused air from barns 24/7, and transport truckloads of dead animals across towns all in the name of economic development.

Dr. Sacoby Wilson from the University of Maryland School of Public Health details the proliferation of chicken CAFOs in Maryland and hog CAFOS in North Carolina in low-income communities with large populations of people of color. He notes that the same counties in the South with a history of slavery are now responsible for the majority of hog production. In North Carolina, pig CAFOs disproportionately affect low-income Black and Latino communities.

Often enough, residents near CAFOs are asked why they don’t move away. For Elsie Herring, it is not that simple. The land in her family has been passed down from generation to generation, and it serves as a reminder of her roots and ancestors. The invasion of CAFOs into these tight-knit communities signals the devaluation of human life. The corrupt politicians that invalidate their constituents’ cries for help and succumb to the wishes of Big Ag are guilty in perpetuating this cycle of environmental racism.

Big Ag continues to evade pollution monitoring systems and appropriate waste management techniques, further exacerbating health problems in low-income communities of color. Runoff from fields inundated in manure routinely exposes residents to water contaminated with bacteria and leads to eutrophication, a process by which algae blooms reduce oxygen levels in the water and kill off aquatic life. Right to Harm highlights the irresponsible and unsustainable nature of CAFOs and calls for stricter government oversight and regulation.