CAFOs vs. Free Range

Robert Lee Metcalf was a distinguished entomologist who was becoming disenchanted with the establishment. He ridiculed the enthusiasm for pesticides among his colleagues, farmers, the chemical industry and government regulators. So in the 1987 summer issue of the Newsletter of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Illinois, he wrote a scathing critique of the chemical industry-farm-government complex. He said he was disappointment with America’s obsession with chemicals.

Wisconsin environmental officials are over-regulating large livestock operations, imposing pollution requirements that are tougher than federal law and arbitrarily changing runoff standards without going through the rule-making process, a trade association says in a lawsuit.

The Dairy Business Association filed the lawsuit in Brown County on July 31. It alleges the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has changed requirements for concentrated animal feeding operations to treat runoff. The department last year stopped allowing farmers to move runoff through patches of vegetation

If you follow environmental or climate news, then you have probably noticed the rise in reporting about harmful algal blooms (aka toxic algae). Over the past few decades, scientists have not only observed an upsurge in the frequency of these blooms around the planet but also an increase in their severity and geographic distribution. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), these blooms - known as everything from red tides to blue-green algae or cyanobacteria - have been cropping up across the country; in fact, in all 50 states. 

When the news broke earlier this summer that cancer-causing chemicals had spiked in my local tap water, I was alarmed. But, like many of the 1.4 million people living in Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and a number of other cities on the eastern slopes of the San Francisco Bay Area impacted by the news, I wasn’t sure how concerned I should be.