BY Tom Philpott, Grist.org
Once, the meat industry acted with impunity, confident that its lobbying clout in Washington could deflect any challenges to its practices. But now, it finds itself on the defensive.
In northwest Iowa, the EPA has taken the brazen, virtually unheard-of step of actually enforcing the Clean Water Act for CAFOs, or concentrated animal feedlot operations. The agency has “documented significant water quality problems” with eight mid-sized cattle feedlots there. “Runoff from CAFOs may contain such pollutants as pathogens and sediment, as well as nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous, all of which can harm aquatic life and impact water quality,” the agency declared in a press release. That’s not the newsflash. The newsflash is that the agency is actually doing something about it.