DES MOINES, Iowa—A new report on the rapid expansion of hog farms in Iowa calls for a moratorium on new barns and concludes that the state’s regulatory system is failing to protect the environment and public health for the sake of profit of the politically powerful livestock industry.
“A tipping point has been reached. Rural Iowans have every reason to be concerned,” said the report released last Thursday by retired University of Iowa professors James Merchant and David Osterberg.
Merchant is professor emeritus of Public Health and Medicine and founded the College of Public Health, and Osterberg is professor emeritus of Occupational and Environmental Health. He is a cofounder of the Iowa Policy Project, a liberal-leaning Iowa City-based nonprofit group that offers research on environmental, economic, energy and tax policies, which released the report.
They point out that the number of Iowa livestock farms called concentrated animal-feeding operations, or Cafos, has grown to more than 10,000, from 722 in 2001. The annual growth has been around 500 new or expanded barns a year for the last decade. Most of them are built to house pigs to satisfy the rapidly growing export market for pork, which grew to nearly $6 billion in 2016, up 7 percent in one year.
Exports to the China and Hong Kong markets broke the $1-billion mark for the first time in 2016, and exports are expected to further expand to meet China’s insatiable appetite for pork.
The report concludes that livestock production contributes to degradation of water quality, increased cases of asthma and other illnesses among residents near hog-confinement operations and a 20-percent to 40-percent decline in the value of homes near hog farms because of the odor.
“The current industrial model is not sustainable given its high input costs, rising energy demands, fresh-water needs, climate change and adverse environmental and public health impacts,” the report concluded. “The very real pushback from rural residents and communities will, however, be sustained.”
Merchant and Osterberg made several recommendations, including revision of the permitting process for new barns that would allow for increased local input, a moratorium on new construction and establishment of land covenants and other local legal strategies to limit local livestock barn growth.