Cattle Update: Groups Petition Feds To Regulate Feedlots
10/04/2009 05:10PM
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The Humane Society of the United States and other groups are petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to start regulating confined-animal feeding operations under the Clean Air Act.
The groups submitted the 69-page petition late last month asking that emissions of hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and other gases be curbed.
EPA spokesman Dave Ryan said the agency will review the petition and respond within 120 days.
The EPA is wrapping up a study of emissions at 24 U.S. feedlots, but doesn't have enough information yet to decide whether confined-animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, need more regulation.
"We really do not have a good handle on CAFO emissions," Ryan told The Times-News in a story published Friday.
He said that when the study is released next year, it should give the agency more information about how much pollution feedlots produce.
Of Idaho's nearly 500,000 cows, about 70 percent are in southern Idaho, a number that some area residents fear could damage the quality of life due to odors from the feedlots as well as possible pollution to ground water.
Tom McDonnell, executive vice president of the Idaho Cattle Association, said the industry doesn't need more regulation.
He said groups behind the petition are out to destroy livestock operations, adding: "These people have friends in power right now."
The petition included past EPA figures plus information from United Nations reports about feedlots.
"So here is one piece of the puzzle for them to begin to bring this unregulated industry under control," said Charlie Tebbutt, co-chairman of the Dairy Education Alliance, which was one of the groups that submitted the petition.
Other petitioners include the Irritated Residents and Friends of the Earth.
Idaho dairies that emit more than 100 tons a year of ammonia are monitored by the state departments of Environmental Qualit y and Agriculture.
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