Environment, Climate, and Animals

Industrial animal agriculture and aquaculture cannot exist without polluting natural resources, contributing significantly to warming the planet, and treating animals inhumanely.  

By taking action to stop deceptive corporate greenwashing, enforce environmental laws, and reveal the truth about conditions for animals within factory farming, we are directly challenging the harm that props up the fragile and dangerous status quo, and building a future that’s healthier for everyone.  

Clean Air & Water

Because industrial animal agriculture concentrates thousands of animals into as little land as possible, it produces a lot of manure that is then mismanaged in ways that pollute the surrounding land, water, and air. Just one industrial-sized hog facility can produce more waste than the entire city of Philadelphia does over the course of a year. 

Unlike human waste, animal waste from industrial facilities is not treated. With more manure than can be spread on nearby fields, manure is stored in enormous open pits commonly referred to as “lagoons.” Waste lagoons housing manure in massive quantities threaten the health of people and communities living near these facilities.

Manure from these lagoons can overflow during hurricanes and flooding, seep into the ground, and contaminate local groundwater – often the only source of water for rural communities. In some areas, waste is sprayed onto fields, resulting in odors, flies, and dangerous chemicals in the air community members breathe. In the Yakima Valley Dairy cases, the Court found that manure from livestock facilities should be regulated as solid and hazardous waste. 

However, the government gives industrial agriculture a free pass to pollute. The same environmental regulations that protect communities from other industries’ pollution do not apply to agriculture.  

When factory farms and fisheries pollute their neighbors and refuse to clean it up to pad their bottom line, FarmSTAND gets creative to force change that benefits rural communities. 

Environmental Racism & Environmental Justice

The U.S. agricultural system was founded on land stolen from Indigenous people, and built on the labor of enslaved Africans. That legacy is central to how industrial animal agriculture operates today: environmental resources and burdens — as well as the power to make decisions about the environment — are profoundly shaped by the racial makeup of a given community.  

Corporations intentionally place factory farms in communities with fewer resources to devote to changing things, knowing it will be harder for local residents to defend themselves against pollution. This means Black and Latino communities have suffered particularly from the rise of the industrial ag system. Studies show that the same land once worked by enslaved Black people is often now dominated by factory farms.   

FarmSTAND seeks to protect the environment and build power in rural communities that animal ag megacorporations routinely exploit. We do this work in collaboration with the communities most directly impacted by the industry’s pollution. 

Climate Crisis

Industrial agriculture is among the top drivers of climate change. Food production today is responsible for nearly a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

Instead of curtailing pollution at the source, governments often want to subsidize industry tech fixes that only make the problem worse – both for industrial’s ag’s neighbors as well as the climate. Factory farm gas, which industry likes to call “biogas,” traps methane emissions from animal manure to sell as energy, creating yet another revenue stream for factory farms. If you pay polluters for their pollution, they’re going to pollute more. In this way, factory farm gas is a scheme to make factory farms even more dominant. 

FarmSTAND challenges factory farm gas by bringing anti-greenwashing suits against companies that deceive customers into paying to support this scheme, and through public education about how industrial agriculture pollution can never be a climate solution.  

Animals

Just as the factory farming system is built on cruelty to people, its survival also depends upon the inhumane treatment of animals. The industrial animal ag business model requires thousands and thousands of animals be packed tightly into warehouses, keeping them from moving in the way they naturally would, preventing access to sunlight, and creating breeding grounds for disease.   

FarmSTAND fights for the First Amendment rights of activists and journalists to conduct undercover investigations of conditions at factory farms, so the public can understand how its food is made. FarmSTAND has been a national leader in striking down ‘Ag-Gag’ laws that ban or otherwise inhibit investigations into industrial ag facility conditions and stifle public protest of factory farms. FarmSTAND has led the legal efforts to strike down ag-gag laws in North Carolina, Iowa, and Wyoming.  

Consumers continue to say they want to choose food products created under more humane conditions for animals. Because Big Ag can’t square public compassion for animals with their method for creating maximum profit at all costs, deceiving consumers is one of their key tactics. FarmSTAND focuses on identifying, litigating against, and revealing corporate schemes meant to trick the public into buying products that marketing suggests are made with higher animal welfare standards than they are.  

Resources

Stopping Illegal Grant Terminations (Urban Sustainability Directors Network v. USDA)

When our government agrees to provide grant funding to a farmer or nonprofit group, it should hold up its end of the bargain. But Trump’s…

Stopping Big Ag Exploitation of J-1 Visa Holders (Alvarado v. Livingston)

Represented by FarmSTAND, Legal Aid of Nebraska, and Radford Scott LLP, these three Guatemalan men are suing Livingston Enterprises and Worldwide Farmers Exchange, the company…

Daley Farm v. County of Winona (Land Stewardship Project Intervention)

This case was a dispute over the dramatic expansion of a dairy operation. The authority of local government hung in the balance.
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How We Make Change

Holding corporations accountable and building power with environmental justice communities — those that most directly experience the concentrated impacts of systemic corporate extraction — strengthens the power of all communities to protect our air and water against industrial agriculture.

Learn more about our work on clean air and water.

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