Hog Confinements and Human Health: the intersection of science, morals, and the law.
A Handbook for Regulating Hog Confinements.
e-book www.civandinc.com
Introduction:
This handbook is a request, and a how to, for help in a grassroots campaign to regulate hog confinements in Iowa. Chapter 3 will give you legislative language that, if adopted, will regulate the discharge of manure pollution from the air avenue of hog confinements. State law now says all manure must be retained in the hog confinement between disposal events. But, the courts have said that is only for the water pollution avenue of confinements. This campaign is about including the other pollution avenue, the air avenue, in that law.
It is our hope that you will use this language to help in a grassroots campaign to convince sitting legislators to adopt and introduce this air avenue language, and/or, to elect legislators who would be in favor of this language. This language, if adopted, will help protect the health of Iowans who live, work, and study in proximity to hog confinements.
Chapter 1 is our powerpoint presentation: “Unintended Health and Environmental Consequences of CAFO Agriculture.” This will give you the scientific background of hog confinements.
Chapter 2 is the media guide version of the DNR lawsuit against the Iowa DNR.
Between the powerpoint and the DNR lawsuit document, you can get a pretty good understanding of what hog confinements are, why they produce the human health problems they do, what those health problems are, and why we have had such a hard time getting anything done to protect humans from hog confinement pollutants and toxins.
The powerpoint explains hog confinement technology, what that technology is, how that technology affects the hog’s waste as it breaks down in an anaerobic (sewer) environment, and explains the human health harming constituent parts that waste produces as it breaks down in this sewer environment. Those human health harming constituent parts of manure are vented or blown out into the surrounding neighborhood and larger environment 24/7/365.
The media guide document has notes in the margin that will help you understand what we are doing and why we put together the lawsuit the way we did. The last page of the media guide is the template we had to follow in order to make our request of the DNR for a declaratory order. That template will explain what we are about in the document when it says “this addresses template number such and such.”
We changed the lawsuit, but not in any real way. We simply left out the original step of trying to get the DNR to agree with us and issue a declaratory order using our wording to protect the public’s health. Instead, we skipped that step and asked the DNR in our lawsuit to “retain” all excreta/waste/manure, and the constituent parts of that manure, that the code/law says it is supposed to do. As it is written today, the code/law regulations leave out the pollution coming out of the air avenue of hog confinements. It only regulates the water pollution avenue. The existing code/law language, which leaves out the air pollution avenue, led to the dismissal of our DNR lawsuit, and, led to this grassroots campaign to get language in the regulations which includes the air avenue and would regulate the human health harming pollution coming out of the air avenue.
[In his “Order Granting Motion to Dismiss” of our DNR lawsuit, the judge wrote:
Section 459.207 is one of many “Air Quality” protections contained in
Subchapter II. Section 459.207 expressly addresses the emission of “airborne
pollutants,” including the emission of “ammonia” and “hydrogen sulfide,” from
“confinement feeding operation structure[s].” And it expressly authorizes the
DNR to take various measures to “control” and “reduce” the emissions of those
pollutants “from animal feeding operations.”
Although the lawsuit was decided in November, 2018, for reasons unknown we didn’t receive a copy of the judge’s decision until January, 2025. In the intervening period we proceeded under the impression that the Legislature had written language to regulate the water pollution avenue, but not the air pollution avenue. We erroneously maintained that because of that omission it was illegal in Iowa to regulate the air pollution avenue coming out of confinements. However, in reading the judge’s opinion we discovered that there is language written in Iowa Code Section 459.207 to regulate CAFO air emissions.
We also discovered that in 2003 the EPC had adopted rules for regulating “hydrogen sulfide” and “ammonia” air emissions from CAFOs, which was, and still is, authorized under Section 459.207. However, via the rule-making process the Iowa Legislature immediately passed SJR 5 which nullified the ambient air standard rules for CAFOs recently adopted by the EPC. So, even though Section 459.207 remains on the books, it is currently not possible to regulate air pollution coming out of confinements because there still remain no ambient air standards in place with which to regulate CAFO air emissions. The judge’s decision in our DNR case, and Dick’s document showing the reason for our new understanding have both been put in the Remainder section of the ebook.]
The lawsuit document, along with parts of the Jillian Fry 2014 Johns Hopkins study used in the main lawsuit document, will also help you understand why opponents of hog confinements have had such a hard time making any headway in protecting the public’s health. It shows that the regulatory scheme leaves out humans, hence there are no laws pertaining to the effects hog confinement waste has on people.
Chapter 3, the legislative language effort, is a particular effort using hog confinements to fight against the larger general problem of pollution from this industrial model of agriculture. It is what we can do today to lessen the inherent pollution problems coming from the use of this industrial model of agriculture that is dominant in the US today.
The Epilogue in this booklet is a “transition to a clean agriculture” document. This document shows where we can, and should, go in the future in terms of having a clean and healthy agriculture in Iowa. The legislative language grassroots campaign is a particular effort. The transition document is a general effort toward a future clean and healthy agriculture.
This transition to a clean agriculture document is also being proposed as a symposium for the Iowa Academy of Science 2020 Annual Conference. Because all the agricultural crops and cropping systems discussed in the transition document exist today, the symposium will stipulate that the transition to a clean agriculture has already been completed. The presenters will then be asked to tell how that transition was accomplished from their research perspective, and/or, what Iowa is like now that we have transitioned to a clean and soil rejuvenating agriculture. It is important to let people know that this future can exist today, show them what it can be like, and let them know that we do not need to continue with this inherently polluting industrial model of agriculture to feed ourselves.
The printed booklet will have a link to the full version e-book. All of the documents in the book, our lawsuit documents, and the 867 peer-reviewed journal studies we cite to justify our positions will be in the full e-version book.
We hope you find this book/e-book informative. We also hope that you will use this information to help with this grassroots campaign to regulate Iowa hog confinements. If you invite us to visit your group, we will discuss how best to use this information locally, and answer any questions you may have about any of the information we have given you.
Since this book is, and contains, the ask of your help with this grassroots effort, we will not be charging for the printed version. We will ask for a freewill donation if you want to help with the printing costs. The e-version is free and printable from the website: www.civandinc.com and click on the book title.
Bob Watson
2736 Lannon Hill Rd
Decorah, IA 52101
563-379-4147
Larry Stone
23312 295th Street
Elkader, IA 52043
563-419-6742
Dick Janson
119 North Mill Street, Apt. Q
Decorah, IA 52101
563-382-6088 [email protected]