U.S. study quantifies livestock operation emissions

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

by SUSAN MANN

A recent U.S. study about air emissions from animal feeding operations may prove helpful to industry researchers but is unlikely to result in American-style air pollution monitoring of animal feeding operations, says a spokesman from a national farm organization.

“I don’t know whether it will actually translate into the government deciding to do more monitoring,” says Greg Northey, director of environmental policy for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, of data from a recently released United States Environmental Protection Agency study on air emissions from animal feeding operations.

Northey says the Canadian federal government is very focused on air quality but “our sense has always been its more focused on smog from cities or large coal-fired plants. There is much less focus on animal feeding operations here than in the U.S.”

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made data publicly available from a two-year study of air emissions from animal feeding operations that house large numbers of animals to produce meat, dairy products and eggs. The farms were monitored for: ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds. Researchers established 24 monitoring sites in nine states, including at farms raising pigs, egg-laying operations and at dairies. A separate industry study monitored emissions from a broiler chicken operation in Kentucky.

The agency says in a press release it will use data from the studies to help develop improved methodologies for estimating animal feeding operations emissions.

The National Air Emissions Monitoring Study was the result of a 2005 voluntary compliance agreement between the EPA and the animal feeding industry, which funded the study. It was conducted by Purdue University researchers with EPA oversight. 

Northey says the data emerging from the EPA study may provide Canadian agricultural industry or researchers here with an idea of what’s being emitted. Canadian farm officials may have idea of the air pollutants being emitted “but I don’t think there’s been a study at the level of this.”

Northey says he’s not aware of any benchmarks for air emissions from farms in Canada. In some provinces’ agricultural operations act regulations there may be standards for odours but nothing dealing with air emissions, he says. BF