Four days after HyLife Foods filed its bankruptcy paperwork, workers anxiously awaited answers from management about its plans for the pork processing plant.

The employees gathered in the plant’s cafeteria before their shifts on May 1 to listen to an executive read a list of what appeared to be frequently asked questions and corresponding answers about the company’s financial situation. 

HyLife announced in early April that if it can’t sell the plant, it anticipated laying off the 1,007-person workforce by June 2. An end date has not been set, the company told Investigate Midwest on May 10.

About half of the plant’s workers are employed through a temporary visa program, and if the plant closes, they will have few options outside of immediate return to their home countries.

Many want to continue living and working in the U.S. in order to support families in their home countries, where wages are much lower.

If the company is successful in selling the plant, the buyer could choose to retain the current workforce, the executive explained during the staff meeting, according to four HyLife employees who were in attendance that day. 

Around 500 HyLife workers are employed through the H-2B visa program, which allows companies to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis when there aren’t enough Americans to fill the company’s needs, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.

H-2B visas are valid for one year at a time but can be renewed annually for up to three years. The employees interviewed by Investigate Midwest all said HyLife promised to employ them for three years.

The employees requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by HyLife and to protect their future job prospects.

HyLife currently employs more H-2B workers than any other meatpacking plant in the country — twice as many as the next-biggest H-2B employer in the industry, according to the DOL data.

If the plant closes, the visas will be immediately terminated and HyLife will have 10 days to return the hundreds of H-2B workers to their home countries.

“We acknowledge this is a challenging situation for our employees and the Windom community,” HyLife CEO Grant Lazaruk said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest. “In an effort to be transparent, we have shared numerous updates with our team on the plant sale process. Our goal remains to find a buyer so that operations may continue under new ownership.”

H-2B visas cannot be transferred to another employer. Few options exist that would allow the workers to stay in the U.S. legally, and each of the potential legal paths come with strict eligibility requirements and some downsides. 

Employees told Investigate Midwest they’re worried about what will happen if the plant closes. In addition to supporting themselves in Minnesota, many send money home to their families. 

“Many of us are paying off cars, or we signed leases” in the U.S., an employee said in Spanish. “We don’t know what will happen with the company. We can’t call the bank and say, ‘Wait for me because the company is out of money.’”

One employee said he came to the U.S. to support his daughter through university. Another said he started working at HyLife in order to purchase a house for his family back home. 

HyLife, based in Manitoba, Canada, is Canada’s largest pork producer, according to the company’s website. Charoen Pokphand Group, a Thai holding company, has held a majority stake in HyLife since 2019. 

HyLife purchased a majority interest in the Prime Pork plant in Windom in May 2020. The company also owns a pork plant in Guanajuato, Mexico, where many H-2B workers were employed before moving to the Windom plant.

Fewer than 5,000 people live in Windom, located in the southwest corner of Minnesota.

When the executive finished reading the prepared statements — including an announcement of reduced hours — to the group of employees in the cafeteria, he left, the four attendees said. Some workers protested, saying they still had unanswered questions, workers told Investigate Midwest. Most stayed in the cafeteria instead of leaving to prepare for their shifts.

The executive returned to the cafeteria. One employee started recording, sensing the rising tensions in the room, he said.

The executive told employees to get to work immediately or be fired. If the H2-B workers didn’t go to their shifts, he said, they would be sent home.

In a video clip reviewed by Investigate Midwest, the executive’s interpreter repeated his words in Spanish. 

“…they’re going to fire you,” the interpreter said. “Those with H-2B, what does that mean? Return to Mexico.”

The crowd grew noisy in response. Some workers shouted and some whistled. Others quickly headed for the door.

“That’s a threat,” multiple women said in Spanish in the background of the video.

The employee who recorded the video requested that it not be published because it could identify him and put his job at risk. Investigate Midwest provided HyLife a detailed description of the events of the May 1 meeting based on the video and interviews with four employees who were in attendance. 

In statements provided to Investigate Midwest, HyLife did not answer questions about the May 1 meeting.

“As you can appreciate, having full context matters, and it is difficult to comment on a video Investigate Midwest refuses to share,” the company said in a May 10 statement.

The four attendees said they left the meeting with unanswered questions. 

“People were a little angry because they aren’t sticking to the hours they promised us,” one employee told Investigate Midwest in Spanish. “And to talk to the people like that…it was like we were animals or something. It’s like they were making a threat against us.”

Few options for those wanting to remain in U.S.

In a church basement in downtown Mankato on May 7, HyLife workers with H-2B visas gathered to learn about the immigration options available to them. 

Organizers had estimated around 100 people would attend. By the end of the meeting, more than 250 sat in folding chairs, leaned against the walls or watched through open doorways. Several tended to infants during the three-hour gathering.

HyLife employees organized the meeting with support from Unidos MN, a nonprofit organization advocating for social and economic equity for Latinx families in Minnesota.

Over Zoom, an immigration lawyer answered questions and outlined the paths available to the employees, if they wanted to continue living and working in the U.S. in the event that the plant closes.

“You could feel the tension, you could feel the desperation,” said Rayito Hernandez, lead organizer of Unidos MN, who participated in the meeting. “They were like, ‘We want an answer.’”

Some workers also addressed Minnesota State Rep. Luke Frederick, a member of the state’s Democratic party, and whose district includes the city of Mankato, where many workers live.

Frederick told Investigate Midwest that some of the current state legislature’s initiatives, such as issuing driver’s licenses regardless of an individual’s immigration status and expanding paid family leave, benefit H-2B workers in Minnesota. 

But the core issue is one of federal immigration law.

“What can we do at the state?” Frederick said. “That’s the question I’ve been asking.”

HyLife said it is following Labor Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service frameworks.

“If the plant closes before our H-2B work authorization ends, we are prepared to help (H-2B workers) identify possible employment options,” the company said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest. “If opportunities are unavailable, HyLife will provide transportation for a safe return home.”

If the plant closes but the employees want to continue working in the U.S. on an H-2B visa, they may need to return to their home country and reapply for the program, according to federal immigration law.

There is a possibility for workers to obtain another H-2B job in the U.S. without returning to their home countries, said attorney Erin Schutte Wadzinski, co-owner of Kivu Immigration Law Firm in Worthington, Minnesota, which hosted a separate legal clinic for HyLife workers on April 29. The prospective employer would need to already have a Temporary Employment Certification from the Department of Homeland Security, have open H-2B positions and submit the new employee’s H-2B paperwork before the existing visa expires. 

“There is no obvious pathway that is available for everyone,” Schutte Wadzinski said. “Some individuals might be eligible for family petitions. Other individuals are genuinely fearful of returning to their home country and wish to seek asylum in the United States.”

Being granted asylum would permit an individual to live and work in the U.S. In order to qualify for asylum, the person must prove that they are subject to persecution in their home country due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a specific social group. 

During the asylum application process, and after asylum is granted, petitioners can’t visit their home countries. (H-2B visas allow the workers to travel internationally. Hourly HyLife employees employed for less than five years receive 15 vacation and personal days, according to a 2022 copy of the plant’s employee handbook.)

Family visas require sponsorship by an immediate relative, like a parent, spouse or adult child who is a citizen of the U.S.

There are other visas available — for victims of human trafficking or crimes that take place in the U.S. Applicants have to weigh the pros against the cost, processing times and international travel restrictions of each option.

Nonresidents who can prove they were victims of or witnesses to violations of labor rights can also request deferred action from the DHS. Deferred action allows non-resident immigrants to temporarily live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation.

Tensions rise as potential plant closure looms

On April 10, in compliance with federal regulations, HyLife Foods sent a letter to the state government informing officials — and its employees — that the company would have to lay off its workforce if the company didn’t find a buyer. 

Two and a half weeks later, the company filed for bankruptcy.

“On April 27, 2023, Windom entered Chapter 11, a formal court-supervised process, for our production plant in Minnesota,” HyLife president and CEO Lazaruk said in an April 27 statement provided to Investigate Midwest. “This helps us to move forward with our restructuring plan while we pursue a potential sale, so that the plant can continue under new ownership.”

The executive reiterated that the company was still seeking a buyer at the May 1 employee meeting, four workers told Investigate Midwest.

“We are still actively seeking a buyer,” HyLife said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest on May 10. “An end date for Windom has not been set. We continue communicating with our team and will give additional updates as more details become available.”

As of May 12, the company had not announced a sale.

HyLife said it has reduced the scheduled work hours for employees by 25%, the maximum allowable under H-2B visa regulations, because the plant is processing fewer hogs.

“We understand this personally impacts our employees and have shared additional Minnesota Unemployment Insurance resources to help support individuals exploring top-up options,” the company said in its statement.

Many non-H-2B employees have already left for other jobs, employees said, leaving the rest of the workforce short-staffed. Work has become more difficult in recent weeks due to the departures, they said.

One employee said he’d had to move to different positions in the plant multiple times recently, including working in the slaughter area for the first time, where the smell of the pig blood and excrement makes him nauseous, he said.

Conflicts are increasing among coworkers and between workers and their supervisors, the employee said.

“There’s a lot of pressure,” he said in Spanish.

Because their visas aren’t transferable to other workplaces, and they don’t have jobs lined up in their home countries, three employees who spoke to Investigate Midwest said they plan to work at HyLife until their visas expire.

“Life must go on,” one employee said. “Until the last day of the plant, we will still be here and we will still continue to work.”

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More than 90% of Americans access drinking water through public water systems, which are regulated at the state and local level, according to the government-standardized data portal USA FACTS.

During 2021, there were 153,501 total water quality violations across all U.S. states and territories. Of the total violations, more than 63% were found because of issues with monitoring and reporting by regulatory agencies. 

The high proportion of monitoring, reporting and public notification violations raises questions about how well tens of thousands of public water supply systems test for and report potential health violations to EPA and the public, according to a USA FACTS report released in November 2022.

While the total number of violations in 2021 is lower than the 10-year average, the frequency of drinking water violations does not appear to be decreasing over time, according to the report.

In states such as Iowa and other big agricultural states — with extensive crop production and livestock farming, which involves the use of fertilizer, pesticides and manure — runoff from these activities contributes to water pollution. 

These pollutants, particularly nitrates and phosphates, can enter water bodies, causing problems such as harmful algal blooms, oxygen depletion and degradation of aquatic ecosystems.

The post Most water quality violations are from monitoring and reporting issues appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

When Brendalyn King and her partner, Osei Doyle, quit their jobs and left Brooklyn, New York, in 2020 to buy land, they had high hopes of entering the growing industrial hemp industry.  They moved to Salem, Illinois, to farm on a family friend’s land until they were able to buy the property. However, they never […]

The post Black Farmers Looked to Cash In on the CBD Industry. Now, Hemp Is in Decline. appeared first on Capital B.

A Polk County judge has reversed the decision of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to permit an 11,600-head cattle feedlot in northeast Iowa.

Friday’s ruling in the lawsuit by the Sierra Club of Iowa and Trout Unlimited against the DNR and Supreme Beef says the state agency used “illogical interpretations and applications” to approve a nutrient management plan for Supreme Beef.

The ruling sends the case back to the DNR for reconsideration.

“It is odd to approve a manure storage system that is banned from confinement operations due to the danger of spills and leaks into the porous bedrock,” Judge Scott Rosenberg wrote. “To approve it for an open feedlot in the same terrain is particularly odd when the only way this type of manure handling system gets built is if the agency approves it.”

Supreme Beef, near Monona, is in the watershed of Bloody Run, one of Iowa’s most prized trout streams, and sits atop porous bedrock where a manure spill could easily contaminate groundwater.

The Sierra Club sued the DNR in September 2021, alleging the agency approved the feedlot’s nutrient manage plan (NMP) with incorrect calculations of how much manure could be safely applied to nearby farm fields. The Sierra Club also alleged the DNR was applying varying legal standards to the operation when it benefited the feedlot.

At a hearing Jan. 20, Assistant Iowa Attorney General David Steward, representing the DNR, said the agency determined Supreme Beef’s 39 million gallon manure retention basin was “more than adequate” for safely storing manure at the site.

A disputed factor is whether the Iowa DNR should have approved manure sample calculations from a smaller beef slaughtering facility as a proxy for what Supreme Beef would be producing. Steward said the state checked to see if the nutrient levels in the manure sample submitted were similar to other cattle feedlots.

Rosenberg’s ruling said he did not think the manure samples from Upper Iowa Beef, a slaughtering facility, could be used as a stand-in for a cattle feedlot.

“ … Use of UIB’s manure sample was incorrect even though samples from other open feedlot operations and a more recent sample from Supreme Beef had similar concentrations as the UIB sample,” he wrote.

Another problem Rosenberg noted with the manure calculations was whether Supreme Beef would house mature cattle or finishing cattle, which produce different amounts of manure.

“The switch from the mature cattle manure volume table estimate to the finishing value after two failed NMPs barely registered for IDNR staff, who either thought Supreme Beef already was a feedlot for finishing cattle rather than mature cattle, or assumed the operation changed between the prior NMPs and the February 2021 NMP,” he wrote.

The ruling noted one of Supreme Beef’s owners, Jared Walz, is the son-in-law of Sen. Dan Zumbach, R-Ryan, who intervened on the feedlot’s behalf with DNR Director Kayla Lyon.

“This NMP for 11,600 cattle was initially going to be denied by IDNR over these concerns; however, after discussions with IDNR, it was determined that Supreme Beef could withdraw this application for 11,600 cattle,” Rosenberg wrote.

“Supreme Beef could then submit another NMP for 2,700 cattle. This was suggested by IDNR Director Kayla Lyons after a phone call with State Senator Dan Zumbach, Jared Walz’ father-in-law. Supreme Beef submitted the new NMP for 2,700 cattle in October 2020. In February 2021, Supreme Beef filed the final NMP for the remaining number of cattle.”

Wally Taylor, attorney for the Sierra Club, said the group was pleased with the ruling.

“We hope that the DNR got the message that its discretion is not unlimited and that it must follow its own rules,” he said in an email.

The post Iowa judge overturns Supreme Beef manure plan approval appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

Chad Kieffer, a third-generation farmer from Utica, Minnesota, has five milkers for his herd of 350 cows. 

The milkers are squat, patient, persistent workers. They hum around the mooing cows. They are robots.

In an increasingly automated world, the dairy industry is keeping up. According to Michigan State University, robotic milkers were first introduced in the United States in 2000. Now, according to Hoard’s Dairyman magazine, over 35,000 robotic milking units can be found around the world with thousands in the U.S.

“It’s always changing. It’s like your iPhone getting changed every six months. There’s lots of technology that’s getting researched every day,” said Dana Allen, a fourth-generation dairy farmer from Eyota, Minnesota. 

Dairy technology has transformed the industry. 

Decades ago, dairy producers milked by hand. Then came buckets, pipelines, parlors, and then parlors with automatic unit removal, rotary parlors, and robots, according to Douglas Reinemann, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Automation started in Europe. Company DeLaval started using an automated robot system at a farm in Sweden in 1997. Another maker is Lely, based in the Netherlands. 

By 2000, automation came to the U.S. The results are significant, farmers and researchers say. Cows feel less stress, farmers are able to be more efficient and they gain time. They also save money on labor.

Now there are 500 to 1,000 U.S. operations using the milking robots, said Reinemann.

The automation is not perfect. Startup costs challenge smaller producers. As there is with most machinery, there also is the need for maintenance. 

Farmers gain time to work

Automated milking systems (AMS) give farmers time to focus on other work, and typically more time on skilled duties. This saves labor, Reinemann said. He also noted that AMS helps farmers ergonomically as they avoid repetitive physical tasks.

Farmers who use AMS appreciate the labor savings.

“The farmers have more time to clean up the farm, work on the crops, and other chores. It may even allow a farmer to attend their kid’s sporting events and in turn, improve their mental health,” said Mariah Busta, executive director of the Iowa State Dairy Association. 

But the rate of change is up to the farmer. 

“The degree to which a farmer adapts to technology and the speed at which they do it is open for their comfort level,” Allen said. “There is a tremendous amount of technology in agriculture, and I think that’s something the general public doesn’t understand.” 

Robots leave cows calmer

Robots, like Kieffer’s, milk cows without the physical presence of a human being, using a robotic arm with the aid of either 3D cameras or laser beams to locate a cow’s teats.  

According to the Animal Agriculture Alliance, a nonprofit focused on sustainable ag, the total time needed to milk one cow takes an average of seven minutes with a robot.

Since installing robots, Kieffer has reduced his number of full-time dairy employees from six to three.

“The robot is doing the milking for you, so the cost of the robots has to be offset by labor savings,” he said. The robots can cost more than $200,000 each.

The farmers also said the cows’ comfort is a critical benefit. Reinemann said cows can associate humans with negative interactions, such as a veterinarian checkup or being moved to and from different buildings.

“You’re allowing a cow to do what she wants when she wants. You’re not forcing her somewhere, and she can go get milked,” Kieffer said.

Cows voluntarily can go to the area indoors to be milked, farmers said. The robot system sorts cows that need to be milked based on how much time has elapsed in between milkings. Ear tags assist with sorting.

In Deer Park, Wisconsin, Kristin Quist of Minglewood Dairy keeps about 500 of her herd of 1,200 cows in a robot milking facility. She uses a system that guides the animals through the barn. 

“The cow walks through a gate determining if it’s time for them to be milked after reading a tag in her ear,” she said. “If it’s time to be milked, she goes into the robot. If it isn’t, she’s sent to be fed in a different direction.” 

RELATED VIDEO: Watch the robot in action

Quist compares her newer robot facility to her milking parlor. 

“The cows in the robot facility are a lot more laid back,” she said. “In the parlor facility, they are more likely to get up expecting to get milked.” 

Regardless of the production method, farmers are producing more milk, primarily because of improved genetics and improved nutrition, researchers said.

Reinemann said research has shown using robots allows cows to remain in the herd longer, which can mean they produce milk longer.

“We won’t be getting any additional land or resources in the coming future, so we need to be efficient with what we have,” Busta said. “Technology is absolutely crucial in helping us continue to be efficient about producing milk in a sustainable way.” 

Other farmers opt for rotating platform systems

Farmers seeking an upgrade have other options beyond milking robots.

Rotary milking parlors allow cows to step onto a circulating platform before farmers attach milking units. The system constantly moves cows on and off the platform.   

Allen milks her herd of about 1,750 cows on her farm, Gar-Lin Dairy, using a platform. Gar-Lin’s rotary allows 50 cows to step onto the platform at a time. 

“Before, we were milking 750 to 800 cows in about seven hours. Now we can milk 1,750 in the same amount of time,” she said. 

Allen said that she initially feared the cows would be difficult to get onto the carousel-like platform, but she quickly learned the greater issue would be getting them off. 

“There’s not a lot of commotion,” she said. “They actually like riding around on the rotary.” 

In deciding what type of system a farmer should pursue, a farm of 1,500 to 3,000 cows likely warrants a rotary system, while a herd of 200-300 cows may be better suited for robots, said Marcia Endres, Ph.D., a professor of animal science at the University of Minnesota. With larger herds, a rotary system is more efficient because up to 50 cows can be loaded at once, though it does still require human intervention to get the cows on the platform. 

One benefit of technology is more milk. In 1925, the average Iowa cow was giving 4,000 pounds of milk each year, while today’s cow gives 28,000 pounds annually, according to the state dairy association. 

Some farmers are weighing the pros and cons of the technology. 

Among them is Nick Seitzer, a recent University of Minnesota grad and dairy farmer from St. Peter, Minnesota. He’s thinking about adding a robot to milk his 65 cows. He forecasts about a 10% increase in production if he installs a robot in a free-stall barn. 

“The robot would be huge,” Seitzer said. “Fewer people want to do what we’re doing, so it would be nice to have robots that are always there doing the job.” 

But the initial cost is high. Seitzer estimates one robot would cost about $250,000, not including the physical infrastructure (such as a potential barn expansion, milk house or other needs) to use it.

On his Utica, Minnesota, farm, Kieffer saw robots as a smart investment. Kieffer typically spends one hour a day doing maintenance, he said. 

“Your debt per cow or debt per stall becomes rather large up front, but what I tell people is you’re basically prepaying your labor for seven or eight years,” he said. “It ends up being less than a traditional herd of cows being milked in a parlor.” 

With dairy technology rapidly changing, Seitzer has been feeling pressure for his operation to adapt. 

“If we don’t, we may not be doing it much longer,” he said. 

Dr. Lindsey Borst, a veterinarian who milks 230 cows alongside her family in Rochester, Minnesota, feels differently. Borst has been looking at robots for five to six years.

“I wouldn’t say we’re falling behind. Robots are still fairly new, and they’re not super common yet,” she said. “Sometimes it’s also good to wait because technology is changing so quickly, too.”  

Robots are not the right choice for all farmers, Kieffer, the farmer, and Endres, the University of Minnesota professor, said.

“Don’t put robots in because you don’t like cows. You also have to be mechanically inclined to do preventative maintenance on the robots,” Kieffer said.

Reinemann, the UW professor since 1990 and director of the UW Milking Research and Instruction lab, grew up in the dairyland of Wisconsin. 

“For me as a young person, milking cows was so ordinary; there was absolutely nothing interesting about it,” he said. “I started my career in milking technology, and it’s been amazing. The shifts in the technology and how dairy farms are managed, it’s been a lot of change.”

RELATED STORY: Technology goes beyond milking

Ethan Humble is a 2023 graduate of Simpson College, where he majored in multimedia journalism. 

Suzanne Behnke contributed to this report.

The post For years, farmers milked cows by hand. Now robots and technology do the work. appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

When gases from large livestock facilities overwhelm communities, the health impacts can be severe.

Children at schools near concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, are more likely to experience asthma. Exposure to ammonia and hydrogen sulfide — both emitted in large quantities by CAFOs — can lead to chronic respiratory issues, and in some cases, cause damage to the nervous system.

In states like North Carolina and Ohio, families that are Black, Hispanic or low-income are more likely to suffer the consequences.

Yet 18 years after starting to develop methods to measure and control air pollution from livestock operations, the Environmental Protection Agency still has not complied with its own mandate to protect Americans from the harmful health effects of air pollution from big farms.

And thanks to an agreement between the EPA and livestock industries, thousands of CAFO owners are shielded from some EPA penalties while the process of developing tools to measure emissions drags on.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Carrie Apfel, senior attorney in the Sustainable Food and Farming Program at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental justice legal organization. “The huge problem is that the agricultural lobby is hugely powerful and hugely influential, and I really think that has a lot to do with it.”

An EPA Office of Inspector General report that investigated the delay in 2017, however, indicates a lack of technical expertise and resources within the EPA is largely responsible for hampering the agency’s progress toward regulating air emissions from livestock operations.

Regardless, in CAFOs thousands of livestock animals live in covered barns, where they eat, drink and poop in mass quantities.

That manure, usually stored in tanks or lagoons, undergoes chemical transformations, releasing harmful chemicals into the air.

Under its authority provided by the Clean Air Act, the EPA sets limits for how much of these chemicals are emitted, but the agency still does not have a method for calculating how much pollutant a livestock facility produces.

For many other industries that cause air pollution, EPA scientists have created formulas to estimate how much pollutant a facility emits.

In 2005, the agency said it would finalize these models, called emissions estimating methodologies, or EEMs, for livestock operations by 2009. It still has not done so.

EEMs to be finalized this year following public comment, industry review

The EPA published its first draft EEMs for CAFOs in 2012, but after receiving criticism from the agency’s Science Advisory Board, it did not publish revised drafts until 2020.

Since 2020, the agency has periodically published revised drafts of the livestock facility EEMs for various chemicals, including ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds. However, the recent drafts do not address all of the Science Advisory Board’s recommendations.

The drafts will not be reviewed again by the advisory board, as the agency has moved beyond the peer-review portion of the EEM development process.

“Now that the draft emission models for all animal sectors are complete, EPA will review and revise all models before releasing the entire set of models for stakeholder review” later this year, EPA spokesperson Shayla Powell said in a statement to Investigate Midwest.

The agency will finalize the EEMs after a public comment period, Powell said. The agency did not specify when the public comment period would start.

Some environmental groups say the current EEM drafts for livestock operations are insufficient, and that the data forming the basis of the formulas are flawed, in large part because of livestock industries’ involvement in the research behind the EEMs.

“The study was designed to fail,” Tarah Heinzen, the legal director for Food and Water Watch, said. “It was largely designed by industry. It didn’t result in usable data, or complete data, even for the very small number of facilities that were studied.”

Environmental, industry groups await final models 

Food and Water Watch, which has worked on the issue of livestock operation EEMs since 2012, petitioned the EPA in 2021 to end the contract between EPA and CAFO owners because it provides legal protections to some CAFOs. The EPA has not yet responded to the petition, but did meet with the coalition once in August 2022.

Despite seeing insufficiencies in the current drafts, Earthjustice believes the EPA should finalize and enforce the drafts before working on improved versions.

Food and Water Watch said the EPA should “put an end to the federal amnesty and abandon the EEMs process entirely, because the flawed NAEMS study is incapable of producing viable emissions models. However, if EPA insists on finalizing EEMs, than at the very least it should not continue to provide amnesty to polluting CAFOs in the meantime.”

“The reality is that facts and science change over time, and emissions assumptions will also change over time,” the coalition wrote in its petition. “There is no end to that process. However, EPA can, and routinely does, estimate emissions from many sources of air pollution, including (animal feeding operations), using the best science available. The agency must do the same here.”

Andrew Walmsley, senior director of government affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest lobbying group representing the agriculture industry, said the group is opposed to “air permits that are not science-based for farms.”

“Our policy also opposes mandatory standards because with (standards) would undoubtedly come enormous compliance costs, including permitting fees, and a mountain of new paperwork,” Walmsley said.

Two laws requiring facilities to report air emissions have been amended in recent years to exempt CAFOs from the rules, but the Clean Air Act still applies to livestock operations.

“I think that there’s a very strong but false narrative on the other side about the struggling farmer and how hard it is to comply with these regulations,”

Carrie Apfel

Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), livestock operations were among the facilities required to report emissions of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide that exceeded legal limits — until 2019, when the Trump-led EPA exempted CAFOs from the law. Environmental advocacy groups including Food and Water Watch sued the EPA to reinstate the reporting requirement for CAFOs, but the exemption remains in place.

A 2018 law passed by Congress — the FARM Act — also exempted livestock operations from reporting air emissions under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

The EEM development process is one piece of a pattern of regulatory exemptions for large agriculture operations, said Carrie Apfel, senior attorney in the Sustainable Food and Farming Program at Earthjustice.

“I think that there’s a very strong but false narrative on the other side about the struggling farmer and how hard it is to comply with these regulations,” Apfel said. “When you do a deeper dive into the regulations themselves, the small family farmers aren’t emitting enough to trigger any sort of regulatory requirements. A lot of these regulations are really targeted at the big industrial agricultural facilities that are sophisticated and big enough to comply with these regulations.”

The Biden administration has said publicly it plans to revisit the EPCRA exemption for CAFOs, but has not yet moved forward with the rule.

If the Biden-led EPA does reinstate the reporting requirement, CAFOs that release pollutants in excess of EPCRA emissions thresholds of 100 pounds per day of ammonia or hydrogen sulfide would have to report the pollution to authorities. That information would be publicly available.

Even if the agriculture exception to EPCRA stands, livestock operations would still need to use the EEMs to determine their compliance with the Clean Air Act and obtain Clean Air Act permits, if they exceeded emissions thresholds, said Emily Miller, an attorney with Food and Water Watch.

Ray Atkinson, director of external communications for Smithfield Foods, one of the biggest pork companies in the U.S., said the company does not expect the EEMs to have a significant impact on Smithfield’s operations.

Both the National Milk Producers’ Federation and National Pork Producers Council told Investigate Midwest they would comment on the EEMs once the final versions are released by the EPA.

The National Pork Producers Council, which participated in the study of CAFO air emissions, noted that “EPA has an obligation to finalize these long overdue tools for producers to use.”

Associations representing the egg and poultry industries did not respond to requests for comment. Investigate Midwest also reached out to other large U.S. meat companies, including Tyson and JBS, but did not receive responses.

CAFOs remain protected today from some EPA penalties

CAFOs were few and far between in the U.S. until the late 1990s, when the livestock system began to transform, becoming more concentrated. In states like North Carolina, and later Iowa and Minnesota, the quantity of large CAFOs rapidly increased over the last two decades.

Today, the vast majority of American meat comes from animals raised in CAFOs.

In the early 2000s, few studies measured the actual emissions from livestock barns. In response to the increasing concentration of CAFOs and the operations’ impact on human health, the National Academy of Sciences called on the EPA in 2002 to further study air emissions from CAFOs.

Without sufficient existing data to create emissions estimates, the EPA turned to the livestock industry for a solution.

Over the course of two years, the agency negotiated with the dairy, egg and pork industries to determine how to study CAFO emissions.

In 2005, the parties landed on a deal, called the Air Compliance Agreement.

Participating producers from each of the industries volunteered as potential study subjects and paid a one-time civil penalty, ranging from $200 to $1,000 per CAFO, depending on the facility’s size. (In recent years, companies in industries other than livestock found to be in violation of the Clean Air Act have paid multi-million dollar penalties.)

More than 2,500 owners and operators representing 13,900 animal feeding operations — more than 90% of the country’s CAFOs — paid penalties to the EPA.

Those penalties would pay for a study to collect emissions data from the CAFOs. The EPA would then use the data to create its EEMs, which would inform its enforcement of the Clean Air Act in the future.

In exchange for the industries’ participation and funding, the EPA promised not to sue the participating producers for certain past and ongoing violations of air emissions laws while the study and EEM development process were ongoing.

The contract would stay in effect until the EPA notified the CAFO owners that the EEMs had been finalized, or until the agency determined it would be unable to create the EEMs. It is still in effect today.

For 18 years, this agreement has shielded nearly 14,000 CAFOs from EPA penalties – yet only 25 facilities actually participated in the data collection.

At the time the agreement was established, meat companies were fearful of lawsuits and EPA penalties over the pollution they produced, said Garth Boyd, who represented Smithfield, one of the country’s largest pork companies, in the negotiations over the study and agreement.

All Smithfield operations at the time signed the contract, Atkinson told Investigate Midwest, and two of its facilities participated in data collection for the study, called the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study, or NAEMS.

Boyd remembers the consent agreement being “controversial” among those on the private industry side of the negotiations, because companies were hesitant to pay the upfront penalty and admit to emitting pollutants.

But others, including Boyd, believed the EPA was negotiating in good faith and that the agreement could protect companies from bigger fines in the future.

“At the time, it seemed to make sense to me to sign the (consent) agreement, because things were tense and it looked like it would possibly prevent penalties,” Boyd said.

John Thorne, a lobbyist representing livestock organizations in the negotiations, said the industries had a mixed response to the consent agreement.

“They were distrustful of anything the EPA had its stamp on,” Thorne said.

Thorne added that livestock industry leaders were fearful that the study and consequent EEMs would eventually force the companies to spend massive amounts of money to curtail emissions.

Critics question sufficiency of data behind EEMs

After working out a deal to fund the research, the industry and EPA stakeholders next needed to decide who would run the study.

The committee selected Albert Heber, Ph.D., agricultural air quality expert and professor at Purdue University, to oversee the study design and data collection for the NAEMS.

NAEMS, which collected data from 2007 through 2010, is still the largest study of its kind, Heber said.

Heber had consulted for both the EPA and for livestock producers, so he represented a middle ground between the EPA and the industries the agency regulates, he said. He had also served as an expert witness for both the EPA and livestock operators in nuisance cases.

“Environmental groups say the study is industry tainted,” Heber said. “So here’s my answer: It wasn’t tainted in any way. Purdue was totally independent in the selection of specific sites. I personally selected the sites. I personally selected the research team and oversaw the conduct of the study.”

Heber said he didn’t take directions from industry leaders, but he did discuss site selection with industry groups to understand which types of facilities were most common in each industry.

“The only part of the (study) design that they were involved with is, what type of barns and farms should be included?” Heber said. “That was a collaborative effort, but they have the information on what kind of farms they have.”

Heber’s team monitored emissions at 27 sites on 25 CAFOs in 10 states. (At two of the CAFOs, teams monitored multiple emissions sites.) The team monitored each site continuously for two years.

Heber said that he chose to monitor a smaller number of sites for a longer period of time to better understand how factors like weather and animal life cycles impacted emissions.

Critics, including some environmental groups and scientists, say that the data is insufficient to create rules for the entire country, and invalid because of the industry’s role in crafting the study.

“The sample size was not large enough, to be honest,” said Viney Aneja, Ph.D., an agricultural air quality expert and professor at North Carolina State University, who served on an EPA Science Advisory Board panel that reviewed the first drafts.

When the EPA published the NAEMS protocol for public review in 2005, many stakeholders submitted comments, concerned that the number of monitoring sites was too few to account for the diversity of livestock operations across the country.

The final dataset that forms the basis of the draft EEMs includes data from two Tyson Foods CAFOs submitted by company-funded researchers and validated by the EPA, as well as other data provided by respondents to a “Call for Information” by the EPA.

Prior to the start of the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study, Tyson had already dedicated $1 million to Iowa State University researchers for a study of ammonia emissions. As part of the Air Compliance Agreement, the team studying the two Tyson facilities expanded the monitoring to encompass all of the chemicals included in the NAEMS and to meet the EPA’s quality assurance criteria.

RELATED STORY: 7 key moments in EPA’s 18-year-long delay in measuring livestock air emissions

Atkinson, the spokesperson for Smithfield, said the EEMs would be “useful” but noted that the pork industry has adapted since the NAEMS.

“Much has changed over this time period that has likely impacted the base data used to develop the EEMs,” Atkinson said. “For instance, feed conversion and overall efficiency have improved industrywide, along with a reduction in the amount of crude protein fed. Both have had the effect of reducing emissions.”

The EPA stands by the validity of the data.

“The EPA is comfortable the data are sufficient to develop an emission estimation method for the animal operations monitored by NAEMS,” the agency said in its response to questions from Investigate Midwest. “EPA is open to discussing options for future monitoring and data collection projects to both expand the amount and type of data available for these operations and how to expand to other animal operation types (e.g., cage-free egg layers) as the industry continues to change.”

Key reasons for delay: conflict with Science Advisory Board, lack of resources 

The EPA published the first draft EEMs in 2012.

But the revision process stalled after a panel of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board reviewed the drafts and took issue with aspects of the formulas.

The panel sent a letter to the EPA in 2013 outlining issues with the drafts, particularly with the data that formed the basis of the formulas.

“The EPA has developed statistical models based on combined data sets and predictor variables which have limited the ability of the models to predict emissions beyond the small number of farms in the dataset,” the panel wrote.

“While basing the EEMs on data from a small number of farms does not necessarily limit the applicability of the EEMs to national populations,” the 2012 drafts should not be applied to all CAFOs, the panel said.

The panel’s final report includes several recommendations for the drafts, many of which involve clearly stating the limitations of the NAEMS data for users.

The Science Advisory Board panel strongly recommended that the EPA use a “process-based” model for the EEMs. A process-based model would require more data than the agency had access to at the time, and would be more time-consuming to produce, but would more accurately represent the wide range of factors that contribute to emissions at CAFOs around the country, the panel wrote.

Upon receiving the Science Advisory Board’s recommendations, the EEM development ground to a halt. The EPA stopped dedicating resources to the effort and key staff retired, according to the 2017 EPA Office of Inspector General report investigating the delays.

“EPA has made strategic hires to bring in talent with agricultural air expertise to work specifically on this project,” a spokesperson for the agency said in February.

“The fact of the matter is, if the study had included a diverse background of scientists to help advise in the design of the study, the nation would have benefited enormously. That did not happen.”

Dr. Viney aneja

The National Resource Council and the GAO both also recommended the agency use a process-based, rather than a statistical approach. Food and Water Watch attorneys argued that a process-based approach would be easier to implement for farmers.

The EPA’s current draft EEMs do not use a process-based approach.

“The amount of input data that you need to run these models is mind boggling,” said Heinzen, the legal director for Food and Water Watch. “To think that every animal feeding operation owner and operator across the country who needs to comply with the agreement, following the publication of these, is going to be able to do that successfully is ridiculous.”

The EPA told Investigate Midwest it will create a tool to assist CAFO owners and operators with inputting the required data, such as weather conditions.

Aneja, who participated in the Science Advisory Board review of the initial drafts, took issue with the funding of the study and the lack of involvement of scientists and university departments from disciplines outside of agriculture.

“The fact of the matter is, if the study had included a diverse background of scientists to help advise in the design of the study, the nation would have benefited enormously,” Aneja said. “That did not happen.”

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