Animal production produces deadlier air pollution than coal-fired power plants
Poor air quality caused by food production in the U.S is estimated to result in 17,000 deaths annually, 80 percent of which are related to animal production
Welcome to EarthWatch, the environmental news and opinion newsletter for people who think you should never turn your back on Mother Earth—written by me, Jerry Bowles, an ancient scribbler who has been around the Sun a few times and doesn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
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When I was growing up on a hillside dirt farm in southern West Virginia in the 1950s and attending the late Sandstone High School, home of the Hornets, I belonged to a group called the Future Farmers of America, which at my chapter consisted of maybe a dozen hormonally-challenged teenage boys. There were rumors that FFA actually stood for something else but I was unable to confirm it at the time despite considerable inept research.
My FFA project was to raise a pig until it was fully grown so my dad went out and found a personable little Berkshire (the black one with a smooshed-in snout) piglet, paid $20 for it and carried it home under his arm. I named him Benji for a character in a Faulkner novel I was reading at the time. I registered Benji with the American Berkshire Society and carried out the slop bucket and corn at feeding time every day and six months later Benji such a handsome dude that it was decided that I should take him to the State Fair in Lewisburg.
Like a bunch of other farm boys staying with their animals I slept in the barn in the hay and made several futile attempts to sneak under the Hurly Gurly tent on the runway which seemed to be a big hit with the older male crowd.
On the day I was to “show” Benji I got up early and walked him around the ring for a few minutes to warm him up. He sometimes gimped a little on one of his back legs so I wanted him to be loose. He made it around fine and we won a Blue Ribbon. It was the first and last time I ever won anything.
I’ll spare you all the details of the day that Benji went to hog heaven beause home butchering is a necessary but distasteful component of subsistence farming. If you think pork or beef or chicken just shows up nicely wrapped in your supermarket, I don’t want to be the one to break the news. I do recall thinking through tears how delicious the fresh tender loin my mother fried up that day was.
Every day around the world millions of head of livestock are consigned to Benji’s fate to meet our seemingly insatiable craving for meat. By any measure industrial level livestock production is a filthy, unpleasant business. Just how damaging it is to the humans has been hard to quantify but a new study published Monday by the National Academy of Sciences found that poor air quality tied to food production causes roughly 17,000 human deaths a year, of which 80 percent are connected to livestock production.
In fact, these emissions now account for more annual deaths than pollution from coal power plants.
Animal production is overwhelmingly responsible for agriculture's air quality-related health impacts, the report states. Ammonia, released from manure and nitrogen fertilizers, reacts with other pollutants to form lung-irritating fine particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) that can travel hundreds of miles in the air. Chronic exposure to PM 2.5 levels can increase the risks of asthma, heart disease, cancer and strokes. EPA notes PM 2.5 particles "pose the greatest risk to health."
Jason Hill, professor in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the report said in a statement:
“Air quality-related mortality from the U.S. food system is comparable to that of other sources of air pollution, such as motor vehicles and electricity production. Nevertheless, food-related emissions are lightly regulated and less studied compared to these other sectors. Fortunately, air quality-related mortality of food can be reduced by improving fertilizer and manure management practices, and by shifting to diets that contain greater portions of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and other plant-based foods.”
Animal-based foods tend to have higher air quality-related human health damages than plant-based foods because of pollution released from the manure of animals themselves and from fertilizer use and tillage of land when growing the crops — primarily corn, hay and soybeans — that they eat. Of particular concern is ammonia, which is released in large quantities from nitrogen fertilizers and manure, as it reacts with other pollutants to form PM2.5.
The study—the first food-by-food accounting of the damage to air quality caused by agriculture, the authors say—shows that, per serving, the average air quality-related harm of red meat to human health is two times greater than that of eggs, three times greater than those of dairy products, seven times greater than those of poultry, 10 times greater than those of nuts and seeds, and at least 15 times greater than the average of other plant-based foods.
Farms could cut the number of air-pollution deaths in half if manure management practices were changed to eliminate manure decomposing in lagoons, as well as covering the lagoons and better separating manure from urine, the study suggests. Precision agriculture can also reduce the ammonia and no-till can also lower emissions as well.
The report estimates that substituting poultry for red meat could prevent 6,300 annual deaths (40% of total deaths from food production) and even greater benefits of 10,700 to 13,100 deaths prevented per year (68 to 83%) could be achieved from shifts to vegetarian, vegan, or flexitarian diets.
Many of the food production solutions that could reduce air quality–related health damages, such as improving nitrogen use efficiency in crop and livestock production, or decreasing food loss and waste, are likely accompanied by other environmental benefits, such as decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient pollution, and undesirable land-use change. Further, dietary shifts that increase the fraction of kilocalories from plant-based foods can improve diet-related health outcomes by reducing the incidence of chronic noncommunicable diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and cancer
The research was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Center for Air, Climate, and Energy Solutions (CACES), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Wellcome Trust. The research team included researchers from the University of Minnesota, University of Oxford, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Washington, and University of Illinois.
Dig Deeper
Animal production responsible for vast majority of air quality-related health impacts from U.S. food (UMN)
Air quality–related health damages of food (PNAS)
Yo JB, another interesting read and I confess I was not so up to date with the food side of pollution so thanks for the insights. Your list shows a very credible group of contributors and so it will be interesting to see how any naysayers of the research respond. BTW, didn’t realise it was your birthday so a belated best wishes. Geoff
Many Happy returns of the day, Jerry. Hope that you are all well, and that the pandemic has not slowed your juices. All well here in Mallorca. Gentleman farmer is my new gig, along with Sepp and various others I suspect. Stay well, best Peter.