We’re changing the rules for factory farms in Michigan

We’re changing the rules for factory farms in Michigan. But the common sense gains we’ve made are under attack by Big Ag. Even so, we know it’s not inevitable that factory farms continue to dominate our food supply at the expense of healthy and sustainable family farms. 

Michigan alone contains 272 factory farms, or “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), as they are known in regulatory parlance. These operations are anything but small businesses with a few dozen cows or hogs. They’re industrial-scale operations with thousands of animals that produce enormous amounts of waste -- waste that contains a toxic slurry of manure, chemicals, pathogens, and nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. This waste runs off frozen and snow-covered fields, into our lakes and streams, and is a major contributor to the toxic algae blooms that shut down Toledo’s drinking water and make swimming and fishing in Lake Erie a potentially deadly experience.

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