More than 350 organizations and more than 150 small businesses have urged President Obama to protect our nation's waterways from animal waste produced by industrial livestock operations.
Food animals in the United States generate up to 1 billion tons of waste every year, which often contains nutrients, pathogens, sediment, antibiotics, and metals such as copper or arsenic. That waste contaminates some of our most prized waterways, such as the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, and Mississippi River, as well as streams, estuaries and wells. It also can taint drinking water, kill fish, and close beaches, harming human health and local economies.
Read the letters from human health, environmental, faith-based, farming, community, animal protection, sporting, environmental justice, student groups, and small businesses below.