Owen Walsh
Weak regulations have failed to protect Michigan from factory farms. Citizen activists are picking up the slack.
Of all the ecologically crucial, natural resources in North America, the Great Lakes are some of the continent’s crowning jewels. No one knows this better than the citizens of Michigan, a state quite literally shaped by and named for the watery wonders surrounding it.
Covering a larger surface area than all of the United Kingdom, the Great Lakes are collectively the largest source of freshwater in the world. They contain about 90% of the country's freshwater—20% of the entire planet's. Between the US and Canada, tens of millions of people rely on them for safe, clean drinking water.
But size and status doesn't equate to immunity. Much like the world's oceans, the Great Lakes are a fragile resource seriously threatened by the byproducts of industrialized human activity. Large-scale agriculture, or factory farming, is one of the primary threats. In Michigan, the residents who live near massive agricultural operations—known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—have a front row seat to the dangers these factory farms pose.
These firsthand experiences have inspired many Michiganders to turn activist and stand up to CAFO development. I talked to several for this piece. Taking on Big Ag is no small task. Valerie Shey, a board member at the nonprofit VegMichigan, summed it up quite succinctly.
"It feels like trying to move an elephant with a pencil."
And yet, there's a collective sense of optimism and a clearly defined mission running through the advocates in Michigan who, now more than ever, are joining together to send the message that CAFOs are a threat, not a solution.
Why are factory farms a risk to water?
When you picture a typical farm with livestock on it, you likely don't think of a massive, windowless facility that packs in animals so tight that they can hardly move. Yet, that's exactly what CAFOs are.
The thousands, or millions, of animals confined on factory farms produce lots, and lots, of waste. Waste that needs to go somewhere. On smaller operations, farmers can recycle manure and use it as a fertilizer for crops. CAFOs, however, produce too much to be recycled. In Michigan—the "Water Wonderland" state—freshwater lakes are the unlucky recipient of much of this excess waste. In 2022, family farmer and researcher Pam Taylor revealed that CAFOs in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio spread nearly 700 million gallons of liquid manure annually in the western Lake Erie basin. The results are devastating.
CAFO manure is packed with plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. When animal waste makes its way into the water, these excess nutrients can lead to toxic algal blooms, a perennial issue for all of the Great Lakes. Toxic algal blooms (or harmful algal blooms) occur when salt or freshwater plants grow out of control and result in harmful—sometimes fatal—effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals, and birds.
Lakes, rivers, and streams near CAFOs are also more likely to be contaminated by animal waste and the chemicals and pathogens contained within. Particularly concerning for water sources impacted by CAFO development is the presence of E. coli—a bacteria that can lead to serious illness and even fatal kidney failures in children and older adults. A recent investigative research article found that water samples collected near CAFOs had elevated levels of E. coli.
Through decades of water testing in Michigan, Taylor recently wrote about the creative excuses she's heard for finding "astronomical" E. coli levels near CAFOs.
"After we started testing for E. coli, the excuses became more creative—it's raccoons, it's geese, it's deer. So we started DNA testing for the source species, and we found cattle, swine, and human DNA," she writes. "While it's natural to find some DNA from wildlife, including aquatic animals, in streams, there should never be human or domesticated livestock DNA in this water. The excuses given by [the state] for not properly collecting and analyzing samples would fill an encyclopedia."
A farmer tests the waters of accountability
Lynn Henning—a corn and soybean farmer in Lenawee County, MI—has had a front row seat to the industrialization of agriculture in her community over the past 23 years. In 2000, as CAFOs began cropping up around her and her farm, one particular operator accused Henning and her husband of reporting the facility's waste discharges to state officials. Henning maintains this wasn't true—she hadn't reported any discharges to the state—but the accusation inspired her to start doing just that.
"We started checking streams in the area and found that we were seeing manure in the water, so we started water testing at that point," she told me. Henning worked with a local group called Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan. "We started doing water monitoring and finding high amounts of E. coli."
To date, the local group has documented more than 4,700 violations from 12 CAFOs, which can be viewed on its website. Citizen reporting like this is so important, Henning said, because the state's own regulatory agencies have fallen short.
"There's definitely a lack of regulation... And there's no cooperation between agencies—the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), the health department—to help communities protect their air, water and land," Henning said.
Henning has worked tirelessly and fearlessly to monitor and report water pollution from CAFOs, despite intimidation and harassment tactics she said that nearby operators have inflicted on her and her family. It's tough work, taking on such a powerful industry, but Henning has seen successes along the way.
"We've shut down CAFOs... we've had one locally that was shut down due to quality of life [concerns] and they were fined," she said. "Around 2010 to 2012, we shut down the largest CAFO in the state due to all the violations for pollution."
In 2010, Henning won the Goldman Environmental Prize for exposing "egregious polluting practices of livestock factory farms in rural Michigan, gaining the attention of the federal EPA and prompting state regulators to issue hundreds of citations for water quality violations."
Today, Henning and her husband continue to operate their corn and soybean farm. On top of that, Henning is working with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project (SRAP), and heading up the group's Water Rangers Program. In communities affected by CAFO development, the Water Rangers train citizens to become citizen scientists. The program teaches participants how to collect and analyze water samples, document pollution, and report violations to regulators in order to prompt enforcement action. In addition to Michigan, the Rangers have expanded to provide training in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana.
Citizens are the first defense
When building a case to hold factory farms accountable, people like Henning who are on the front lines, living next door to CAFOs and documenting what goes on in and around them, are the most important pieces of the puzzle, according to Carrie La Seur, legal director at For Love of Water (FLOW), a group that works to protect the Great Lakes.
"As a lawyer doing this kind of work, it's tremendously valuable to have advocates out there identifying where the serious problems are," La Seur told me. "The records kept by the states that have significant livestock agriculture... there's either very poor reporting or none at all. So having someone who lives next door to the operator—as unpleasant as that is for them—who is able to provide information, and take videos, and do sampling of waters near them or their own groundwater, it's absolutely priceless in building a case."
And the number of Michiganders who are affected by industrial agriculture is surely growing, as factory farms in Michigan have quadrupled since 1997. There are now around 300 CAFOs throughout the state. These enormous facilities are designed to fit as many animals into as tight a space as possible, so the number of confined cows, pigs, and chickens in Michigan has skyrocketed as well. The state's CAFOs now house around 20 million animals raised as sources of food. Over the same timeframe, family farms in Michigan, unable to compete alongside these agricultural behemoths, have declined.
Citizens all throughout the state are coming to the conclusion that this rise in CAFO development is unsustainable at best. While activists may come at the issue from different angles—environmental justice, conservation of rural communities, animal welfare, to name a few—a recently formed coalition called Michiganders for a Just Farming System welcomes all advocates to come together under the same roof.
"There's often a lot of infighting [among like-minded groups]," said Bee Friedlander, founding member and director of Attorneys for Animals. "But we have a group of advocates who work well together and who come together when there's a big project like this."
Pushing for legislative change
Top of mind for Michigan-based advocates right now is reforming the state's existing Right to Farm Act, as well as reforming a proposed piece of legislation, MI Senate Bill 275.
Right to Farm Act
Established in the early 1980s, Michigan's Right to Farm Act was originally enacted to protect small rural farmers from nuisance suits—preventing neighbors from suing family farms over frivolous complaints. However, the legislation has since been co-opted to allow for the unchecked expansion of CAFOs. The result has been that local communities have no legal recourse to impose size or density restrictions on factory farms setting up shop.
"Right to Farm is no longer a shield, it's become a sword for Big Ag," said Cheryl Ruble, a physician and a core member of Michiganders for a Just Farming System. "Local communities You can't stop a CAFO, you really legally can't. So there is a need for Right to Farm reform."
SB 275
The bill is included in a larger package aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting clean energy in the state. Advocates support the majority of this legislation as positive steps toward a cleaner energy future. However, Senate Bill 275, if passed in early 2024, would provide financial incentives for the production of low-carbon fuels. One of the "low-carbon" fuels currently included in the bill's language is biogas sourced from animal manure.
Researchers throughout the country, and beyond, have been sounding the alarm and refuting the false promise of biogas as a clean or alternative energy. As described in a 2022 research article published in the journal Environmental Justice, "The production of biomethane from manure-to-energy projects, such as manure digesters, is hazardous to local communities, locks farmers into more debt, and perpetuates the expansion of our current harmful agriculture practices, while increasing fossil fuel infrastructure by entrenching CAFOs with pipelines for the gas that is produced."
Ruble has been working on this issue for years now. By providing financial rewards to CAFO operators for turning their animal waste into a source of fuel, Ruble told me, the state would be essentially encouraging the further development of factory farms throughout the state.
Advocates don't want SB 275 scrapped altogether, but they are urging fellow Michigan residents to call their representatives and ask them to remove the language incentivizing the production of biogas from manure.
"This is wrapped in an environmental bill, and that is the biggest concern," said Cynthia VanRenterghem, executive director Barn Sanctuary, a Michigan-based group that rescues neglected and abused farm animals. "In this generally good series of environmental bills we have the greenwashing of biodigesters, using manure. The language out there obfuscates the unintended consequences of pursuing this sort of alternative fuel."
'If people only knew'
Counteracting the influential effect of greenwashing from Big Ag is an ongoing process for Michigan-based advocates in general. Susan Holcombe, Professor Emeritus of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Michigan State University, said that when people are informed about the realities of factory farming, they are far less likely to support the industry.
"If they saw how these cows were maintained, how these hogs were maintained—rather than sizzling bacon—most people would not buy that product, they simply wouldn't," Holcombe said. It's hard, though, to overcome the fact that CAFOs provide cheap meat, especially at a time when so many people are struggling financially, she added.
"There are costs that are not added to that cheap food, health costs, environmental costs," Holcombe said. "If somehow the story could actually be told as it truthfully exists, I do think people would make a different choice about how and what they eat."
It's a real challenge to separate the idyllic image many people have of a small, family farm from the reality of these "monster" animal confinement facilities. Criticizing large-scale agriculture can even get advocates painted as unpatriotic or "anti-farmer," Ruble said.
For Barn Sanctuary, it's all about helping people "see farm animals in a different light."
"In the end, there really is nothing different between your dog and your chicken, but there is this disconnect," said Vanrenterghem. She said when they can help supporters make that connection and decide to make new dietary choices, then step two is showing them how to make their voice heard.
"We are facing huge forces that are very much interested in maintaining and growing the current system. But things have been changed through grassroots efforts, and that is definitely the best way Barn Sanctuary can help."
Support activists in Michigan and beyond
While this piece focused on the work being done by advocates in Michigan, the threats posed by CAFOs—environmental degradation, harming rural communities and local economies, hurting people's health and inflicting cruelty onto innocent animals—know no geographic boundaries. The mission to change the way we think about and engage in agriculture connects us all.
No matter where you live, I hope you'll take some time to learn more about, and support, the various organizations mentioned throughout this article:
