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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Cows Pass Cars as Polluters |
| 2005-08-02 |
| Got smog? California's San Joaquin Valley for some time has had the dirtiest air in the country. Monday, officials said gases from ruminating dairy cows, not exhaust from cars, are the region's biggest single source of a chief smog-forming pollutant. Every year, the average dairy cow produces 19.3 pounds of gases, called volatile organic compounds, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District said. Those gases react with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone, or smog. With 2.5 million dairy cows ââ¬â roughly one of every five in the country ââ¬â emissions of almost 20 pounds per cow mean that cattle in the San Joaquin Valley produce more organic compounds than are generated by either cars or trucks or pesticides, the air district said. The finding will serve as the basis for strict air-quality regulations on the region's booming dairy industry. The dairy industry will be forced to invest millions of dollars in expensive pollution-control technology in feedlots and waste lagoons, and may even have to consider altering animals' diets to meet the region's planned air-quality regulations. Not surprisingly, industry officials challenged the estimate as scientifically unsound. Air-quality regulators defended their estimate as a conservative one based on the best available research. But it was criticized by some scientists ââ¬â including one whose work was used by the district to arrive at the figure. Five members of Congress and 12 state legislators had demanded that the district reconsider a similar draft estimate, calling it absurdly high. Environmentalists and some community groups, meanwhile, called the same figure too low. The entire exercise of estimating cow emissions has been lampooned on talk radio as "fart science" run amok ââ¬âalthough most gas actually comes from the front end of the cow. "I'd like to challenge the people that came up with this information to enclose yourself in a shop with a cow, and at the same time have someone enclose themselves in a similar shop with a car or truck running," one critic, Steve Hofman of Ripon, Calif., wrote to the Modesto Bee. "Then let me know the results." "This is not some arcane dispute about cow gases," said Brent Newell, an attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. "We are talking about a public health crisis. It's not funny to joke about cow burps and farts when one in six children in Fresno schools is carrying an inhaler." The dairy industry is growing fast in the San Joaquin Valley as farms driven out of the Chino area in Southern California by urbanization move into the Central Valley. Government officials estimate that over the next several years, the number of cows in the San Joaquin air basin will increase from 2.5 million to about 2.9 million. Although air-quality officials now have a figure on the extent of the cow pollution problem, it remained unclear how far they could push dairies to reduce bovine emissions. Cow manure is also a major source of emissions and will probably be targeted for regulation. Officials said they may also require dairies to alter the food cows eat in order to reduce flatulence. Possible measures include scraping manure from cow corrals more frequently so it won't fester in the heat and installing digesters to break down pollution in the lagoons where cow waste is later flushed. "We need immediate regulation now. We know the pollutants are coming off these dairies," said Tom Frantz, a native of Shafter, Calif., who heads a group called the Assn. of Irritated Residents. He says that he developed asthma in the last five years as factory dairy farms moved into the region. "Ag hasn't been regulated in the past, but times are changing. Our lungs will not become an agricultural subsidy." |
| Posted by:Mrs. Davis |
| #4 Jebus, if the anti dairy types can't stop the daries from being built (and they try like hell) They come up with some junk crap like this. I live here. Most of the air I can see is dirt! Cow farts are a distraction. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0â Doom 2005-08-02 23:38 |
| #3 Although air-quality officials now have a figure on the extent of the cow pollution problem, it remained unclear how far they could push dairies to reduce bovine emissions. Can't speak to dairy cattle but back in the midwest the folks report that beef cattle raised in feedlots result in a profit of about $20/head at current prices. Much regulation and California will find that they're regulating agriculture right out of the state. Of course that likely won't bother them at all. |
| Posted by: AzCat 2005-08-02 23:27 |
| #2 Cows, why do they flatulate? |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-08-02 22:38 |
| #1 Cows... Why do they hate us? |
| Posted by: jn1 2005-08-02 22:29 |