Almost two trillion pounds of animal waste are produced per year nationally. An increasing amount of this animal waste is produced by intensive livestock operations, which are really more factories than farms. Common animal waste treatment practices used by these livestock factories are often inadequate to protect our drinking water and environment, posing one of America's serious pollution problems. See Scorecard's overview of animal waste problems.
NOTE: Scorecard combines 1997 livestock population data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture with waste factors developed by the agricultural community to estimate the amount of animal waste that livestock operations produce. Due to limitations in available data, Scorecard cannot describe the waste management methods of specific livestock operations or evaluate the level of health or ecological risk that animal waste may pose in an area.