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Meet the new neighbors: 7.5 million chickens and their mountains of manure
MALCOM, IOWA — When Carolyn Bittner moved to Malcom, Iowa, in 2008 to serve as a pastor at two churches, she had no idea the town was also home to millions of egg-laying chickens. Three miles from her home, those chickens — which now total around 7.5 million — are raised in massive warehouses on […]
MALCOM, IOWA — When Carolyn Bittner moved to Malcom, Iowa, in 2008 to serve as a pastor at two churches, she had no idea the town was also home to millions of egg-laying chickens. Three miles from her home, those chickens — which now total around 7.5 million — are raised in massive warehouses on a sprawling complex run by Fremont Farms, which from the outside looks more like a maximum security prison than an egg farm.
“Fremont is an egg factory,” Bittner told me when I visited her late last year. “It’s not a farm.” The US Environmental Protection Agency categorizes egg farms with 82,000 or more hens as “large”; Fremont has over 90 times as many birds, all packed into about 100 acres.
Despite living three miles from the egg operation, Bittner is regularly reminded of its presence: “When they move manure, the stench is sickening. They will be moving manure now for the next few days, and it will be bad.” An egg farm that houses 7.5 million hens generates hundreds of millions of pounds of manure each year.
The stench affects her in seemingly mundane ways that accumulate to degrade her overall quality of life. She can’t hang her clothes out to dry for fear the wind will shift and make them smell terrible. She often can’t open the windows, lest the smell invades her home. And the staggering amount of manure attracts tons of flies to the town, which spread their own manure around.
“I had a new garage built while I was here, and it looked new for three days, and then there were so many fly specks [excrement] on the white edging and around the windows that it looked like it had been here for a decade,” she said.
The same week I visited Bittner, I also visited other factory farm towns in the region and quickly grew sick of the odor; I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with it every day.
Bittner told me that years ago, during a permit hearing at the local county board of supervisors meeting, the Fremont Farms CEO at the time asserted that the operation doesn’t smell and that no one ever complains. “From that day on, I have complained every time it smells,” she said. “This morning, before you came, I was on the phone.” Both the former and current CEOs have met with Bittner at her home, and while the meetings were cordial, she told me, neither seemed particularly sympathetic to the problems their company had wrought.
Bittner also worries about what’s in the air she breathes. Hog and poultry barns are equipped with giant exhaust fans that push pollutants, such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic compounds, and particulate matter, out into the atmosphere.
Air pollution from animal farms is linked to almost eight times more premature deaths than coal-fired power plants, a 2021 study from Johns Hopkins University found. Other research has found that living near a factory farm is positively associated with risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia, and people who live near them report higher rates of headaches, depression, anger, and respiratory symptoms, such as asthma.
“Owned by a group of family farms with a long legacy in egg production, our team makes environmentally conscious decisions each day to protect the land, air and water around our farm,” reads part of a statement provided to Vox by Fremont Farms, which declined an interview request for this story. “We are committed to responsible farming and we will continue to support the Malcom community as we have for decades.”
What it’s like to live near a factory farm
Future Perfect fellow Sam Delgado traveled with Kenny Torella to report and film this story. She explains what it was like to see — and smell — America’s factory farm capital.
@vox What it’s like to live near a factory farm. #factoryfarm #factoryfarming #agriculture #farmlife #farmtok #farming #farmer ♬ original sound – Vox –
Over the last 65 years, the US has nearly tripled annual meat production, and the number of animals raised for food each year surpassed 10 billion in 2022. At the same time, the number of farms has plummeted, as small- and mid-sized operations have given way to large factory farms — and increasingly, “mega” factory farms, like Fremont Farms — that now produce the vast majority of America’s meat, milk, and eggs.
These massive facilities can far exceed the threshold for what the EPA considers a large animal farm by orders of magnitude. Their enormous scale enables them to produce more food on less land with a smaller carbon footprint on a per-pound basis, and at a lower price point, compared to traditional farms. But they also push environmental and public health boundaries with little to no repercussions.
The mega factory farm is the inevitable consequence of decades of federal and state agricultural policy that has incentivized growth at all costs, with few guardrails in place to protect the people who live near them, like Carolyn Bittner, many of whom feel their health and quality of life has been sacrificed for corporate profit and cheap meat, milk, and eggs.
With unceasing domestic and international demand for animal products, there’s no limit to how big the country’s factory farms will get — and how much damage they’ll do.
How a mega factory farm could end up in your backyard
How so many animals, and the voluminous manure and noxious fumes they produce, can exist so close to people’s homes is the result of a complex web of federal, state, county, and local regulations — or lack thereof.
In Iowa, for example, the nation’s top egg- and pork-producing state, agricultural operations are exempt from county zoning ordinances, and there are no limits on how many animals can be crammed inside a factory farm. Large farms can set up shop half a mile from homes, businesses, churches, and schools.
Iowa’s agricultural zoning and permitting laws are written by the state legislature and carried out by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, each of which have close ties to Iowa’s powerful agribusiness lobby — as does Iowa’s governor and secretary of agriculture. Some environmentalists call Iowa a “sacrifice state,” where the health and well-being of its residents has been sacrificed to enrich large meat, milk, egg, and grain corporations.
This is the fourth in a series of stories on how factory farming has shaped, and continues to impact, the US. Find the rest of the series and future installments here, and visit Vox’s Future Perfect section for more coverage of Big Ag. The stories in this series are supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from Builders Initiative.
While Iowa produces more animal waste than any other state, many aren’t far behind, and every major agricultural state has similar policy regimes, political dynamics, and air and water quality issues.
If there were regulations in place to prevent factory farms from polluting so much, their staggering animal populations and close proximity to people might be less of a concern, but there aren’t.
The deregulation starts at the top, with the US Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces the Clean Air Act. But the agency has long said it doesn’t know how to measure pollutants on animal farms, so its authority there has barely been put to use.
In 2005, the EPA said it would study the issue and finalize pollution measurement models in 2009, which it could then use to issue Clean Air Act permits in 2010 and get factory farm air pollution under control. Over 15 years later, it still hasn’t delivered.
The agency declined an interview request for this story and didn’t answer several detailed questions. Over email, a spokesperson said that in November 2024, the agency posted draft air emission models for dairy, swine, and poultry operations. On its website, the EPA says it will finalize its emissions models by spring of this year. The agency didn’t provide insight as to when it will begin issuing Clean Air Act permits to animal farms.
Factory farms are exempt from other federal air pollution laws, due to actions taken by the EPA and Congress.
The factory farm industry also benefits from sweeping exemptions under the Clean Water Act, which has helped make agriculture the leading source of US water pollution. Much of the near 1 trillion pounds of manure produced each year by animal farms is applied to cropland as fertilizer, and when it rains, the manure — along with chemical fertilizers and pesticides — can leach into groundwater and contaminate the wells that people depend on for drinking water. It also runs off into rivers and streams, some of which water utilities source their water from, causing them to spend significant taxpayer resources to filter out pollutants.
“More recently, there’s been concerns over longer-term health impacts that can develop through long-term exposure to nitrate [from manure and chemical fertilizers] in drinking water,” David Cwiertny, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa, told me, pointing to studies on the potential links in association between nitrates in drinking water and bladder cancer, thyroid disorders, colorectal cancer, and birth defects.
Those potential health effects worry Jennifer McNealy in Decatur County, Indiana, who lives 1.5 miles from Hulsbosch Dairy Farm, which has 8,000 cows — around 11.5 times the threshold for what the EPA considers a large dairy. Her tap water comes from wells, and while she hasn’t tested it for nitrate levels, she doesn’t drink it out of an abundance of caution.
“I do not feel comfortable drinking my well water,” McNealy told me. She has reason to worry; a 2022 report by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that Indiana leads the country in polluted waterways, with agriculture as the top cause.
In recent years, the EPA appears to have modestly increased its oversight of agricultural water pollution; in a few states it’s either sued individual factory farms or directed state officials to take action. But the agency has much more work ahead if it’s to see meaningful progress.
While McNealy said the stench of manure from 8,000 cows is bad enough, there are also three hog farms with around 4,400 pigs apiece within a 2.5-mile radius of her home. The EPA considers a hog farm to be large if it houses 2,500 pigs.
About three years ago, McNealy was diagnosed with asthma. “I can’t say that any one or the combination of these facilities has caused it; I can say that it aggravates it,” she told me.
Like Carolyn Bittner in Iowa, the smell of the factory farms near McNealy’s home erodes her quality of life. She takes the long way to work to avoid driving by the dairy and hog operations, and some days when she gets home, the stench is so bad she has to cover her mouth and nose with the top of her shirt or a scarf and run to the door. She bought a grill but ended up giving it away because she couldn’t host outdoor cookouts due to the unpredictability of the odors.
Hulsbosch Dairy Farm didn’t respond to a request for comment.
McNealy’s’s situation illustrates another problem of factory farm expansionism over the last few decades: Rural communities don’t only have to contend with the rise of mega factory farms, but also with increasing factory farm density, with numerous large farms concentrated in one area that ultimately has the same impact of living near one massive facility.
Agricultural permitting regimes “don’t adequately look at the cumulative impacts of all of the surrounding operations, so there’s a huge gap there,” said Holly Bainbridge, a staff attorney with FarmSTAND, a legal advocacy organization that works to reduce the harms of industrialized agriculture.
Other people I spoke with in Ohio, Minnesota, and Iowa complained of similar factory farm density in their community.
“The smell just made you want to throw up,” Kim Gearhart, who formerly lived within a three-mile radius of around nine cattle operations — each of which he estimates had a little under 1,000 steer each at the time — in Edon, Ohio, told me.
The operations are run by the Schmuckers, an Amish family with a beef empire of nearly 100,000 cattle concentrated around the Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio tri-state border. They raise the cattle for JBS, the world’s largest meat company, and the region — 85 miles west of the manure-imperiled Lake Erie — has been plagued with farm pollution as the family has expanded its empire.
About 10 years ago, Gearhart and his wife moved several miles away to another part of Edon. “We moved over here, and I just thought… It’s out of sight, out of mind.” But about a year ago, the Schmucker family started a new cattle operation a quarter-mile from his new home, and they’re building two more, he said. “I have to keep the windows closed year-round. It’s just disgusting again.”
Schmucker Family Farms didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The right to farm, or the right to harm?
With few policymakers or regulators looking out for them, people who live near factory farms might naturally take livestock operations to court, but even that right has been taken away. Every state has what’s called a “Right to Farm” law on the books, which protect farms from lawsuits over nuisances like odor, noise, and dust.
Most of the laws came about in the 1970s and ’80s as city dwellers moved to the country, sometimes bringing complaints of agricultural pollution with them. Right to Farm laws have long been invoked as a means to protect small, independent farms and conserve a rural way of life, but food system reform advocates have nicknamed them “Right to Harm” laws, as they’ve been instrumental in both factory farm operators’ and large meat corporations’ efforts to beat back nuisance lawsuits.
“Everyone has a right to use and enjoy their property” under common law, said David Muraskin, managing director for litigation at FarmSTAND. “What the Right to Farm laws have done is basically say, ‘If you move next to a farm, no, you don’t — that farm can screw you over however it wants.’”
Almost two-thirds of states’ Right to Farm laws supersede municipal ordinances, meaning towns can’t implement their own regulations to limit factory farm pollution, such as placing a cap on the number of animals allowed per farm.
“I don’t think it’s a good thing for states to strip communities of their capacity to self-govern,” Loka Ashwood, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky and co-author of a book on Right to Farm laws, told me. “I think it’s undemocratic.”
While there are ongoing, long-term efforts to regulate farm pollution at the federal and state levels, campaigning on the ground against proposed factory farms before they can be built seems to be one of the few approaches that’s actually worked.
As executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors, Diane Rosenberg has been running local campaigns to oppose factory farm construction in southeast Iowa, and elsewhere in the state, for almost two decades. When a factory farm is proposed in her county, she sends out a letter to people living within a couple miles of where it’ll be built explaining the potential impact it might have on them and, if they have concerns, how to make their voice heard.
“Truthfully, [factory farms] are hard to stop, because Iowa does not give us a whole lot to work with,” Rosenberg told me. “We come up with a strategy to exert public pressure … and that can look like a lot of different things”: phone calls to the meat company or potential factory farm owner, letters to the editor, organizing public meetings, attending hearings, or placing local ads. That the county in which she primarily works — Jefferson County — has far fewer hogs than most surrounding counties is a testament to the power of community organizing, she says.
Such campaigns may ultimately result in the proposed factory farm being built elsewhere, making it somebody else’s problem — what some would criticize as a form of NIMBYism. But after spending a few days in Iowa and Minnesota touring factory farm communities and hearing — and smelling — what it’s like to have millions of chickens or thousands of pigs as neighbors, I can’t blame them for using the only tool left at their disposal.
Stopping factory farms isn’t easy, Rosenberg said, “but it’s possible — and it’s possible when people work together and they don’t give up.”
Sam Delgado contributed reporting to this story.
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