| Environmental Health Impacts of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: Anticipating Hazards—Searching for Solutions Peter S. Thorne College of Public Health, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA Abstract
A scientific conference and workshop was held March 2004 in Iowa City, Iowa, that brought together environmental scientists from North America and Europe to address major environmental health issues associated with concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in large, industrialized livestock production facilities. After one and a half days of plenary sessions, five expert workgroups convened to consider the most relevant research areas, including respiratory health effects, modeling and monitoring of air toxics, water quality issues, influenza pandemics and antibiotic resistance, and community health and socioeconomic issues. The workgroup reports that follow outline the state of the science and public health concerns relating to livestock production as they apply to each workgroup topic. The reports also identify areas in which further research is needed and suggest opportunities to translate science to policy initiatives that would effect improvements in public and environmental health. Viable solutions to some of the current environmental health problems associated with CAFOs are outlined. In addition, these reports bring to light several major concerns, including air and water contamination, the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in livestock, and the specter of influenza outbreaks arising from siting industrialized poultry and swine production in proximity to each other and to humans. Key words: air quality, animal confinements, antibiotic resistance, antimicrobial growth promotants, avian influenza, bioaerosols, livestock, poultry, swine, water quality. Environ Health Perspect 115:296–297 (2007) . doi:10.1289/ehp.8831 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 14 November 2006]
This article is part of the mini-monograph "Environmental Health Impacts of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: Anticipating Hazards—Searching for Solutions." Address correspondence to P.S. Thorne, College of Public Health, The University of Iowa, 100 Oakdale Campus, 176 IREH, Iowa City, IA 52242-5000 USA. Telephone: (319) 335-4216. Fax: (319) 335-4225. E-mail: peter-thorne@uiowa.edu The author thanks S. Kaliszewski, R. Ungar, J. Cook, and L. McCormick for handling the numerous arrangements for the conference and N. Newkirk for organizing and editing the workgroup reports in this mini-monograph. This workshop was supported by grant P30 ES05605-14S from the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center at The University of Iowa and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 9 November 2005 ; accepted 13 November 2006.
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