Regulating animal waste management--all the rage

Concern about how animal wastes are managed has reached a peak over the last several years. Late last year, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa introduced the Animal Agriculture Reform Act (S.1323), designed to regulate waste management practices at Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) on a national level. Recently, staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee (where Harkin is the ranking Democrat) issued a report that backed up the call for such legislation. The study found that the amount of manure produced in the United States was an estimated 1.3 billion tons/year (much of which is generated in open areas that has no chance of being captured). That's about 130 times greater than the amount …