That report, with occasional updates, has become her standard spiel. It’s scientific enough to recite in academic settings, and graphic enough to keep the attention of citizen groups who have called her in for advice upon learning that a CAFO is coming.

For example, in “Patchwork” Hudson lists state agencies and university studies that have documented lagoon leaks in Iowa (70 percent of the earthen lagoons were leaking faster than allowed), Kansas (one lagoon alone was projected to leak more than 87 million gallons over its life span), and Minnesota (some lagoons were leaking 500 gallons per acre per day). In Illinois, policing leaks and other pollution violations is left to the IEPA, which is staffed with only five inspectors to monitor some 35,000 farms, large and small. IEPA’s current policy opts the agency out of any pollution permitting process [see “Land of stinkin’ ” April 8, 2008], limiting the inspectors’ work to responding to citizen complaints.

Once it receives a complaint, the agency has six months to file a notice to the facility, and the farmer has another 45 days to respond. If the farmer proposes a solution (digging an additional lagoon, for example), the IEPA can enter into a compliance agreement with the farmer.

The IEPA’s 2006 report documented more than 60 farm facilities in violation of waste handling, storage and runoff controls requirements and 18 with air emissions violations.

Seventy percent of the facilities IEPA contacted in 2006 had more than one violation. Runoff isn’t just viscerally disgusting: the Center for Disease Control found that manure lagoons harbor bacteria, parasites, nitrates, pathogens, heavy metals and antibiotics. The antibiotics have been fed to the animals routinely, usually along with growth hormone, for decades. It’s a proven method for producing bigger, healthier animals, but there’s an unintended side effect: Along with the more robust animals come more robust, antibiotic-resistant bugs. In 2000, the World Health Organization linked farmers and livestock producers to a surge in drug-resistant infections.

Last month, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof devoted two editorials to the link between hog farms and MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which kills 18,000 Americans per year. Kristof cited studies from the Netherlands, where pork production is industrialized, showing that Dutch pig farmers are 760 times more likely than other people to carry MRSA. A study published this year, of 299 hogs and 20 farm workers in Iowa and Illinois, found almost half the swine and 45 percent of the workers carried MRSA.

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