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In animal husbandry, a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), as defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is an intensive animal feeding operation (AFO) in which over 1,000 animal units are confined for over 45 days a year. An animal unit is the equivalent of 1,000 pounds of "live" animal weight.[1] A thousand animal units equates to 700 dairy cows, 1,000 meat cows, 2,500 pigs weighing more than 55 pounds (25 kg), 10,000 pigs weighing under 55 pounds, 10,000 sheep, 55,000 turkeys, 125,000 chickens, or 82,000 egg laying hens or pullets.[2]
CAFOs are governed by regulations that restrict how much waste can be distributed and the quality of the waste materials.[2] As of 2012 there were around 212,000 AFOs in the United States,[3]: 1.2 19,496 of which were CAFOs.[4][a]
Livestock production has become increasingly dominated by CAFOs in the United States and other parts of the world.[5] Most poultry was raised in CAFOs starting in the 1950s, and most cattle and pigs by the 1970s and 1980s.[6] By the mid-2000s CAFOs dominated livestock and poultry production in the United States, and the scope of their market share is steadily increasing. In 1966, it took 1 million farms to house 57 million pigs; by 2001, it took only 80,000 farms to house the same number.[7][8]
- ^ "Animal Unit Equivalent for Beef Cattle Based on Metabolic Weight". www.ag.ndsu.edu. Retrieved 2021-02-12.
- ^ a b "Animal Feeding Operations". Livestock. Washington, D.C.: United States Natural Resources Conservation Service. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
EPA CAFO Manualwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
EPA 2016 summarywas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Imhoff, Daniel; Tompkins, Douglas; Carra, Roberto (2010). CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. Devon, UK: Earth Aware Editions/NHBS. ISBN 9781601090584.
- ^ Burkholder, J.; Libra, B.; Weyer, P.; Heathcote, S.; Kolpin, D.; Thorne, P. S.; Wichman, M. (2006). "Impacts of Waste from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations on Water Quality". Environmental Health Perspectives. 115 (2): 308–312. doi:10.1289/ehp.8839. PMC 1817674. PMID 17384784.
- ^ Walker, Polly; et al. (2005). "Public health implications of meat production and consumption" (PDF). Public Health Nutrition. 8 (4): 348–356. doi:10.1079/phn2005727. PMID 15975179.
- ^ MacDonald, James and McBride, William (January 2009). "The transformation of U.S. livestock agriculture: Scale, efficiency, and risks", Economic Information Bulletin, No. EIB-43, United States Department of Agriculture.
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