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Factory Farms and Water Pollution

Step 1: Watch the "Pollution and Watershed" activity video.

What did you observe when you added "rainfall" to your paper topographical map? What happened to the ink (water) ? Where did the "water" collect?

Step 1: Continue reading and adding to your map.

What is Intensive Animal Farming (Factory Farming)? Intensive animal farms, or factory farms, raise Not only do these large operations mistreat and exploit animals to produce animal products like meat, farm animals, they also create tons of pollution. In the eggs, and dairy. Factory farms maximize United States, intensive animal farms generate 450 production by packing animals together in small million tonnes of waste each year. (That is more than the areas, usually indoors, feeding them fattening feed weight of 3,000 blue whales!) This manure waste is made from soy and corn. stored in giant slurry ponds.

Add 4 marks on your map along hillsides. Imagine these are factory farms built along the hillsides on your map. Each farm is generating thousands of pounds of animal waste every day and storing it in ponds on the property. What happens when it "rains" again? What happens to the waste? Page 2

Factory Farms and Water Pollution

Down stream from each of the factory farm on your map is a town. How might there communities be effected by the waste pollution in the water? What would it be like for those who live near these intensive animal operations? What other negative impacts can you think of?

Do your best to draw the map you made and label where you added the intensive animal operations. Add in where the waste pollution ended up.

What further questions do you have about factory farms or water pollution?