Last month, the Los Angeles Times published a story about a new study that confirmed what many in public health and environmental justice have long suspected: California is the industrial cattle capital of the nation. According to researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of California, Santa Barbara, the state has more cattle feeding operations than any other, concentrated heavily in the Central Valley. Tulare County alone has more feedlots than any other county in America, and if it were a state, it would rank eighth nationally.
The new study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, also quantified an unsurprising and troubling link between high concentrations of industrial animal farms and air pollution: counties with large cattle feeding operations experience significantly higher levels of fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅)—28 percent higher on average than similar areas without them. PM₂.₅ is one of the deadliest forms of air pollution, linked to heart disease, lung cancer, and premature death, often affecting communities that already face economic and healthcare barriers.
Building on that data, Farm Forward estimated the potential mortality burden associated with cattle animal feeding operations (AFOs) in California counties, focusing on the heart of the state’s dairy industry. The results are stark. In Tulare County, home to a dairy industry worth roughly $2.67 billion in milk sales each year, AFO-related PM₂.₅ is linked to an estimated 60 excess deaths annually.1 Using EPA’s standard economic valuation of a statistical life (VSL), those premature deaths should be valued at $337 million, and that’s before adding the victims’ costs of lost wages, hospitalizations, and long-term healthcare.
The pattern repeats across the Valley. In Stanislaus County, the mortality cost associated with cattle feedlot PM₂.₅ exposure is nearly $389 million, accounting for over half of the industry’s gross value. In San Joaquin County, the toll is higher: $569 million in mortality costs against $621 million in sales of milk, roughly a one-to-one ratio. According to our analysis, based on this study, about 144 premature deaths each year in California in just five counties with the highest concentration of AFOs are linked to higher PM₂.₅ emissions from industrial dairy farming.
When the value of lives lost (as measured by VSL) nears, or surpasses, the market value of the milk produced, it forces a hard question: are these operations economically viable when their true costs are counted?2 The dairy AFO model in California is profitable in part because much of its real costs—especially the health burden—has been offloaded onto nearby communities. Though California regulators may treat air pollution from AFOs as a cost-of-doing business, those costs are to a large extent borne by working-class, often uninsured residents residing near industrial dairies.
The Clean Air Act (CAA) is the United States’ primary tool for regulating harmful air emissions from industrial sources. Under the CAA, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, and manufacturing facilities are required to monitor and control emissions of dangerous pollutants like PM₂.₅. These industries must install pollution control technologies, undergo regular inspections, and report emissions to federal and state agencies.
But industrial animal operations are treated differently. Despite producing vast amounts of airborne pollution (including PM₂.₅ at concentrations likely to increase mortality), AFOs are exempt from the CAA’s permitting and reporting requirements. This is not because their emissions are benign; rather, it’s a result of decades of political lobbying, industry influence, and the framing of livestock production as “agriculture” rather than “industry.”
This is a clear example of agricultural exceptionalism: the set of special legal carve-outs that shield large-scale animal agriculture from the environmental, labor, and safety regulations that apply to virtually every other sector. As a result, communities living near factory farms bear the health burden of emissions that the EPA does not regulate, while other industries must pay to clean up their pollution. In practical terms, this means that if a factory or power plant emitted the same level of PM₂.₅ as a large dairy feedlot, it could be fined or forced to install costly pollution controls. But the feedlot faces no such repercussions.
Until factory farms are brought under the same legal framework that governs other polluting industries, the cycle will continue: profits for large industrial meat and dairy companies, premature deaths in surrounding communities, and the public footing the bill.
Find out if you live near an industrial animal farm here.
This estimate is based on a recent national study that mapped the location and size of thousands of cattle and hog feedlots, linked them to long-term data on fine particulate pollution (PM2.5), and used statistical matching to compare areas with and without feedlots. The researchers found that census tracts near large animal feeding operations had significantly higher PM2.5 levels—about 28% higher near cattle operations. Public health research shows that every 10 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m³) increase in PM2.5 is associated with about a 4% rise in overall mortality. Using this relationship, the authors estimated that feedlot-related PM2.5 contributes to roughly 144 additional premature deaths each year in five California counties with especially high concentrations of dairy AFOs—meaning the total for the state could be higher.
A more complete economic analysis might include the broader economic value of the dairy industry beyond milk revenue. Similarly, a more complete analysis of costs of the dairy industry beyond VSL would include lost wages due to illnesses, property devaluation, etc.