Cost Methodology Report For Beef And Dairy Animal Feeding Operations

Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations: Current Knowledge, Future Needs discusses the need for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement a new method for estimating the amount of ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane, and other pollutants emitted from livestock and poultry farms, and for determining how these emissions are dispersed in the atmosphere. The committee calls for the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish a joint council to coordinate and oversee short - and long-term research to estimate emissions from animal feeding operations accurately and to develop mitigation strategies. Their recommendation was for the joint council to focus its efforts first on those pollutants that pose the greatest risk to the environment and public health.

This is an interim report of the ad hoc Committee on Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations of the National Research Council's Committee on Animal Nutrition. A final report is expected to be issued by the end of 2002. The interim report is intended to provide the committee's findings to date on assessment of the scientific issues involved in estimating air emissions from individual animal feeding operations (swine, beef, dairy, and poultry) as related to current animal production systems and practices in the United States. The committee's final report will include an additional assessment within eight broad categories: industry size and structure, emission measurement methodology, mitigation technology and best management plans, short- and long-term research priorities, alternative approaches for estimating emissions, human health and environmental impacts, economic analyses, and other potential air emissions of concern. This interim report focuses on identifying the scientific criteria needed to ensure that estimates of air emission rates are accurate, the basis for these criteria in the scientific literature, and uncertainties associated with them. It also includes an assessment of the emission-estimating approaches in a recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations. Finally, it identifies economic criteria needed to assess emission mitigation techniques and best management practices.