Every day, people who live near concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) must bear the brunt of the odors and pollution that come with such large-scale farming. These conditions could worsen, as the proposed Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 (H.R. 7567) would roll back animal welfare laws and potentially endanger environmental and public health.
With this new era of legislation in development, farmers, experts and activists in and near the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington area are urging lawmakers to uphold animal protections and prioritize small- and mid-sized farming operations over corporate agriculture.
“Who feeds the nation matters, and lawmakers should put the responsibility of that in the hands of smaller-scale farmers like us,” Sharon Kay, co-owner of Fawn Crossing Farms in Virginia, told The Informer, “meaning that the type of processes that we do become a greater opportunity for larger farmers to join the effort in providing healthier foods.”
The proposed bill could prioritize the interests of large-scale agriculture, especially with the inclusion of the Save Our Bacon Act (H.R. 4673), which would erode states’ ability to pass their own laws regarding how farmed animals are treated. Lawmakers also introduced the Food Security and Farm Protection Act (S. 1326), which would also jeopardize reforms made in the factory farming space regarding intensive confinement and could potentially nullify states’ rights to impose standards on the production of agricultural products in interstate commerce.
Notions like these, especially those that loosen up provisions on factory farming, can be extremely detrimental to the environment, especially air quality. Large-scale animal operations are a primary source of air pollutants such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, nitrous oxide and methane, due to manure and waste.
“Our Big Ag system in the country is broken, whether it be for chicken farms, the hog farms, the cattle feed lots,” University of Maryland (UMD) Environmental Health Scientist Dr. Sacoby Wilson, told The Informer. “We have to change that. We have to figure out a way to support real family farming and make sure it’s sustainable, regenerative… and address some of these long-term negative impacts.”
‘The Smell Was Unimaginable’: The Horror of Living Next to a CAFO
Six major types of animals are raised across approximately 83,000 farms throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed: dairy and beef cattle, hogs, hens, broiler chickens and turkeys. Poultry facilities release large amounts of ammonia into the atmosphere due to the microbial decomposition of uric acid in chicken litter, methane is emitted from cattle through their belching and manure, and swine manure produces nitrogen and phosphorus gases.
While farming is essential for feeding the nation, it is the biggest contributor to pollution in the estuary. The pollutants released into the air from agriculture can harm water quality through atmospheric deposition, in which gases and particles are transported and deposited onto solid or aquatic surfaces. According to modeling by the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), agriculture accounted for 46% of nitrogen loads, 29% of phosphorus loads and 7% of sediment loads entering the water in 2024.
“Ammonia has various health effects,” Wilson told The Informer. “It can burn your eyes, nose, and throat, and it can contribute to respiratory conditions,… exacerbate your asthma and… can impact your mental health, increase stress levels, [and] increase fatigue.”
People living in the watershed know the effects of ammonia all too well, especially Maria Payan, the executive director of the Sussex Health and Environmental Network (SHEN) and co-founder of Sentinels of Eastern Shore Health (SESH). Payan, her son and her late husband used to live across the street from a poultry CAFO in Delta, Pennsylvania.
One summer, the CAFO’s electricity went out, causing all the generators to turn off. Within 10 minutes, 20,000 chickens were dead and left to decompose on the property.
“The smell was unimaginable,” Payan told The Informer. “I mean, if I think about it today, I can actually get sick.”
Since houseflies breed in manure, they are the most common insects associated with CAFOS and were always a nuisance for Payan and her family. She recalls having hundreds in her house, even in rooms without windows. The air was also hard to breathe, especially for her husband, who had cancer and suffered from respiratory issues.
The last straw for Payan was when doctors wanted to test her son for cancer. The family moved to Delaware, but they still faced the same issues. Since then, Payan has dedicated her time to advocacy and education surrounding the relationship between environmental and public health.
“I’ve been doing this [for] 20 years, and… it’s changing, but guess what? It’s going in the wrong direction,” she told The Informer. “Doesn’t matter which party is in control,… the politicians don’t want to deal with it.”
Smaller Farms in Maryland, Virginia Champion Sustainability
Eroding animal welfare laws could put the air quality of the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington region, where ozone levels and particle pollution are already areas of concern, at risk. According to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System’s (NPDES) most recent CAFO Permitting Status Report, Maryland and Virginia are home to 494 and 206 CAFOs, respectively.
While these large-scale operations make up a small portion of the total farms in each state, protecting and prioritizing small- and mid-sized farms is crucial to safeguarding the air quality in the region. Bridgewater, Virginia’s Fawn Crossing Farms and Monkton, Maryland’s Roseda Black Angus Farm are two prime examples of what humane livestock conditions and sustainability in agriculture should look like.
“We want what’s best for the animals, so we treat [them] almost like we would treat our kids and look out for the best of them,” Dean Bryant, Roseda’s cattle manager, told The Informer. “Animals that are healthy and happy tend to grow faster,… so we don’t want to do things that will hurt the animal’s performance and production,… so it’s usually a win-win situation for farm operations and for the environment.”
Roseda currently has a base cow herd of 140, all of which are allowed to graze the pasture as they please and as the weather allows. The farm operates on a schedule that rotates grazing every three to four days, a practice that protects the air. Cows can produce 40-60 gallons of methane per day, but the grass they graze on can store those emissions and block them from entering the atmosphere. If a herd isn’t under a rotational schedule and eats in one concentrated spot, the captured carbon is at risk of leaking into the air.
While Bryant says cattle can do well in confined feeding areas, he prefers seeing them out on the pasture. Rotational grazing and pasture raising both increase productivity and protect the environment by reducing emissions, preserving soil health and fostering animals’ overall wellbeing.
“Cows are the best way to utilize pasture because they do all the work,” Bryant told The Informer. “We don’t have to go out there with tractors and equipment to cut the hay and haul it to them, so they go out and harvest it and eat it.”
Roseda protects the Chesapeake Bay by using a gravity-based watering system to keep the cattle out of streams on the property that connect to the estuary. The black angus farm runs completely on solar energy– another way it reduces overall carbon emissions.
Environmental health and the animals’ well-being are also top priorities at Fawn Crossing Farms for Kay and her husband, co-owner Bill Theiss. The married couple are leaders in the group Farmers for Animals Communities and the Environment (FACE), which advocates for policies that will improve the food system as a whole. Their farm is on the smaller side, consisting of 10 acres that are home to one boar, two sows, three milking does, a couple of bucks and some chickens and ducks. Like Roseda, their livestock grazes on a rotational schedule.
“We only wanted a small-scale operation because we didn’t care to feed the whole world,” Kay told The Informer. “We wanted to feed ourselves and those that value what we do in a manner that made sense to us without harming the animals for the amount of property that we have, as well as being able to provide them the level of attention and care that we believe they deserve.”
All the animals at Fawn Crossing Farms live in a barn where they are free to come and go on their own accord. Piglets and kids are born in 12-by-12-foot farrowing stalls away from the rest of the animals because sows and goats are naturally driven to isolate in the 24 hours before giving birth. Kay and Theiss provide the birthing animals with ample bedding to ensure their comfort.
Other ways the married farmers protect environmental health are by maximizing their energy efficiency through solar water heating and by reducing their carbon footprint through geothermal heating and air conditioning in their house.
Wilson believes the solution to the current agricultural system in the U.S. starts with supporting farms like these two that are committed to sustainability. Taxpayers are expected to pay $14.7 billion in 2026 for the federal crop insurance program, which benefits industrial-scale operations over smaller ones.
“Those families that are part of rural America, that are part of our farming culture, that are the backbone of this country, invest in them so they do not have to be beholden to the big corporate integrators,” Wilson told The Informer. “We’ve got to flip the model, so take those subsidies from the big corporations, and… invest in innovative [agriculture].”
Kay and Theiss want to see the protection of smaller farming operations in new farming legislation, as a way to level the playing field between independent and corporate agriculture. If farms like theirs are considered by lawmakers, Americans will get more opportunities to have healthy, nutrient-dense food, and the nation will be one step closer to improving its environmental health.
“We want accountability and transparency so consumers can make good choices and know where their food comes from and how it was raised,” Kay told The Informer. “Our voices may be like whispers in the wind drowned out by Big Ag dollars and their money, but as another farmer, Jodie Osmond, says, ‘We can beat the money by being the many.’”
