The agency will not finalize methods developed under a 2005 agreement, but an advocate says farms that exceed emissions thresholds still need Clean Air Act permits.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has ended its effort to develop methods for estimating air pollution from factory farms under a 2005 agreement, leaving unfinished drafts that farms could have used to assess their permitting and reporting duties. The agency announced the decision on 30 October 2026, Inside Climate News said.
The agreement followed enforcement disputes in the early 2000s, when the EPA tried to prosecute large animal-feeding operations for exceeding pollution limits. Industry argued that emissions could not be measured adequately; participating operations received protection from legal action in exchange for joining an industry-funded study.
The EPA says approximately 2,600 operations, representing nearly 14,000 farms, joined the agreement. They raised hogs, broiler chickens, egg-laying hens and dairy cows.
The study was intended to give farms tools to determine whether their emissions required Clean Air Act permits or notifications under two other federal laws. The EPA says it drafted methods for each participating sector covering ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds, but will not finalize them.
Abigale Tardif, the EPA’s acting air-office chief, said the data were too old and limited to support reliable methods. The agency says the data, collected in 2005–2007, reflect barn designs, herd sizes and manure practices that no longer represent many farms.
The EPA’s inspector general criticized delays in 2017. The agency released updated drafts for public comment in November 2024; after comments closed in August 2025, it identified limitations it said could not be resolved with the existing data.
The inspectorate says it detected illegal extraction or concealment of non-metallic mineral volumes in January–September 2026, involving 11.7 million cubic meters. It assessed environmental damage in 90 cases at AMD 254 million (about $710,000) and referred all 114 cases to law enforcement.
Tarah Heinzen, legal director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch, said the Clean Air Act still requires permits for facilities that exceed emissions thresholds, and that farms remain obliged to comply with federal law. She said other emissions studies can be used and pointed to California’s livestock-emissions models. The EPA says its action does not change its implementation of the Clean Air Act.
Heinzen said she expects the administration not to regulate factory-farm air emissions. Rob Brenneman, president of the National Pork Producers Council, welcomed the decision, saying farms differ and a single model cannot be applied to all of them.
Separately from the agreement’s enforcement protections, Congress and the Trump administration weakened farm air-pollution reporting requirements under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. The agreement did not cover methane.
Animal waste releases pollutants through ventilation fans and manure lagoons. Research cited by Inside Climate News estimates that air pollution from these operations causes nearly 12,700 US deaths a year.
The EPA says it will notify participating operations as required by the agreement, to the extent possible, and then terminate it. The agency also says it will continue working with the US Department of Agriculture, universities and producers on ways to understand and reduce farm air emissions.
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