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Community Members, State and National Groups Rally at EPA to Oppose its Support for Factory Farm Gas

June 26, 2024

WASHINGTON- Today dozens of people representing farmers, rural communities, researchers, environmental organizations, and others rallied at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters to speak against factory farm gas, a greenwashing measure that will further entrench factory farming and fossil fuels.

Rally attendants delivered a petition opposing EPA's support of manure biogas, which was signed by over 33,000 Friends of the Earth members.

Factory farm gas is a greenwashed approach to climate mitigation that is incompatible with the goals of environmental justice and public health. Anaerobic digesters are portrayed as a way to substantially reduce methane emissions from the animal agriculture sector, the largest source of U.S. emissions of thispotent greenhouse gas.

However, these systems not only fail to resolve the negative environmental and public health impacts of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), but they exacerbate pollution and safety risks to communities living near industrial livestock operations and biogas plants. Rather than enforce the Clean Air Act and regulate methane emissions from industrial livestock operations, the EPA is supporting this harmful industry by promoting factory farm gas through its AgSTAR program and funding biogas projects through new IRA-authorized grant programs.

"EPA has for decades failed to protect vulnerable communities from pollution associated with industrial animal agriculture," said Molly Armus, Animal Agriculture Program Manager for Friends of the Earthand organizer of the rally. "The agency's support for factory farm gas doubles down on this historic betrayal of rural communities and undermines its commitments to environmental justice and following the science."

Contact:Shaye Skiff, Friends of the Earth, [email protected]

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