Hormonal and Growth Promoter Pollution

The Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Center , a National Facilitation Project of the CSREES National Integrated Water Quality Program, and The National Center for Manure & Animal Waste Management , funded by the USDA Fund for Rural America, are important projects helping USDA address this issue.

Land application of animal wastes containing natural hormones and feed additives of growth promoters, including organoarsenic compounds, hormones, and antibiotics, in animal operations poses a potential threat to water quality. USDA CSREES sponsors research to understand the fate of these compounds in the environment and how waste treatment and handling methods can be designed to minimize these emissions.

Accomplishment:

North Dakota State University Extension Service published "Water Resource Impacts from Medicines and Other Biologically Active Substances."

Hormonal pollution from the land application of animal wastes is a relatively new concern. Research at the University of Tennessee found that hormonal pollution to water is unlikely from manure applied at rates sufficient to meet the phosphorus requirement for winter wheat but is more likely from nitrogen-based manure applications.

The Mid Atlantic Regional Water Quality Program recently organized and conducted a forum on endocrine disruptors in the environment. The agenda and PDFs of all the presentations from the forum, entitled "Endocrine Disruptors: What We Know & What We Don't".

Examples:

Arsenic-containing feed additives are used extensively in the broiler poultry industry to improve weight gain and feed efficiency. Specific objectives of a research project at Virginia Tech are to evaluate 1) if arsenic from poultry waste leaches into surface and groundwater and 2) if poultry waste application increases the overall arsenic content of soils. Results from this research will be applicable to watersheds across the United States that are impacted by poultry-management practices.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have initiated a novel study to determine the occurrence of two commonly used animal production antibiotics in groundwater .

Indicates work supported by the USDA-CSREES National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program .

The intent of this page is not to catalogue all activities but rather to indicate the types of research activities in the Animal Waste Management theme across the U.S.