Food & Water Watch is back in court defending your right to know about hazardous substances in the air you breathe. The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) is a federal law that requires factory farms to disclose information about their dangerous air emissions. But in a 2019 rule, Trump’s EPA attempted to exempt factory farms, also known as animal feeding operations (AFOs), from these reporting requirements, relying on the newly passed Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act (FARM Act).

The FARM Act created a carveout for the industry from separate reporting obligations under CERCLA, commonly known as Superfund. With partners from across the country, we sued over the rule, arguing that the FARM Act did not allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to shield factory farms from EPCRA’s distinct reporting requirements.

Unfortunately, in 2025, after going back and forth in the courts for years, a U.S. District Court upheld the administration’s rule. Now the Food & Water Watch legal team is back in court on appeal, working to restore EPCRA air pollution reporting requirements for factory farms.

Success in this case would allow frontline communities access to vital pollution information necessary to protect their own health, make it easier for advocates to expose the factory farm industry’s pollution to the public, and ultimately hold this dirty industry accountable.

AFOs house thousands, sometimes even millions of animals, to produce meat, dairy, and eggs. These facilities produce enormous amounts of waste, and that waste emits noxious gases into nearby communities. Among other pollutants, EPCRA requires reporting of two major AFO emissions: ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

Most of the ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions from animal waste come from a relatively small percentage of the largest AFOs, and reporting is only required for facilities emitting more than 100 pounds of either pollutant per day. EPA estimates that only 3% of all U.S. farms exceed this reporting threshold. These massive facilities are the reason EPCRA’s reporting requirements are so necessary.

The protections provided by EPCRA are critical to keeping these facilities in check by informing communities about industrial ammonia and hydrogen sulfide releases. Both pollutants are hazardous to human health and have been linked to issues like respiratory diseases, nasal and eye irritation, headaches, nausea, and in extreme cases, even death.

EPCRA was enacted specifically to help inform and prepare communities about such hazardous exposures. And it has done so for many industries — but not factory farms. In doing Big Ag’s bidding with its illegal exemption rule, EPA has kept rural communities in the dark about what they are exposed to and unable to take action to protect their health.

Our appeal seeks a decision that the 2019 rule violates EPCRA, paving the way toward transparency from this industry. EPA has worked hard to give the factory farm industry a pass from the standards that most other industries have been required to meet for decades.

It initially attempted to exempt all but the very largest AFOs from reporting under EPCRA in 2008. We challenged that rule with allies and after years of delay by EPA, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the rule was unlawful.

That should have led to industry-wide reporting of hazardous emissions. Instead, Congress got involved by passing the FARM Act. While this law did not create a reporting exemption from EPCRA, Trump’s EPA used it as an excuse to once again attempt to do so on its own with the 2019 rule.

We sued again after the exemption, and when the Biden administration came into office, it committed to revising or eliminating the exemption. Unfortunately, the Biden EPA walked back this commitment after several more years of delay.

So, in January 2024, our coalition asked the court to set a deadline for EPA’s reconsideration. In response to the District Court’s orders, EPA finally admitted that it did not intend to change course from the Trump EPA rule. This enabled us to finally move forward with the case on the merits. Unfortunately, we received a bad decision from a Trump-appointed District Court judge in August 2025, who upheld the rule as lawful.

EPA’s own administrative record acknowledged a growing body of scientific research that shows how this air pollution causes a range of serious and potentially fatal health problems. EPA has further admitted that AFOs are disproportionately located near “communities with environmental justice concerns, including those comprising people of color, low-income individuals, and children.” But none of this has stopped it from shielding corporate factory farms’ pollution — and their bottom lines — at the expense of public health.

In the months ahead, we will once again make our case that EPA’s latest handout to Big Ag is illegal and factory farms must report their air pollution under EPCRA. Communities deserve to know the threats to their health and the industry must be held accountable for its pollution.