Google Image Depicts Factory Farm Waste Lagoon

For years environmentalists have reported the devastating toll that factory farming takes on the environment due to the overwhelming amount of waste generated from the billions of animals raised and killed every year. These reports had an image put to them earlier this week when a user on Reddit posted a satellite picture from Google Images that depicts a large waste lagoon from an industrial beef farm in Dalhart, TX. According to the Huffington Post, the shot was pulled from Google shortly after it went viral, but it is still circulating on online news sources. The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that animal waste is responsible for polluting more than 100,000 square miles of groundwater with the chemical nitrate in California alone, and has been found to contain levels of Salmonella, E. Coli, and fecal coliform that are exponentially more concentrated than human waste.