We can't just ban livestock water pollution emissions; "it" happens. We can't banish livestock to remote areas where its pollution will be someone else's problem; few but vegetarians wish to be far from fresh meat. On the other hand, nobody wants to live downstream from a cattle feedlot, or compete with his food for clean water.

Water pollution concentrated in the tissues of livestock can become even more concentrated in human tissues when tainted livestock flesh is consumed. For this reason alone, it is vital to monitor and control the quality of water delivered to livestock.

Livestock water quality guidelines are inevitably compromises and balancing acts. Poor water quality leads to sick, slow-growing, or even dead livestock, all painful losses in industries that operate on razor-thin profit margins. Livestock water quality can also affect the taste and appearance of meat, and its marketability. But high quality drinking water treated in multi-million-dollar plants is relatively expensive. Getting it to livestock wandering the open range would be even more expensive. Agricultural economics play a major role in livestock water quality guidelines and practices. Livestock water quality must be good enough and cheap as possible. Often, this leads to corrective instead of preventive livestock water treatment practices.

The quality of water consumed by livestock is monitored for living and non-living contaminants. Both may have natural sources or may be caused by human activity, including industrial water pollution emissions or the very human act of crowding large groups of livestock into small spaces.

High concentrations of salt and other ions in livestock drinking water can cause diarrhea, lack of appetite, and death. In the U. S. general guidelines for testing livestock water quality, and acceptable levels of salt and many ions, are published by the Environmental Studies Board of the National Academy of Engineering, part of the National Academy of Sciences. The United Nations published similar guidelines in 1976, entitled Water Quality for Agriculture.

Pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites can enter livestock drinking water from many sources, including bird droppings, inflowing water, and new livestock imported from other populations. High-density, large scale livestock management practices help pathogens spread very rapidly through populations. Constant monitoring and swift treatment are essential.

Water-borne pathogens from livestock pose relatively little threat to humans in developed nations, where human drinking water supplies are treated intensively. (Of course, many diseases that livestock catch from poor quality drinking water can be transmitted to humans when meat is eaten.) But in underdeveloped nations where humans and livestock share the same, often untreated water supplies, parasites and other biological diseases are common.

Because human health is intimately connected to livestock water quality, guidelines are critical to develop and enforce. It is vital to increase awareness of livestock water quality's consequences in underdeveloped nations, and to control the spread of large-scale, high-density livestock operations in developed nations.