Livestock and Feedlots in Pettis County, Missouri

The scale here is genuinely large

The USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture put Pettis County's livestock inventory at roughly 4.8 million broilers and other meat-type chickens, about 129,600 hogs and pigs, about 49,400 cattle and calves, and roughly 89,000 turkeys, alongside soybeans (about 89,700 acres) and corn (about 55,000 acres) as the dominant row crops. That's a large concentration of confined animal production for a single Missouri county, and it's the direct reason the county has its own locally adopted health ordinance addressing animal feeding operations rather than relying purely on state permitting.

The county's 1996 ordinance -- and what changed since

Pettis County Ordinance No. 96-1 is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation ordinance the County Commission adopted under the authority granted to county health boards by RSMo 192.300. It sets tiered setback requirements keyed to an "animal unit" (AU) measure -- for example, no Class IA CAFO (broadly, an operation authorized for 1,000 or more animal units) may be located within a quarter mile of an occupied dwelling, with that required distance increasing by a quarter mile for each additional 500 AU of authorized capacity above 2,000 AU. An animal unit itself is a standardized comparison measure across species (one animal unit equals one beef feeder or slaughter animal, roughly 2.5 hogs over 55 pounds, or 15 hogs under 55 pounds, for instance), which is how the ordinance compares hog, cattle, and poultry operations of different sizes on the same scale.

That ordinance, however, doesn't operate today with the authority it had when adopted. In March 2023, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a state law (passed in 2019 and amended in 2021) that bars Missouri counties from imposing animal-feeding-operation regulations stricter than state Department of Natural Resources and Department of Agriculture standards. The case was brought by Cedar and Cooper counties and several residents, not Pettis County, but the ruling applies statewide to any county with a similar local ordinance. We could not confirm from public sources exactly which specific provisions of Pettis County's 1996 ordinance are now unenforceable as a result versus which happen to already align with (and therefore survive under) current state minimum standards -- that distinction matters for anyone relying on the ordinance's setback numbers, and it should be confirmed directly with the County Commission or an attorney rather than assumed from this summary.

The state permit layer still applies regardless of county authority

Separate from any county ordinance, a livestock operation above certain size thresholds needs its own Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, administered under the state's own animal-feeding-operation rules and setback requirements. That state permit process exists and applies in Pettis County the same way it would anywhere else in Missouri, independent of the county-preemption question above -- so a large-scale operation still faces a real regulatory filter, just one set primarily at the state level rather than the county level.

What to check if you're buying near an existing or proposed operation

• Whether a neighboring parcel already holds (or has applied for) a Missouri DNR CAFO permit -- DNR's permit database and public-notice process are the state-level record, separate from anything the county tracks.
• The size class (animal-unit count) of any known or proposed operation nearby, since both the county ordinance's setback tiers and state permit thresholds scale with size.
• That Pettis County has no zoning process to provide an additional hearing or notice on a new livestock operation beyond whatever the state permit process requires -- there is no conditional-use hearing at the county level to attend.
• Odor, manure-management, and water-quality history for an existing operation nearby, which affects daily livability and resale even where a use is fully permitted.