Animal agriculture is a major industry in the United States and around the world. Like all major industries, animal operations generate a significant amount of waste by-products, by-products which represent serious potential environmental pollutants. This work is an attempt to help those concerned with animal waste management--agricultural economists and policy-makers, environmental and public health officers, farmers, and so on--deal with this critical issue by addressing the problems generated by animal waste within a comprehensive management approach. As animal production worldwide has taken on the characteristics of an industrial operation, the implications of large quantities of waste--disposal and/or refuse--must be analyzed in environmental, economic, and public health terms. This work provides such an analysis.