In 2006, the UW Discovery Farms Program was asked to cooperate on a proposal with researchers from UW-Madison and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene on a project that would assess the potential effects of hormones in livestock manure. The overal goal of the study was to determine the presence, persistence, and biological effects of natural and synthetic hormones that may be released into the environment from farms that raise livestock and to evaluate the effects of different animal manure spreading practices on the fate and activity of these compounds.