Friends of Rural New York

Speak at a hearing on factory farming
The National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production is holding a series of public hearings around the country on factory farming. The task of the Commission, an independent entity launched by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is to examine the impact of factory farming on public health, the environment, rural areas, and animal welfare. Its final report and recommendations could be very influential, so it is important for the Commission to hear from family farmers, citizens in communities affected by factory farming, and others who have particular knowledge of the issues. Visit http://www.ncifap.org/meetings/ to see hearing locations and dates, and to sign up to speak.

Article published February 7, 2007
Toledo Blade

More megafarm enforcement is urged
Indiana considering bills to restrict large livestock farms
ASSOCIATED PRESS
INDIANAPOLIS - A bill that would prohibit large livestock farms within 2 miles of schools, cities and towns drew criticism from a state agricultural official and support from residents who said dust and odors from the farms make them ill.

More than a dozen speakers testified Tuesday before the state House of Representatives’ agriculture and rural committee, which is considering two bills that would place limits on the state’s growing number of large livestock farms, where thousands of hogs, dairy cows and poultry are raised in tight quarters.

One bill aims to address rural residents’ concerns about the odors, dust and manure runoff coming from the farms, called confined feeding operations, by prohibiting their construction within 2 miles of a school, city or town.

It would permit only manure application by ‘’incorporation or injection’’ below a field’s surface, and require the certification of farm workers who apply livestock waste to farmland as fertilizer _ the most common method of disposing the large amounts of manure the farms generate.

‘’It’s a bill I think we may be able to get passed,’’ said state Rep. Phillip Pflum, who co-authored the bill. ‘’Would I like to go further than this? Personally, yes. But this whole process is a compromise.’’

He said the bill was needed to get the state’s 92 counties to operate according to the same standards.

Nellie Seal, one of several residents who testified before the panel, said she has lived in rural Hancock County for decades and never complained about nearby livestock farms until large hog farms opened nearby.

Seal said the farms’ odors and manure-tainted dust blowing off nearby fields now make her husband, a grain farmer, nauseous and sometimes force her to stay indoors.

‘’This is an everyday fact that we live with,’’ she said.

By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Four area citizen groups are among 26 nationally trying to get the U.S. Department of Agriculture to step up enforcement of air pollution regulations on megafarms known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

A Jan. 30 letter that was released to the media Monday claims a federal USDA task force is top-heavy with large-scale- agriculture lobbyists who are politically biased and focused on easing regulations for their industry, rather than following their congressional mandate to control emissions from lagoons and other CAFO sources.

The letter, signed by at least five attorneys, two physicians, and a variety of officials from environment, animal welfare, and small farm advocacy groups, said the task force membership itself violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires balanced representation.

“What we’re looking for is balance,” said John Klein, president of the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan.

His group is comprised largely of small farmers and residents of Hillsdale and Lenawee counties upset about open-air lagoons near them that hold manure from large livestock facilities.

Sue Torrey, a Wood County resident and president of the newly formed Ohio Alliance for Responsible Agriculture, a consortium of smaller groups, said the task force has been “stacking the deck” to the point of becoming an industry lobbying team that has “managed to pervert the original intention from one of a reduction in pollution to one of a reduction in regulation.”

Other area signatories included Jane Phillips, president of Wood County Citizens Opposed to Factory Farms, and Ron Wyss, a Hardin County farmer and president of Citizens for Respectful Agricultural Environmental Policies.

The complaint was sent to Arlen Lancaster, chief of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The letter was posted on the Web site of the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project, which was founded by a longtime U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforcement chief.

Other signatories, in addition to that group, included officials from Johns Hopkins University, the Sierra Club, the Humane Society of the United States, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Environmental Trust, and the Waterkeeper Alliance.