Friends of Rural New York

Animal factories get permission to pollute. New York State agencies set different standards for agricultural industries.

Letter to the Editor
Finger Lakes Times

Rules on CAFOs out of balance
New York State has changed from a family business to a factory operation owned by large corporation. Factory farms are called “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations� (CAFO). CAFOs raise chickens, pigs, or cattle for food. These factory farm animals are never allowed to graze in a pasture. Instead they spend their short miserable lives crowded in large barns that are comparable to a factory warehouse. Ion the interest of profit, CAFOs will house thousands of animals at a time.
Consequently, CAFOs produce large amounts of animal waste that is removed from the barn (warehouse) and is deposited and stored in “lagoons�. A lagoon is a kinder, gentler word for a CAFO cesspool containing feces and urine. These cesspools resemble large dark lakes that release noxious gases into the air. Moreover, these cesspools leach into the ground killing lakes and rivers, in addition to contaminating drinking water.
There are 600 animal factories or CAFOs operating and polluting New York State. Neighbors of CAFOs have witnessed their air quality diminish, their water supplies contaminated, their health deteriorate, and their property values decline. CAFO neighbors have little or no recourse because CAFOs are considered farms and are protected from the consequences of their actions by the New York state Right to Farm Act.
The intent of the New York State Right to farm Act is to protect the farmer by providing a different set of environmental standards for farmers than the environmental standards imposed upon manufacturers and factories. Of course the family farmer that the Act is designed to protect is very different from the corporate CAFO. However, the impact that a CAFO has on the environment is not much different than that of a factory. Moreover, New York State would never allow a factoryto store chemical waste in an open “lagoon�, but a CAFO can.
In conclusion, if both a CAFO and factory farm have the same devastating effect on our environment than why are CAFOs protected under the New York state Right to Farm Act? Certainly our representatives in Albany never intended the New York state Right to Farm Act to become a license to kill.

Kimberly D. Hutchinson
Clyde, NY
Wayne County
Letter to the Finger Lakes Times
Oct 7, 2004