Holding animal factories accountable

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.” ­—Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Family farm? Factory Farm? Animal Factory? CAFO? (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation)…. Maybe it’s a little bit ironic to launch a story about “manure” with a quote about a rose, but the olfactory factor fits. Farmers and ranchers have long understood that animal husbandry may not always smell like a “rose.” Thus, there has always been some skepticism when urbanites challenge the odors that emanate from nearby farms.

But what about when downstream cities, as well as neighbors including other farmers and ranchers, find hydrogen sulfide and ammonia blowing from massive animal factories, impacting their health and their property values? Or when emergency workers are killed trying to rescue farmworkers overwhelmed by toxic gases in agricultural buildings? What about when the manure generated from a dozen mega-dairies (50,000 dairy cows) collectively results in enough phosphorous to contaminate a downstream city water supply?

Industrial-sized animal factory
One of the perennial concerns with huge animal factories is they hold too many animals to adequately handle the inevitable solid waste generated. Any feedlot, cattle ranch or dairy farm that has sufficient acreage to allow for normal land application levels from manure, is explicitly exempted from the Superfund (Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act or CERCLA) and Right to Know (Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act or EPCRA) laws. The Right to Know law protects neighbors and emergency personnel, from potentially toxic gases that have caused some of the most tragic losses of human life in agricultural settings in recent years, as one rescuer after another follows each other into a death trap of poisonous gases.

“Large agribusiness organizations have been lobbying Congress for the past 18 months soliciting support by asserting that city-folk have managed to get plain old feedlot and barnyard manure captured under the federal superfund and right-to-know laws,” said K.C. Duerig, Idaho Resource Council member and Planning and Zoning Commissioner, “which conjures an image of a bucolic farm, not an enormous industrial-sized animal factory.” Advocates for the exemptions rest their case on the claim that huge animal factories are adequately covered under clean air and water laws.

In fact, the EPA and the states have failed to adequately control large-scale agricultural pollution under federal environmental laws. Neither the Clean Air Act nor the Clean Water Act regulates most large livestock operations, with less than one-half of the nation’s largest Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations operating with Clean Water Act permits. To the extent that a CAFO is operating in compliance with a Clean Water Act permit, it is exempted from liability under CERCLA.

Superfund a last resort
The Superfund (CERCLA) functions as a “backstop” or safety net designed to hold the source of a contaminated water body accountable where no other laws may come into play. The Superfund statute strictly limits whose who can file suit under that law to governmental jurisdictions (municipalities, states, tribes, counties); and it precludes punitive damages.
It should be noted that in most of the small handful of legal cases where either CERCLA or EPCRA has been invoked in relation to agriculture, the defendants have included names like Tyson, Cargill, Premium Standard Farms, and Continental Grain Co.

For example, when 14 mega-dairies upstream from the City of Waco, Texas, contaminated its water supply, the city filed suit against the dairies, under CERCLA. Before it came to trial, the dairies either settled out of court or entered mediation with the City of Waco, allowing them to make changes in their management practices (manure handling). None of them wound up helping Waco pay the $50 million (plus) necessary to clean up the existing water supply.
In Oklahoma, the Attorney General is seeking remedy from improper dumping and storage of waste from massive poultry factory farms (Tysons Foods) in the Illinois River watershed. The case is still winding its way through the courts.

Bipartisan support for the exemptions
Enter the Farm Bureau, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn., and others claiming that the Superfund, and the Community Right to Know laws need to exempt agriculture. Bills introduced into the last (109th) Congress had 226 co-sponsors (Senate and House), including the following from WORC states: Colorado- Allard, Beauprez, Hefley, Musgrave, J.Salazar; Wyoming- Cubin, Enzi, Thomas; Idaho- Otter, Craig, Crapo; Montana- Rehberg, Burns; South Dakota- Herseth, Thune; North Dakota- Pomeroy; Oregon- Walden.

The same bills are now being re-introduced into the 110th Congress, S.807 and HR 1398. “Now would be a good time to touch base with your Congressmen or -women to educate them on the need for accountability of the large animal factories,” Duerig urged, “which are a growing phenomenon in the WORC states, as well as other states.

“A dairy or feedlot or confinement operation with thousands upon thousands of dairy cows, cattle, pigs, or millions of poultry may be owned by a family corporation; but it is not a family farm, it is an animal factory,” Duerig said. “It is essentially an industrial operation and not a farm or ranch grounded in centuries of animal husbandry practices. That is why WORC uses the term ‘animal factory” to distinguish these operations from agriculture as traditionally practiced throughout this region.”

—Margie MacDonald