Who Wants to Regulate and Shut Down CAFOs?

Post from Betty Salmon


I wrote recently about attacks against animal agriculture. On Sept. 21,
2009, the United States Humane Society (HSUS) and other environmental
organizations filed a petition with the United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to govern air pollution emissions from Confined
Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) utilizing a section of the Clean Air Act.



I thought it would be interesting for many of you to have more
information about the organizations behind the Sept. 21 petition to EPA.
It is always helpful to know the background of your opposition, their
true purpose, and also gauge their understanding of agricultural practices.



The HSUS is a national and international non-profit organization. Its
goal is protection of all animals. The organization claims to have 10.5
million members, maintains an office in Washington, DC and claims
offices and staff in 25 states and foreign countries.



HSUS says it is the most effective animal protection organization in the
United States. HSUS has an animal protection litigation section that
claims to conduct precedent-setting legal campaigns on behalf of
animals. It does this with 13 staff lawyers in Washington, New York, San
Francisco, and Seattle.



It further claims to have a network of over 1,000 pro bono lawyers
(lawyers who work for free) and dozens of active cases. Agriculture has
nothing like this to defend its interests. Have any of you ever seen
USDA's lawyers intervene to help out a farmer?



Another organization joining the Humane Society in petitioning EPA is
the Dairy Education Alliance (DEA). This alliance claims to be a
national coalition of farmers, grass roots activists, public interest
lawyers, and economists. DEA claims to have member organizations in 10
states. The alliance operates in conjunction with the Western
Environmental Law Center which says it defends the West's air, water,
and wild lands since it was created as a law clinic at the University of
Oregon's Law School in 1976.



Spotted owl fame The Western Environmental Law Center gained fame over
its seven-year litigation regarding the spotted owl. You may recall the
victory in this case helped shut down logging in many parts of the West.
The DEA claims member organizations such as the Center on the Race,
Poverty and the Environment, located in California; Family Farms located
in Missouri; the Idaho Concerned Area Residents for the Environment; and
the Idaho Rural Council. These organizations want to hold CAFOs
accountable for air emissions and educate the public about the serious
environmental damage caused by CAFOs.



Another alleged nonpartisan and non-profit organization seeking to
regulate air and water pollution from CAFOs is the Environmental
Integrity Project (EIP). One of EIP's main areas of focus is 'factory
farms,' or CAFOs. EIP was founded by former EPA enforcement attorneys
and is supported by a number of major foundations. EIP's founder and
executive director resigned from EPA and publicly expressed his
frustration with the Bush administration when he claimed it sought to
weaken enforcement of the Clean Air Act.



EIP claims to have five attorneys and works with grassroots
organizations to force alleged polluters to reduce their emissions. EIP
opposes the waste created by CAFOs and does not seem to understand that
many of us use the valuable manure for fertilizer. You might think that
such organizations would applaud the recycling of material, but
apparently EIP does not understand agriculture.



There are several other organizations filing the petition with EPA that
I could describe to you but the last one I want to bring to your
attention is the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which
claims it is an environmental justice litigation organization. It claims
it has beaten a 55,000-cow mega-dairy. I assume this means the dairy was
never built! It further claims it has cut pollution in California's
great agricultural San Joaquin Valley by reducing 7,237 tons of volatile
organic compounds and reduced 29,600 tons of ammonia per year. The
Center claims thousands breathe cleaner air today as a result of their
work.



Improved air quality After reading about these organizations and their
claims, one would believe that EPA and the 50 state environmental
organizations are hardly doing a thing to maintain air quality
standards. As we know, this is not the case because there has been
enormous improvement in the nation's air quality since 1970 when the
Clean Air Act was passed under the Nixon administration.



Notwithstanding these successes, these groups deserve to be watched
carefully because they are smart, have excellent lawyers, and are
dedicated to greater regulation of CAFOs. I recently was involved in
trying a case in the Midwest where many claims were made with regard to
alleged terrible air pollution emitted by a CAFO. We proved these claims
to be false and the jury returned a 12 to 0 verdict in my client's
favor. This case demonstrates how important it is to deal in facts and
not in scare tactics.



Nevertheless, HSUS and the organizations described above with their
enormous foundation support, financial resources, legal resources, and
close contacts in the Obama administration, are worthy adversaries and
agriculture must organize itself in a similar fashion to protect its
interests. As you can see, these organizations which filed this
petition with EPA are not easily dismissed.