Factory hog, poultry, and dairy producers are being handed a ‘get out of jail free‘ card by the EPA, says the Sierra Club.
For $2,500, and “additional fees of up to $100,000 for “presumed” past violations,” Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) operators will be free from prosecution for two years while a select few will be monitored for violations of the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws. In the name of research, “monitors that cost as much as $500,000 each” will “measure particulates, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen sulfide and other pollutants,” at facilities of the agency’s choosing. Since 2002, these polluters have been able to write their own anti-pollution plans and keep them secret from the public, have been guaranteed immunity from lawsuits, and have been free to use outdated, faulty technologies to keep toxins from seeping into the environment, as occurred on Sept. 15 and 16, 1999, when Hurricane Floyd caused hundreds of waste cesspools in North Carolina to “over flow, burst, and be completely submerged in water.” What do you think the results of the new research project will be?
The University of Iowa College of Public Health released the results of a study last month which found that children living on hog farms are more likely to develop asthma, and if feed has been laced with antibiotics, even more so (pdf). This is yet another reason that misuse of antibiotics should be halted, a practice which grows in proportion to the size of the farm, and one that is making us hosts to disease without cure. Although neighbours weren’t part of this study, other data indicates the fumes make them ill. The EPA’s acting administrator for enforcement and compliance, Thomas V. Skinner, says that the Clean Air Act “doesn’t deal with odor.” When the smell’s so invasive it catches in the back of your throat, causes your eyes to tear, and makes breathing difficult, you’ve likely inhaled hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and other manure-related emissions. Skinner knows it since he stated that reducing these emissions “might well help control odors.”
Black, Native American and Latino residents of eastern North Carolina, where most of N.C.’s hog farms are located, would call it the smell of money. Wendell H. Murphy, a Democrat who served in North Carolina’s General Assembly from 1982-1992, became the nation’s largest pork producer by passing “laws worth millions of dollars to his company and his industry” while in office.
During the ten years he served in North Carolina’s General Assembly, Murphy’s Law came to mean a slew of legislation and regulations favorable to hog industry expansion. Since 1982, annual hog production in the Tar Heel state swelled by more than 400% as the “other white meat” grew into a $2 billion a year business. At the same time, however, North Carolina’s number of hog farmers shrunk from 25,000 to 7,000.
The impact on the environment has been equally dramatic. Nitrogen run-off from pig manure is the major contributor to the fouling of the Nuese River and portions of the North Carolina coastline. A strange skin eating bacteria, fueled by the nitrogen, has attacked fish (one outbreak in 1995 killed 14 million fish), sickened swimmers, and closed oyster beds.
Jack DeCoster is another legend of the nineties:
Not only does DeCoster farms benefit from millions in corporate welfare and contaminate the environment with agricultural waste, they have a record of criminal mistreatment of their employees. In July 1996, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) slapped DeCoster Farms with a $3.6 million fine. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich publicly denounced DeCoster Farms as “an agricultural sweatshop” where workers were treated like animals. Federal investigators reported finding workers living amid rats and cockroaches in company-owned mobile homes near DeCoster’s Maine egg farm. The investigators also found workers handling dead chickens and manure with their bare hands. (9)
Blaine Nickles is a longtime farmer who lives 1.5 miles from the closest DeCoster facility in Wright County, Iowa. “When the wind is coming from the wrong direction, the smell is just terrible. We’ve seen fishkills, algae and more nitrates in the water. We worry about contamination of the water we use in our own well.”
The Wright facility came under investigation in August 2001. The Hispanic women who alleged they were raped and abused by supervisors there were ultimately paid by DeCoster Farms $200,000 each for a total of $1.5 million. It’s not as though we didn’t see it coming:
The egg-and-chicken producer DeCoster Farms, of Turner, Maine, was fined $46,250 in June 1988 for 184 labor standards violations of federal labor–and was then caught, in September 1992, keeping as many as 100 workers from Mexico, Texas, and Central America in virtual slavery. Confined to company housing when not on the job, the Spanish-speaking workers were threatened with deportation if they left without authorization, and were not allowed visitors. Priests, social workers, and truant officers were barred. Fined $15,000 for those offenses in January 1993, DeCoster took the case to the Maine Supreme Court, which ruled against the company in January 1995.
That was just the start of a drama now running for more than 28 months. Trying to enforce the court verdict, U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich on July 12, 1996 announced that DeCoster would be fined $3.6 million for continuing noncompliance with health and safety standards. Violations recorded by OSHA included failures to install required guards on equipment, 10 months after a worker lost parts of three fingers because the guards were missing; workers not paid overtime despite logging from 80 to 100 hours a week on the job; workers paid below the minimum wage or not at all; hiring children as young as nine; preventing workers from attending Catholic services; and allowing supervisors to physically intimidate staff.
The Heartland – A Place to Grow?
Iowa Report 04: Crops Everywhere, Nothing to Eat
No, Iowa doesn’t grow corn and soybeans for its citizens. These crops are grown primarily to feed millions of hogs and billions of chickens raised industrially. It’s estimated that 70 to 80 percent of these crops in the United States are used to feed livestock. What’s the big deal, you ask?
Well, consider the fact that a large fraction of these corn and soybean crops are the genetically modified variety. The European Union and organic-agriculture advocates continue to question the long-term health and environmental effects of genetically modified organisms (GMO) such as Roundup Ready soybeans (which are resistant to Roundup herbicide) or Bt corn (which produces its own insecticide to combat the European corn borer).
What’s more, the corn and soybean monoculture depends heavily on petroleum-based herbicides and pesticides and fertilizers. For almost 60 years, beginning at the end of World War II, these petroleum-based inputs have steadily expanded, slowly poisoning Iowa’s waters, killing off much of its wildlife, and affecting its children’s health.
You see the endless cycle here? More corn and soybeans, produced with questionable agricultural practices, are needed to feed more hogs and chickens, which move through factory slaughterhouses at increasingly alarming speeds. This system is just one giant factory of commodity monoculture crops and industrially raised animals. And the whole system depends on subsidies and monopoly markets for its profits, not to mention expensive and environmentally destructive chemicals and practices for its very existence.
We’ve not only converted nearly all of the heartland into genetically-modified crops used to fatten artificially-inseminated, genetically-selected animals, and abuse the humans who abuse the animals, we’re filling the creatures full of antibiotics which creates antibiotic-resistant diseases for which we have no cure.
The terrorists couldn’t have devised a better plan.