Announcer script :
Last month more than 550 million shelled eggs were recalled in what the Centers for Disease Control said was the largest salmonella outbreak since tracking began in the mid 1970s.
The outbreak is one of many public health and environmental problems linked to the practice of confining thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, of animals in enclosed livestock and poultry facilities critics say are unsanitary and inhumane.
The FDA traced last month’s salmonella outbreak to two massive egg producing facilities in Iowa. But today we go to Ohio, where residents are fighting to have a say over how factory farms there are regulated. Tom Over begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting reports.
Reporter script :
In yards in front of modest two-story houses, signs proclaim in red and white: ‘No More Chicken Factories.’ For almost 2 years, residents have opposed a plan by Hi-Q Egg Products to set up a factory farm here.
The Iowa-based company’s plan would bring at least 6 million more chickens to a community that has 3 million of them already—in a 3-mile radius.
Residents have plenty to deal with just from the existing factory farms. They say there is so much chicken manure it damages local waterways after it runs off saturated fields. They also say the manure generates airborne pathogens and toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.
(In-person audio) “On any day you can come outside and just have this horrible reek in the air that burns and makes you squeeze your eyes shut and tears roll down your face,”
Local resident and activist Cheryl Johncox.
(In-person audio) “Your nose will run. Your throat will prickle and burn and you cough and are driven back into your home.”
Speaking out about these problems can get you sued. In November of 2008, New Day Farms slapped Pam Williams——not literally. SLAPP is an acronym for strategic lawsuit against public participation. New Day Farms has not responded to FSRN’s request for an interview.
“A SLAPP suit is no different than the playground bully,”
Shawn Organ, one of the lawyers defending Williams.
(In-person audio ) “Basically, the cost of litigation is what the corporation that files the SLAPP suit is banking on. They, essentially, know that for a private citizen to defend themselves or hire council, you’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
But wait, maybe this is just a big misunderstanding. Residents and the corporate farmers should just have dinner or talk things over at the township hall. Slim chance, says Johncox.
(In-person audio) “They’re not members of our community. A lot of times they don’t even live here. If they had to look their neighbors in the face everyday, maybe they’d feel some kind of guilt or responsibility to our community but that’s not the case.”
Owners of factory farms may be aloof to the people living with the swarms of flies and the stench that burns their eyes, but they have cozy ties to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, say residents here.
Robert Boggs, director of the department disputes that.
(Phone audio) “The only thing we do for large farms is to regulate them with some of the toughest rules in the country.”
That could not be further from the truth, because state agencies are under the not-so-green thumb of the agribusiness lobby, says Rick Sahli, an environmental lawyer who served as Ohio EPA Chief Council from 1987 to 1991.
(In-person audio) “We have a study by the University of Nebraska which determined our rules were the weakest for factory farms. Then we have a study by the Environmental Integrity Project which says our enforcement of those weak rules is virtually nonexistent.”
Sahli says Ohio’s right-to-farm law, which was enacted in 1982, has prevented residents from bringing nuisance suits against factory farms.
(In-person audio ) “They had no limits on the size of the farming operations that got the protections, so now these factory farms have come in under the radar and get the same protections–and I would say unearned protections– that were initially designed for family farms.”
More recently, matters were made even worse, says Joe Logan of the Ohio Environmental Council.
(In-person audio ) “In 2002, a law was implemented in the state of Ohio that said in no uncertain terms that there will be no local authority administered by any county commissions, any health commissioners…or any township trustees.”
Activists say this has been happening around the country in states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Kentucky.
(Phone Audio ) “There are groups in Missouri that every year–for the last five or six years–have had to go to the state legislature and fight bills that would take away their local governments’ role in siting factory farms,”
Patty Lovera of Food and Water Watch.
(Phone audio) “This is kind of the standard procedure for this industry to try to make sure the most accountable level of government–the local government–doesn’t have a say.”
But residents here in York Center Ohio have not given up. With help from the Humane Society of the United States, they have pushed for a ballot initiative calling for improved conditions for the state’s 27 million egg laying hens and other farm animals.
In May, a deal between Ohio and the Human Society halted the ballot initiative—at least for now. Activists say they will move forward with the ballot initiative if Ohio does not implement the agreement by the end of the year.
Tom Over begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, FSRN
Leave a Reply