Industrial ag once again demanding free pass to crap in your backyard

[JohnyCanuck]

Take the Chesapeake Bay. Once one of the nation's most productive sources of wild food, the area has become a virtual wasteland after decades of serving as a "toilet" (as the environmental NGO Waterkeepers puts it) for the poultry industry, which has unconscionably concentrated itself right in the Chesapeake watershed.

Finally, after years of bumbling inaction, the EPA has belatedly come up with a set of rules that would force vast chicken factories to monitor and -- gasp! -- limit the amount of algae-friendly, heavy metal-laden chicken "litter" (that is, shit, feathers, and bedding) that ends up in the Bay.

According to the industry, cramming hundreds of millions of chickens into houses right along the Bay is an environmentally benign activity; so presumably, the new rules won't have much impact. Right? Except, the industry is shrieking like an abused hen over the new rules. Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau and a bare-knuckled warrior on behalf of the few companies who dominate the U.S. food industry, issued this statement in response to the EPA's Chesapeake move:

EPA likes to call the new regulations a pollution diet, but this diet threatens to starve agriculture out of the entire 64,000 square-mile Chesapeake Bay watershed, and this new approach will not end with the bay. EPA has already revealed its plan to take similar action in other watersheds across the nation, including the Mississippi River watershed. <Emphasis mine.>

snip

The "get out of our way, world" message is also being sounded loud and clear by the genetically modified (GM) seed industry, particularly in the case of Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa. The industry is demanding that the USDA allow unrestricted planting of the alfalfa, which mainly serves as feed for cows. Alfalfa represents a lucrative opportunity for Monsanto, because it's a massive crop, covering about 20 million acres, about 7 percent of U.S. cropland.

http://www.grist.org/article/food-2011-01-11-industrial-agriculture-crap-in-your-backyard

[era veteran]

1. Mosanto is the evilest company on the planet.

[DCKit]

2. This story crapped up about a month ago as a "grass-roots" revolt against the "new" rules.

It is not at all surprising to learn that MonSatan is (one of the companies) behind it.

They've had over 20 years of guidelines they knew would eventually be implemented into rules and laws, and they have only continued to ramp up the damage. BushCo* only allowed the implementation to be put off for another eight years.

Screw 'em. I would rather be get, or at least, be able to afford crabs and oysters from the bay.