Four Steps to Stop Agbiz Polluters

[nosmokes]

original-progressive populist


RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen

Four Steps to Stop Agbiz Polluters

If there's one thing you can count on for a year between elections, the state General Assembly will be hard at taking away your rights and giving them to somebody else.

Here in Missouri, the G.A. is trying to pass a bill to make it impossible for local governments -- counties, cities, towns -- to make rules about Confined Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. Senate Bill 364 would not only repeal 193 existing regulations and laws, it would make it impossible for a citizen to sue if they have been impacted by a CAFO that moves into their neighborhood.

These CAFOs, promoted by industrial agriculture giants like Cargill, ConAgra, Tyson and Hudson, put thousands of animals into steel buildings the size of football fields. The critters can't move around much and, on high-calorie feeds, they grow obese faster than an American school kid. Chickens and turkeys get so fat they can't stand up. Hogs and beeves develop foot problems. And then they're butchered and the meat is treated with chemicals and sold at grocery chains and restaurants.

To put these CAFOs in business, the promoters find a willing farmer or wannabe-farmer and help him or her purchase a building built to industry specifications. Who are the willing farmers? Sometimes they're first-generation Americans with no experience in signing contracts and taking on debt.

Others are experienced farmers that have grown up trusting the Farm Bureau, the banks, the extension agents that tell them these CAFOs are good risks. The federal government insures the loans, so the banks love to make them. The extension agents owe the corporations for the grant money that's gone to the University. The Farm Bureau, which just ten years ago hated industry's attacks on family farmers, have decided they can make money by working with the corporations.
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complete article here