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| Michigan should put hold on new industrial farms |
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A “CAFO” is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, each steaming with thousands of cows or hogs or hundreds of thousands of chickens. In recent years, more than 200 of these industrial operations have moved into Michigan.
They produce a lot of meat, eggs and milk, to be sure, but the pollution they produce threatens public health as well as the health of our streams, rivers, lakes and beaches.
Many CAFOS are vertically integrated, internationally based corporations that come to Michigan because they can operate without environmental safeguards. They are able to do this because they currently fall under the Right to Farm Act, which allows them to operate as “farms.” Don’t let anyone kid you. I grew up on a farm and these are not farms.
Imagine a million-gallon, unlined sewage pit being filled every day with liquefied manure from thousands of animals. One dairy cow produces as much urine and feces as 23 people. A single dairy CAFO with 3,000 milking cows produces 345,000 gallons of sewage every day – more than the city of Saginaw, Mich. Every day!
Am I exaggerating? Already, E. coli bacteria has been found in our waterways. Fish kills have occurred. Animal sewage pits have overflowed.
Not having enough land to safely dispose of the liquid sewage, over-application is a regular occurrence. If you live downwind or downstream, the odor and the toxicity of the air are unimaginable.
Recently, the dangerous pathogen cryptosporidium was found in Lenawee County drain leading into the Raisin River, the source of drinking water for numerous communities. This is the same pathogen that caused 104 human deaths in Milwaukee, Wis. in 1993. The suspected culprit is runoff from one of the CAFOs operating in the watershed area.
Believe it or not, the Farm Bureau (no friend of the traditional farmer) wants to keep CAFOS unregulated. Why? Because the Farm Bureau is the same family of companies as Farm Bureau Insurance, which insures these industrial animal factories. No regulations. No liability.
CAFOS may serve a useful purpose. They mass produce milk, meat and eggs. Like any other industry, they have a right to enter the marketplace, but not without environmental safeguards, which protect not only citizens, but also the pristine quality of our rivers, lakes, streams and beaches that make tourism the second largest industry in the state.
Call your legislators and support legislation that will place a temporary moratorium on the expansion or the building of any new CAFOs so that the Department of Environmental Quality can investigate, develop appropriate regulations and enforcement procedures for the CAFOs that are polluting.
Any legislations introduced to deregulate the CAFO industry should be strongly opposed.
In the meantime, support your local family farmers, who have provided fresh produce with integrity and care, long before the CAFO industry began bullying them out of the market.
Steve Rall
Lansing, Mich. |
| 6/13/2007 |
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