Friends of Rural New York

This was published in the Joplin Globe August 9, 2008. It has
brought out the CAFO industries’ anger. The Globe welcomes comments:
http://www.joplinglobe.com/editorial/local_story_222214415.html

Ken Midkiff, guest columnist:

CAFOs a drain on economy

Several state governors — including our own — promote concentrated
animal feeding operations (CAFOs) as a rural economic development tool.
But are they?

I set out to find an answer to a simple question. That simple question
is: Are CAFOs economically beneficial?

The answer, I learned, is equally simple: No.

Realizing that I am entering an area that has traditionally been the
stomping grounds of rural economists, I relied heavily on the studies of
Bill Weida of Colorado College and John Ikerd of the University of
Missouri. Both are rural economists and both are retired. Retirement has
certain benefits. For one thing, it frees retirees from the dictates of
the hierarchy at whatever institution employed them. The second benefit
is that the retiree is freed up to work on the issues deemed important.

Both Weida and Ikerd have studied rural development and both have
concluded that CAFOs do more harm than good to the rural economy.

For indicators, they cite:

* The increase in rural crime (burglaries, driveby shootings, drug deals).
* The decrease in property values on lands near CAFOs.
* The necessity (and increased cost) for local school districts to teach
English as a Second Language.
* The necessity for local “C-Stores” to hire bilingual clerks.
* The closure of local retail outlets.
* That local banks and savings and loan institutions are purchased by
larger entities or close altogether.
* That independent farmers go out of hog-rearing, dairy or chicken
operations (and this has a “domino” effect).
* The amount of direct and indirect subsidies to CAFOs.
* The few local workers hired by CAFOs.
* The growing numbers of documented and undocumented immigrants as the
work force.
* The burden on the local community to provide social services for a
foreign population.

Any one of these indicators would be problematic, but when all of them
are added together, it becomes readily apparent that CAFOs are an
economic disaster for rural communities.

No doubt, a few on the boards of Tysons, Smithfield, and Seaboard
benefit. No doubt, that CEOs of ConAgra and Cargill do well. But the
folks on corporate agribusiness boards and the CEOs don’t live in rural
communities. Indeed, Joe Luter, the CEO of Smithfield — a self-described
“family farmer” — lives in a condo on Park Avenue in New York City.

So, while a few of the already-rich get richer, rural communities get
poorer. While a few bigwigs vacation for months in Bermuda or a tropical
island in the Pacific, rural residents can hardly afford to take a
vacation at all.

Economic benefit? No. Economic development? No.

If this is, as some say, “the future of agriculture,” rural residents
had better hang onto their pocketbooks and hope that the invasion of the
CAFOs goes away.

So what are the governors thinking in promoting CAFOs as a way to
benefit rural communities? While my first impulse is to state “They
aren’t thinking,” the adage of “follow the money” applies. Take a look
at which business organizations bankroll gubernatorial campaigns. Take a
look at the donations flowing in from advocacy groups such as the Farm
Bureau, the Pork Producers Association, the Poultry Federation, or the
American Dairy Federation.

Who are the governors listening to? Those with the most money for them.

Ken Midkiff is a spokesman for the Sierra Club.

The Buffalo News


High bacteria counts close four Niagara County beaches

Updated: 07/23/08 7:12 PM

LOCKPORT … The Niagara County Health Department announced Wednesday that swimming has been barred until further notice at three campgrounds and at Krull Park Beach in Olcott because of high bacteria levels in water samples taken this week.

The affected campgrounds are Niagara’s Lazy Lakes Campground, on Church Road in Cambria; Niagara County Camping Resort, on Wheeler Road in Hartland; and Niagara Hartland Campground, on Hartland Road in Hartland.

This is the third time this summer that Krull Park Beach, on Lake Ontario, has been closed because of elevated bacteria levels. The campgrounds, located inland, are affected for the first time this season.

As the weeks went by, I got used to the dark, repugnant labyrinth of filth, the feel of calloused cow tongues on my face, and getting urinated and defecated on routinely. I learned how to avoid being crushed between the bovine behemoths, and how to escape the bull, who clearly wanted me dead. I was a milking pro-lining up the cows into the gallery, manually removing the encrusted dung on their teats, hosing them off, spraying the udders with iodine and attaching the suction tubes that drew the milk into a large vat.

For the rest of the story, see:
http://www.buffalobeast.com/54/udder.htm

Yesterday, Farm Sanctuary scored a precedent-setting victory in its decade-long battle against the New Jersey Department of Agriculture’s (NJDA) inhumane standards of farm animal care. In a monumental legal decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously declared that factory farming practices cannot be considered “humane” simply because they are “routine husbandry practices.” The Court also rejected the practice of tail-docking cattle, the manner in which the NJDA had provided for farm animals to be mutilated without anesthesia, and ordered the agency to readdress many of the state-mandated standards for the treatment of farm animals.

The NJDA had set its spurious standards of humane farm animal care after the state legislature ordered it to develop humane care standards in 1996. In a disingenuous and duplicitous move, the NJDA responded nearly eight years later by qualifying all factory farming practices as “humane,” simply because they are routine in the industry.

In response, Farm Sanctuary launched a coalition and filed a lawsuit against the NJDA, stating that the NJDA’s sanctioning of factory farming practices as humane failed to follow the legislature’s directive. The lawsuit reached the state Supreme Court, which yesterday handed down its decision.

This decision does not stand without criticism. The Court failed to take the opportunity to strike down regulations that allow the confinement of breeding pigs in gestation crates, and calves in veal crates, as well as the transport of sick and downed cattle. Although the Court admitted that confinement practices were “controversial” and that downed animals “suffer greatly,” it refused to intervene in the agency’s decision to permit these systems, suggesting that these issues should be addressed to the legislature. In fact, there is growing momentum nationwide, and in other countries, to phase out these cruel systems, and we will push the agency vigorously to phase out these cruel and inhumane practices when the regulations are revised.

The Court’s decision will have far-reaching repercussions for farm animals across the entire country. Historically, perhaps the greatest legal obstacles preventing the application of cruelty statues to farm animals are state exemptions based on “routine husbandry practices.” Now that Farm Sanctuary has persuaded New Jersey’s highest court to reject such a consideration as sufficient grounds for declaring any practice to be humane, we have created a new and deep crack in the industry’s legal dam.

Read more about this landmark victory, and thank you for your ongoing support in our efforts to end factory farming. See Farm Sanctuary’s website for more information.

These closings are in CAFO country.

(WIVB) - As the holiday weekend approaches, you may be planning a trip to a local beach. But, Tuesday night many local beaches are closed. Why are they closed and will they open in time for the holiday?

Kelli Kruzel went to Woodlawn Beach Tuesday with her friend and family, but they could only sit and look at the water.

Kelli Kruzel, Lancaster, said, “When we entered the guy actually told us and we were kind of upset but we wanted to come out to the beach it was nice and it’s not raining or anything like it has been.”

Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Anthony Billitier says Monday’s rain is actually the reason many beaches are closed to swimming Tuesday.

Dr. Anthony Billitier, Erie Co. Health Commissioner, said, “They have to close if there’s half an inch or more of rain in a 24 hour period either at the beach or upstream from the beach, until we can prove that the water is not contaminated.”

Testing goes on daily here in Erie County’s lab to make sure beach-goers stay safe.

Dr. Scott Zimmerman, Director of Laboratories, said, “The fact that we sit at the far eastern end of Lake Erie, we have westerly prevailing winds :00 which drive everything and anything towards our end of the lake. The contamination we’re looking for is actually fecal contamination, and so we’re looking for raw sewage kind of remnants, not in high quantities, but at least in microscopic quantities.”

Dr. Scott Zimmerman says it wouldn’t be worth the risks to swim in contaminated water.

Dr. Scott Zimmerman, Director of Laboratories, said, “The risks include a variety of types of infections, gastrointestinal infections, skin infections, ear, nose, eye infections.”

One mom appreciates the warnings, even if it means no swimming for a few days.

Sue Alessandra, Lancaster, said, “You don’t want to go in the water and take any chances, I think it’s good that they keep testing it, it’s disappointing that we’ve had so much rain and they had to close the beach.”

Story by Alysha Palumbo (WIVB)

We highly, highly recommend this article:

Loboa, Linda and Curtis W. Stofferahn.  “The community effects of
industrialized farming:  Social science research and challenges to
corporate farming laws.” Agriculture and Human Values.  v. 25, number 2
/ June 2008.  p.219-240.

This article is very important for those fighting the pernicious effects
of industrialized farming in our communities.  It’s a survey and
analysis of 51 studies, done using 4 different study methods, across the
years since the 1930s.  It divides up the kinds of effects of
industrialized farming on communities into 3 categories:

1.  Socio-economic
2.  Community social fabric
3.  Environmental outcomes

Their conclusions are that 82% of the studies show adverse effects (57%
largely detrimental and 25% some detrimental effects).  The rest show
some beneficial effects, but when examined closely, these are mostly in
the area of income-related improvements for those owning the corporate
farms—and we all know how well THAT trickles down to the rest of us.

This is an extremely solid piece of academic research, well-documented
in a peer-reviewed journal.  It also provides concrete and irrefutable
talking points when you are out and about in the community as to why
corporate farms are no good for any of us in any way.  The researchers
who wrote the article have both served as expert witnesses in cases
against laws protecting corporate farming.

Read this articles:
“A Shortage of Democracy Not Food” by Frances Moore Lappe
http://www.progressive.org/mag/lappe0708

Farm Report

I am the daughter of a dairy farmer and having worked in the horticultural field for 20 years, I was fully prepared to find some fault with Sour Milk. However, I found Rebecca Lerner’s article to be interesting and informative.

David Galton, the dairy professor at Cornell University sums up many of the United States’ problems today with agriculture when he asks, “Why larger dairies? Well, why Wegmans? Target and Circuit City and Home Depot and Lowe’s?” People have demanded cheap goods and foods for so long that we have lost sight of the bigger picture and our future. It is a fact that if I grew a tomato and tended it from seed in late winter until summer harvest, most people would not even want to pay me a dollar for that tomato that I cared for six months. Yet people have no problem buying a chemically enhanced, greenhouse-grown tomato, trucked all the way from California, for 50 cents.

I would also like to point out that like most government agencies gone astray, the United States Department of Agriculture is no friend of farming. In fact, I believe that the USDA does more to hinder quality food from being produced. I would like to recommend that anyone interested in the plight of our food and the small family farm to read Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin, Night Came To The Farms Of The Great Plains by Raymond D. North, Small Farms Are Real Farms by John Ikerd and Unforgiven by Charles Walters.

–Caron Chapman-Case

Tully
Syracuse New Times
Letter to the Editor
July 2 2008

06/25/2008

Ithaca Times
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19802348&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=216618&rfi=6

Mr. Cook paints a picture of Willet Dairy quite at odds with what Rebecca Lerner found. He makes unsubstantiated assertions about the farm’s practices and quite surprisingly mischaracterizes the decision of the district court. The court dismissed one of our claims under the federal Clean Water Act, but specifically allowed us to refile claims for nuisance, trespass and health harms in state court, which we have done. The state case is going forward.
The federal district court decision is being appealed by myself and Alan Knauf, who have yet to be paid a penny for our time. That we would bring a new state lawsuit and a federal appeal against Willet is an indication we believe strongly the case has merit.
The district court did not even look at proof we offered that Willet systematically overspreads liquid manure and other farm waste in violation of its permit. Contrary to Mr. Cook’s belief that we failed to meet our burden of proof, the district court avoided review of our proof by finding that the mere fact that Willet has a permit shields the farm from any lawsuit. The appeals court will decide whether violations of the permit can be excused for years after the permit was issued.
Citizens can bring an action in federal court to enforce such violations if DEC does not. Unfortunately, at the time we brought this action DEC was committed to developing a cooperative relationship with the factory farm industry in New York and, apparently on that basis decided that investigating Willet to determine whether our allegations have a basis was at odds with this policy. Even today, DEC has not devoted the time and resources required to compare the spreading rates on a field by field basis established in Willet’s waste management plan, a requirement under its permit, with records of the actual spreading rates, also required to be kept under Willet’s permit. We did, and it does not require expertise in farm practices to do so. It is complicated to find the information, but once discovered its analysis is no more complicated than simple arithmetic.
The results of Willet’s overspreading are not hard to see. Many streams and drainage channels around Willet’s fields are choked with algae. We measured runoff from Willet’s production area during a brief rain and found nutrients, e-coli and coliform counts many times in excess of DEC’s water quality standards. Without even seeking a special permit Willet diverted water from Fred Coon’s pond to get more water for the farm, abandoned the project, and allowed the stream and pond to be filled with manure runoff and sediment. Once used for swimming, the pond is now filled to the brim.
Once Fred started complaining he found a pile of dead rats deposited under his mailbox. Once his daughter started filming Willet’s practices, she got chased along the roads by men in pickup trucks. When she asked Willet to stop spraying liquid manure because her mom’s COPD had flared up, Willet refused, and her mom died that night.
Willet Dairy is not a good neighbor. Willet’s lawyer should know better than to tell the public we have no proof of their misdeeds. Justice delayed is justice denied, but we hope it will not be denied much longer.

-Gary A. Abraham, Esq.
Allegany, New York

“... the County Farm Planning Department Specialist, wanted to make it clear that the regulations governing a CAFO are strict and constant monitoring of operations is a standard.” HO Ho HO HO HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This guy has so much bull manure!!!
When the good people of this town get a whiff, they will be entitled to tar and feather him!

PIGS VERSUS PEOPLE?

North Rose residents concerned about commercial pig farm and effect on water wells and smells, but new breed of farmer says concerns addressed

What do you get when you gather 2,000 pigs under one roof? Tons of bacon, lots of manure and undoubtedly some neighbors with concerns.

Last January, when the Town of Rose learned that a CAFO (Contained Animal Feeding Operation) was planned for Brown Road near the hamlet of North Rose, they passed a building moratorium on the construction.

Why the concerns? Gone are the days of the small family farm where a dozen pigs or cows were the center of the family business. The current market scenario favors big mechanized operations where thousands of head of livestock are mass produced for market.

According to Rose Town Supervisor, Lucinda Collier, the temporary six-month ban was enacted so the Town Board could learn more about CAFOs and their impact on the environment and to possibly quell neighbors’ concerns.

The large barn-like structure now under construction on the 150 acre farm of Ryan and Michelle Zimmerman, allows for the raising of the pigs from 40 pound cuties to 280 pound porkers in about three months. According to Ryan, Keystone Mills in Romulus ships in the pigs and feed. His job is monitoring the automatic feeders and taking care of any medical needs and wants. He readily admits his function is little more than babysitting for the pigs during their plumping-up transition.

The concrete based barn has one level for the pigs with a slatted floor where the pig manure falls to a level below. Twice a year, in Fall and again in Spring, the lower levels are emptied out and the manure spread over the nearby bean and corn fields on the farm for fertilizer. Ryan emphasized that there are no outdoor manure pits, everything is enclosed. “We built the barn far away from neighbors and on the east side of the road. The wind blows mostly from east to west. On the eastern, down wind border of the building is a large wooded area, all part of the Zimmerman’s property.

Collier is concerned that laws such as the ‘Right to Farm Act’ recently reaffirmed by the Wayne County Board of Supervisors, never really foresaw the coming of CAFOs. The ‘Right to Farm Act’ recognizes that such noises, smells and common farm practices that may otherwise disturb neighbors, existed well before there were neighbors who cared. That farmers have a right to farm where agriculture has a history.

CAFOs, the rules regulating their existence, came out of the early 1970’s movement to address any environmental concerns that large, commercial farm operations would have on the environment. The guidelines were set up by the Federal government and adopted by New York State .

Collier is also concerned that with the CAFO regulations, a local municipality has few, if any options to set local guidelines. “They can do just about what they (CAFOs) want.” The Rose Supervisor said the Zimmerman operation is “Smack dab in the middle of what the town had zoned for residential development.” She stated that the Town had been expanding water lines in the area, but that the municipal water well supply, as well as many homeowner private wells are located in the area. She was also concerned that the barn is close to wetlands that feed into the water table and any run-off from the pig operation could contaminate water supplies. as for the odors that could emanate? “Odor, the State has nothing to do with odor,” emphasized Collier.

Ora Rothfuss, the County Farm Planning Department Specialist, wanted to make it clear that the regulations governing a CAFO are strict and constant monitoring of operations is a standard.

A Certified CAFO specialist must be hired by the operation to ensure that concerns are addressed before the CAFO begins. Such things as manure spreading, nitrogen, phosphorus content, must fall into guidelines of crop need so that nutrients from the fertilizer does not run off and cause water pollution. It was not until the Clean Water Act of the early 1970s that farm run-off was really recognized as a source point to downstream water contamination.

Rothfuss said that a farmer must spend upwards of $20,000 to ensure the CAFO specialist has a total plan in place. Collier said she believes that a CAFO specialist, hired by the farmer to create such a plan and monitor the operation is a conflict of interest. She also said she believes a similar operation in the nearby Town of Butler has created some ongoing concerns. Rothfuss countered the conflict of interest concern by stating that a licensed, certified planner of a CAFO has his reputation and livelihood at stake and that a CAFO farmer has his entire investment at risk for violating the terms laid down.

Collier said the Town Board is thinking of creating a liaison committee with farmers to address and perhaps head off any problems with residential homeowners. “We are trying to be pro-active. This is not a zoning or building code issue,” she stated.

The Town of Rose will be conducting a meeting on Monday, June 9th at 3:30 p.m. at the Town offices to form a committee to address concerns with CAFO operations.

©2008 The Times of Wayne County. All Rights Reserved. 

NY Times Editorial: The Worst Way of Farming
Published: May 31, 2008
In the past month, two new reports have examined how farm animals are raised in this country. The report funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts calls the prevailing system “industrial farm animal production.” The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists prefers the term “confined animal feeding operations.”

No matter what you call it, it adds up to the same thing. Millions of animals are crowded together in inhumane conditions, causing significant environmental threats and unacceptable health risks for workers, their neighbors and all the rest of us.

The astonishing increase in the number and size of confined animal operations has been spawned largely by the very structure of American farm supports, which always has been skewed in a way that concentrates farming in fewer and fewer hands. As both of these reports make clear, the so-called efficiency of industrial animal production is an illusion, made possible by cheap grain, cheap water and prisonlike confinement systems.

In short, animal husbandry has been turned into animal abuse. Manure — traditionally a source of fertilizer — has been turned into toxic waste that fouls the air and adjacent water bodies. Crowding creates health problems, resulting in the chronic overuse of antibiotics.

And, because the modest profits in confinement operations require the lowest possible labor costs, including automated feeding, watering and manure-handling systems, these operations have helped empty and impoverish rural America.

The Pew report recommends new laws regulating pollution from industrial farms as rigorously as pollution from other industries, a phasing-out of confinement systems that restricts “natural movement and normal behavior,” a ban on antibiotics used only to promote animal growth and the application of antitrust laws to encourage more competition and less concentration.

These are all useful guideposts for the next Congress and a new administration.

[You can read the Pew report on their website at http://www.pewtrusts.org.  It is called “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America” and there is a link from the right hand side right on the home page.

This in from a CAFO insider. The attempt now being made in NY
State to ban outdoor burning, is being opposed by big ag. I am told
that the CAFOs want outdoor burning to stay legal, as they burn
huge amounts of heavy plastic used in their operations. It would cost
them big bucks to take it to the dump. 

Sour Milk

Big-box dairy farms bring manure and misery to some Central New York communities

By Rebecca Lerner

Karen Strecker is bracing. She’s about to turn on the faucet, and there’s a chance liquid manure is going to stream from the spout. “I’ve been taking a bath and actually had cow shit pour into the tub,” Strecker says, matter-of-factly. She uses well water. “It’s nasty.”

Yet the threat of a sewage bath pales in comparison to a more dangerous problem: breathing poisonous fumes. After years living next to Willet Dairy, the largest industrial farm in the state, Strecker and her neighbors in Genoa are reporting the kinds of health problems eco-watchdogs lose sleep over, from blistering eyelids to brain damage. Manure is known to release gases that, in high concentrations, are linked to those scary symptoms.

Strecker’s plight takes on national relevance as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to roll back air pollution reporting requirements for industrial animal farms like Willet in October, even as environmentalists warn that regulation is already too lax in New York.

Bovine line: Willet Dairy’s cows eat in one of the Genoa farm’s barns. All photos by Rachel Philipson.

Located next to Lansing in Cayuga County, Genoa is a rural town with sprawling hills and a population of 1,914. Its main street is spare but quaint, with an antiques shop, a fire hall advertising a NASCAR event and a church with the motto, “Exercise Daily: Walk With God.” The roadsides here are dotted with farms. Willet Dairy’s giant white barns sit close to Route 34, the main thoroughfare. Pickup trucks and heavy machinery sit in dusty lots.

With 7,800 cattle, Willet is a relative behemoth. The other two major livestock operations in town are Osterhoudt Farm, with 470 cattle, and Ridgecrest Dairy L.L.C., with 1,090, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the agency charged with regulating agricultural pollution. Willet began in 1974 as a small, family-owned operation that grew steadily over the years, acquiring its neighbors’ property and expanding as American agricultural practices became increasingly mechanized and efficient.

Today, Willet spans approximately 6,300 acres over four sites, including a facility on Route 34 near Lansing, one on Lane Road in Locke, Belltown Dairy in King Ferry and W.D. Corey Dairy, located in Venice, just north of Genoa on Route 34.

“Why larger dairies?” says David M. Galton, a dairy management professor at Cornell University. “Well, why Wegmans? Target and Circuit City and Home Depot and Lowe’s—they’re doing it to dilute out cost and to maintain or improve standard of living. It’s like every other segment of our economy. Larger dairies are trying to address the ever-rising cost of producing milk and standard of living.”
Image

Industrial disease: Fred Coon lost his bottom eyelids, he says, after hydrogen sulfide fumes from the manure dumped on the Willet Dairy property caused blisters and an infection.

Connie Mather reported similar blisters on the inside of her throat and nasal passages.

In 1993, farms with 200 or more cattle made up 3.6 percent of the state’s dairies, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. By 2002, they made up 9 percent. “The larger the dairy farm, the lower the costs are. And so, as the costs keep rising—fuel costs, feed costs, taxes—it puts more economic pressure on the individual farms to produce more milk,” Galton says. “If you take the milk price of 1980 and adjust it for inflation, the milk price would be $38.92 per 100 pounds. The milk price today is approximately $20 per 100 pounds.” Galton is director of PRO-DAIRY, a government-funded outreach arm of Cornell University that works to increase profitability in the dairy industry and educate farmers on the latest manure-management techniques.

the skinny on cowflop

Willet Dairy is a privately held business headed by Dennis Eldred, a Genoa resident. The company is listed as Willet Dairy L.P.; Willet Dairy L.L.C.; and Willet Dairy Inc., in legal documents. Eldred did not return phone calls to his home and office and declined to be interviewed through his attorney, David Cook of Nixon Peabody L.L.P.

Scott, Todd, Susan and Peter Eldred are also listed as co-owners of Willet, according to 2005 USDA records as compiled by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. Todd, Susan and Peter Eldred are “all family members, members of the LLC,” according to Cook. Neighbors identified them as Dennis Eldred’s adult children. Scott Eldred is Dennis Eldred’s brother, and his status with the company is not clear at this time because Scott Eldred is in the Caribbean working as a missionary, Cook says. Town Supervisor Stuart Underwood has known Dennis Eldred and his family for decades and describes them as “good people.”

Willet operations officer Lyn Odell declined to discuss the company’s annual profits. Public records show Willet received more than $1 million in USDA subsidies from 1995 to 2005, according to a database maintained by the Environmental Working Group. Property tax records show Willet paid more than a third of the locally funded portion of Genoa’s 2007 town budget.

Large-scale dairies like Willet are known colloquially as factory farms, a term that refers to the industrialized nature of their daily operations. The DEC refers to large dairies as “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs, because they confine their animals in warehouse-like facilities for more than 45 days each year. If you peer into Willet’s barns, some of which are open-air and visible from the roads, you will observe bovine faces neatly aligned, as far back as the eye can see.

At dairy farms in general, cows are impregnated once every 13 to 14 months in order to keep milk production at a profitable level, Galton explains. But whereas small farms may house cows and calves together, it is standard practice for CAFOs to isolate calves in individual crates for the six weeks immediately following birth, Galton says, in order to avoid compromising their fragile immune systems.

This is a practice assailed as cruel by animal welfare groups, including Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen. It irks Strecker as well. Down the street from her house, small evergreens do little to block the view of the crates, arranged in orderly rows along a grassy plain that stretches several football fields in length. At night, floodlights illuminate the scene. “We do what we have to do to improve standard of living and dilute out cost,” Galton says of the industry.

Willet cows produced 157,126 tons of manure in 2006, according to the DEC. To address the ecological impact of thousands of cows relieving themselves in one area, large dairies like Willet are required by law to manage the excrement using techniques developed in large part by Cornell University.

Willet liquefies the untreated waste and pumps it into manure lagoons, as is standard practice among large-scale dairies. There it sits—some hundreds of feet from Strecker’s home—uncovered and decomposing, releasing hydrogen sulfide, a poisonous, acidic gas known to burn the eyes and respiratory tract, until some of Willet’s laborers spray it onto farm fields with tanker trucks.

The stench in Strecker’s yard makes you cough at first, then your eyes water and nausea sets in. Dizziness knocks you over if you stick around for more than five minutes, and if the wind is blowing the right way, you might find yourself nursing a headache. Of course, that’s just if you’re
visiting on a mild day. The effect is more severe if you actually live there.

“No matter which way the wind blows, we’re screwed,” Strecker says. Strecker has been on a constant dose of antibiotics for years to treat chronic respiratory problems caused by exposure to her surroundings, according to a series of letters written by her doctor, Ahmad Mehdi of Groton Family Practice. The letters span from Aug. 15, 2000, to Jan. 22, 2007.

“Do people get sick when manure gets spread? Yes, it’s a fact,” Mehdi says. “It’s the huge, mass production. When you have 10,000 cows in one place, that’s a lot of manure. Everybody knows that. But it’s the way of life around here.”

Cayuga County, home of Genoa, has 28 industrial farms, and Onondaga County has 25, according to the DEC. There are more than 600 such facilities in the state.

You can’t see manure lagoons from the roadsides, but you can smell them, and the dangers of their fumes have been documented. A 2002 study by the University of Iowa and Iowa State University examined the impact of aerial ammonia and hydrogen sulfide on residents living near industrial hog farms after former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack requested information on their public health impact. The researchers noted that aerial ammonia and hydrogen sulfide gas—both routine CAFO emissions—are poisonous in high concentrations, causing sinusitis, asthma, chronic bronchitis, inflamed mucous membranes of the nose and throat, headaches, muscle aches and pains in those who live or work nearby.

The National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents local, state and federal agencies, cites manure-pit emissions containing hydrogen sulfide and ammonia for the deaths of at least two dozen people working or living near the operations in the Midwest over the past 30 years. “The release of toxic substances from manure in amounts dangerous to human health is not a theoretical exercise—people have been killed,” said the NACAA’s Catharine Fitzsimmons, in testimony before the U.S. Senate on Sept. 6, 2007.

A June 2006 fact sheet put out by PRO-DAIRY on health and safety issues describes hydrogen sulfide as “a poisonous, acidic gas that can kill in a matter of seconds,” “accumulates in low, confined spaces” and dissolves “rapidly in eye moisture and in the respiratory tract.” Yet the DEC does not closely monitor toxic emissions from livestock farms.

DEC spokeswoman Lori O’Connell says the fumes are regarded “as either ‘trivial activities’ or as ‘fugitive emissions’ in the case of outdoor manure piles and waste lagoons. Both of these designations have the effect of relieving farms in New York from needing an air permit or minor source registration.”

fuming mad

If you ask Fred Coon, Strecker’s 82-year-old father, why he’s missing his lower eyelids, he will tell you about the time he “got my eyes poisoned.” “It was a terrible process,” Coon says. “I was raking leaves by the barn, and my eyes started stinging. I came inside and looked in the mirror, and there were a million little tiny blisters over here, and here,” he says, pointing to the magenta tissue his lower eyelids used to cover. The blisters burst and became infected, prompting doctors to amputate the thin flaps of skin containing them.

Neighbor Connie Mather, a perky former schoolteacher from Philadelphia who owns a property around the corner, also had a run-in with the blisters. In her case, they converged on the inside of her throat and nasal passages. But Mather had another cause for alarm. In 2004, a medical expert diagnosed her teenage son, Samuel, with irreversible brain damage caused by exposure to hydrogen sulfide gas.

The physician was Dr. Kaye Kilburn, a professor at the University of Southern California who has published 61 peer-reviewed papers on neurobehavioral toxicology. Kilburn is president and director of Neuro-Test Inc., a company that evaluates chemical exposure for lawsuits and disability claims. Kilburn also diagnosed Connie Mather and Coon with neurological damage from the fumes.

During the evaluations, Kilburn reviewed a 15-page questionnaire on each patient’s medical history and administered 43 different tests, according to legal documents. “Each patient’s brain impairment has been caused by exposure to hydrogen sulfide,” Kilburn wrote. “None of the patients have been exposed {to} other significant chemical exposures, and none of the patients has suffered spontaneous or associated neurological or psychiatric disease. After analyzing for other possible causes for brain impairment, I found that for each patient the clinical signs of all possible alternative causes are absent.”

Kilburn told the Mathers to vacate their property immediately. The family is renting elsewhere.

Angered into action, Mather became a founding member of Neighbors United for the Finger Lakes, an anti-CAFO organization with membership in a national coalition called the Dairy Education Alliance. She worries about plans for an 84,000-head cattle CAFO in St. Lawrence County, an operation that would be more than 10 times the size of Willet.

Strecker spends her days taking care of her father, Fred Coon. Both retired carpenters, they live on a 7-acre property with a main house, a trailer, a garage decorated with Coon’s artwork and a muddy stream in the back yard. The land has been in the family since the 1800s. Coon still sleeps in the house he built in the 1940s. His late wife, and Strecker’s mother, Pearl Coon, spent her last days here. In the good old days, the air here smelled like lilac trees, flowers grew in the garden and marathon barbecues brought the town together, Coon remembers. They even had neighbors. But that was before Willet expanded. Now they’re surrounded by Willet on three sides.

“I’m just angry they took our lives away,” Strecker says. “I can’t even get a friggin’ clean glass of water.”

Strecker and Mather tried complaining about Willet to the state DEC, Office of the New York State Attorney General, New York State Soil and Water Committee, Cayuga County Health & Human Services Department, former New York Governors Eliot Spitzer and George Pataki, the EPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, federal and local legislators, the New York State Police, the Cayuga County Sheriff’s Department, and the Genoa town supervisor. To no avail.

“They all say they’ll ‘look into it,’” Strecker says. “Nobody cares.”

Frustrated, the neighbors tried the legal arena, banding together to file a citizens’ lawsuit alleging violations of the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Rivers and Harbors Act, and the New York State Environmental Conservation Law. Suing Willet were Karen Strecker; Fred Coon and his late wife Pearl Coon; Connie Mather and her husband Scott Mather; and three other neighbors, Karen and Kenneth Keppel and Dale Mangan, according to legal documents.

After five years of litigation, the case was dismissed in July. Their attorney is Gary Abraham, a T-shirt-wearing environmentalist who works out of a room in his house in Allegany, N.Y., and who took the case at his own expense. Willet Dairy was represented by Cook from Nixon Peabody, a 700-attorney powerhouse with offices in 17 cities, including Rochester and Shanghai, China.

Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. of the Northern District of New York dismissed the suit, ruling in Willet’s favor that the farm’s neighbors did not have the legal authority to bring an enforcement action. This leaves the door open for the neighbors to try again in another jurisdiction. Abraham is challenging the court decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Judicial Circuit. Both Abraham and Cook have filed briefs; oral arguments are expected to begin later this summer.

Abraham says he is optimistic, bolstered by a Jan. 15 decision by a Michigan appellate court reaffirming the power of citizen suits to enforce Clean Water Act violations.

On behalf of Willet, Cook describes the dairy as “a leader in environmental stewardship.” Inaction by the broad array of local, state and federal government agencies bolsters the argument that Willet did not violate any laws, Cook says. He called the neighbors’ allegations of pollution and detrimental health effects “utter nonsense.”

“Now, do I believe these people believe it? Absolutely. But the science doesn’t back it up,” says Cook. “When we went out to hire experts to tell us what the levels of exposure were, do you know what the levels were? Non-detect.”

Researchers took samples of soil, air and water at Willet and then extrapolated the results to estimate what Willet’s neighbors encountered, Cook says. When this reporter asked to see the data, Cook declined to release it. “We are still in the midst of litigation,” Cook notes. Odell, the Willet employee, says he believes the company is being subjected to unreasonable scrutiny.

During a recent four-day-long surprise inspection of the farm in November, the DEC found that Willet “continues to be a well-managed and operated dairy” in “satisfactory” compliance with permit requirements, according to a Dec. 11, 2007, letter sent to Dennis Eldred from the DEC’s Environmental Program Specialist Scott D. Cook.

“We don’t farm any different than anybody else does up and down this road,” Odell says, referring to Route 34. “This is about the nature of our business, about how we farm. It’s not about Willet. It’s about the dairy industry.”

Willet Dairy is one of 28 industrial farms in Cayuga County and occupies 6,300 acres over four sites.

While Genoa’s other two CAFOs, Osterhoudt and Ridgecrest, have never been cited for environmental violations by the DEC, Willet has paid for two. On March 8, 2001, the DEC fined Willet $25,000 for leaking “a significant amount of manure” into the Cayuga Lake watershed when a pipe burst, resulting in a fish kill and a water quality violation, the DEC said. The company paid $15,000; the remainder of the penalty was suspended due to satisfactory compliance with cleanup efforts, the DEC’s O’Connell says.

From January 2005 through June 2007, the DEC filed 30 enforcement actions against CAFOs. On Dec. 11, 2006, the DEC fined Willet $2,500 after manure spilled from an overturned tanker, leaking into a tributary of Salmon Creek in the Cayuga Lake watershed. The company paid just $500 of that amount; $2,000 was suspended because Willet complied with the cleanup to DEC’s satisfaction, O’Connell says.

The Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, the National Resources Defense Council and other national environmental organizations have long criticized industrial farms as major polluters, particularly because of the run-off problems associated with liquid manure. A 1998 study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of nine large Iowa CAFO sites turned up chemical pollutants, pathogens, bacteria, nitrates and parasites in lagoons and other areas in and around the sites.

In an effort to mitigate pollution, CAFOs are required to file annual reports with the DEC, and the agency sends regulators to inspect the facilities once a year. However, the agency does not keep farms’ waste management plans on file, and the documents are not available for public view. The Sierra Club, in its 2005 report “Wasting New York State,” says this makes enforcement difficult. It’s a familiar refrain from environmentalists: There are too many loopholes; too little oversight. Or as Abraham puts it: “The system is broken.”

Cattle call: Calf housing on Willet Dairy ensures that newborn calves are isolated for six weeks to avoid compromising their fragile immune systems.

To read the Sierra Club report: The Wasting of New York State, see:
newyork.sierraclub.org/iroquois/Wasting_NYS_Report.pdf

From the Pesticide Action Network:

A new path for global agriculture: After six years of work, the United Nations-sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has concluded that “modern” agriculture is not sustainable.  According to the UN News Service, “Modern agricultural practices have exhausted land and water resources, squelched diversity and left poor people vulnerable to high food prices.” The IAASTD, after a week-long meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, pronounced the verdict of 400 scientists, government agencies and civil society participants: “Business as usual is no longer an option.” At the meeting, 55 world governments agreed on the IAASTD final report; Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States requested more time to consider whether or not to approve it.

Reporting from Johannesburg, PAN North America Senior Scientist Marcia Ishii-Eiteman observed: “This is a wake-up call for governments and international agencies. The survival of the planet’s food systems demands global action to support agroecological farming and fair and equitable trade.” Ishii-Eiteman explained that the IAASTD calls for replacing dependence on petrochemical fuels and pesticides with “resilient, sustainable agricultural systems, grounded in agroecological science and drawing on local, indigenous and community knowledge.” The IAASTD was bitterly attacked by Syngenta and other powerful multinational corporations but, as UN Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner observes: “If our modern agricultural systems continue to focus only on maximizing production at the lowest cost, agriculture will face a major crisis in 20 to 30 years time.”

The Nation.

Milk Wars
By David E. Gumpert

March 5, 2008

For the past sixty years, there hasn’t been much good news for America’s small dairies. Thanks to rising land costs and intensifying price pressures, the bucolic sight of cows grazing in the countryside has become ever less common. Since 1970 alone, the number of dairies has plunged an astounding 88 percent, to 75,000, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The consolidation means that factory-style dairies with between 1,000 and 5,000 cows have become increasingly common.

The one bit of encouraging news for small dairies has been the growing market among health-conscious consumers for unpasteurized milk and dairy products like yogurt, butter and cream. There may be a half-million or more raw-milk drinkers in the United States, with the number growing “exponentially,” says Sally Fallon, co-founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation, which encourages consumption of raw milk for its healthful enzymes, bacteria and proteins.

Small dairies have rushed to meet this need via a completely new business model. Instead of selling milk in bulk to processors who offer take-it-or-leave-it prices of $1.50 to $2 a gallon, some small dairies sell directly to consumers at whatever price the market will bear, typically from $5 a gallon to as much as $10 a gallon. At those prices, dairy farmers actually begin thinking in terms of a long-forgotten word: profit.

In New York state, which regulates direct sales of raw milk to consumers by issuing permits to dairies, the number of raw-milk dairies with permits has doubled to twenty from ten in 2005. The same sort of minirevival has occurred in other states that allow raw-milk sales direct from the farm, like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In California--one of the few states that allow sales of raw milk via Whole Foods Market and other retail outlets--the largest raw-milk dairy, the 350-cow Organic Pastures Dairy Company, has seen its annual sales climb by 25 percent annually, to more than $5 million.

Arguing that raw milk isn’t safe and that consumers must be protected from its dangers, some government regulators and legislators are targeting small raw-milk dairies for tough enforcement actions, focusing most intensively on dairies in New York and California.

State regulators have supplemented inspections by obtaining search warrants, pushing restrictive legislation and even threatening to throw dairy farmers into jail. They’ve been encouraged by the US Food and Drug Administration, which in a sixty-four-slide PowerPoint presentation posted on its website last March, exhorted “everyone charged with protecting the public health to prevent the sale of raw milk to consumers....”

Barb and Steve Smith see New York’s ever-harsher tactics against their tiny Meadowsweet Farm as closely related to the rising demand for raw milk. They obtained a raw-milk permit in 1997 because they were desperate to extricate themselves and their nine children from the commodity bondage that dominated their lives from the time they purchased the farm in 1995. “We figured by selling milk to the processor we were getting about $1 an hour for our work,” says Steve.

The raw-milk option was slow going until 2005 and 2006, when demand began rising sharply. Anywhere from twenty to thirty customers would regularly visit their lonely outpost near Lodi, most of them from Ithaca, the home of Cornell University, which is about forty-five minutes away.

“But our customers always wanted more things raw--butter, kefir, cream,” says Barb. New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets prohibits the sale of any raw dairy products except milk and cheese that has been aged at least sixty days.

The expanding customer demands coincided with what the Smiths say was a change in the department’s inspection procedures, beginning in the summer of 2006. Minor violations like a tear in a screen door or excessive weeds outside the barn, overlooked in earlier years, now meant fines of a few hundred dollars and automatic thirty-day re-inspections.

One day in February 2007, they received four letters from Ag and Markets announcing violations and fines. On that day, Barb says, she and Steve concluded, “They were not giving us any way to achieve compliance.”

Ag and Markets declined recent requests for comment about the Smiths’ case, but last July, when a number of dairy farmers with raw-milk permits began complaining about intensified inspections, agency spokeswoman Jessica Chittenden told me, “Even though there is a demand for this product and we have regulations that allow for the sale of raw milk, food safety must come first. Therefore, we take our responsibility in safeguarding consumers from food-borne illness very seriously.”

The Smiths decided over the next few months to pursue an increasingly popular avenue among dairies in states that don’t allow the sale of raw milk or have very restrictive policies: issuing “herd shares” or “cow shares,” legal agreements under which consumers acquire partial ownership of the dairy herd and receive milk and other dairy products from “their” cows.

While some state agriculture officials have challenged these arrangements, they have held up to legal tests in two major states. In Ohio, a small dairy sued the Ohio Department of Agriculture in 2006 over efforts to shut down its herd share, and won in state court. The Michigan Department of Agriculture last year backed off on seeking criminal charges against a farmer who formed a herd share for Ann Arbor consumers, in the face of widespread public opposition.

Last spring, the Smiths established a herd share, in the form of a limited liability company. Simultaneously, they gave up their raw-milk permit. They spread the word in Ithaca that buying shares in the LLC would entitle owners to raw milk and the other high-demand raw-milk products, along with delivery to easy-access drop-off points.

By the summer, they had 130 shareholders paying $50 each for shares, plus the equivalent of $6 a gallon for milk, in the form of fees to feed and house the cows; thirty more customers joined a waiting list for future shares. The Smiths were able to reduce their herd to fourteen cows from thirty, generating the same cash flow but with reduced fuel and feed costs.

New York’s Ag and Markets immediately showed its displeasure by stepping up its inspection and enforcement efforts. In late August, the department notified the Smiths that fines for “unsanitary plant conditions” totaled $1,700 and needed to be paid within fifteen days to avoid legal action.

Arguing that they no longer had a raw-milk permit and were serving only private shareholders, the Smiths resisted. That led to steady escalation by Ag and Markets, including the quarantining in October of 130 quarts of yogurt, twenty bottles of buttermilk and five gallons of whole milk in the Smiths’ cooler.

On December 13, with the support of the recently formed Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the Smiths filed suit against the department and two of its officials. They asked the court to allow members of the dairy LLC to continue to pick up their raw-milk products without harassment from regulators.

The same day, in the middle of a snowstorm, two Ag and Markets inspectors showed up to force the Smiths to dump the quarantined milk, yogurt and buttermilk into buckets while the inspectors poured in bleach. The inspectors returned yet again just before Christmas with a search warrant, but the Smiths’ lawyer advised them to refuse the inspection since the warrant didn’t allow for breaking into the Smiths’ locked cooler.

The entire affair has evolved into a three-front legal battle: an additional Ag and Markets regulatory complaint to shut the Smiths’ dairy, the Smiths’ lawsuit and, most recently, a show-cause order in state court as to why the Smiths shouldn’t be held in contempt for refusing to allow the inspectors access to their locked coolers. If the judge rules in favor of the state and if the Smiths continue to resist, they could be thrown in jail. At a hearing February 28, a state judge took under advisement both the state’s request for a contempt finding and the Smiths’ request to quash the show-cause order.

While New York agriculture officials have been fighting small dairies via regulations and the courts, California regulators have been fighting a legislative battle. There, the marketplace is much different, since retail sales of raw milk are allowed. But because of high capital costs and the state’s tough regulations (for example, requiring automated bottling equipment), only two dairies serve the entire market.

Business was growing so quickly for the largest, Organic Pastures, that at one point last fall, the owner, Mark McAfee, said he was in negotiations with a venture capital firm for funds to significantly expand the dairy.

All that’s on hold now. This past October, at the recommendation of California’s Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), the State Assembly quietly passed tough new standards for nonpathogen bacteria counts that the two dairies argue could make a significant portion of their current milk production unacceptable. The chair of the State Assembly’s Agriculture Committee said she hadn’t realized the implications of the legislation, and last month she backed an effort to repeal the standards.

At hearings in Sacramento in January, about 700 raw-milk consumers showed up to back the repeal, and the Agriculture Committee unanimously passed it. But it died in the Appropriations Committee, where large-dairy and medical industry interests opposed what they termed a watering down of toughened food-safety standards.

The CDFA has already begun enforcing the new standards, and Organic Pastures failed two of its initial three tests. The dairy can continue selling raw milk, but if it fails one of its next two tests in the coming months, it could be forced to at least temporarily halt production. McAfee argues that the bacteria being measured, coliforms, have no bearing on milk safety, and that the state should focus its efforts on monitoring potential pathogens like E. coli O157:H7. “This is destabilizing; it’s a game of harassment,” he says.

His dairy and the other California raw-milk producer, Claravale Farm, have joined forces to sue the state and CDFA to block implementation of the regulations. Among their claims: a “denial of due process” because the tough standard “is not rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest.”

While the FDA and most state agriculture and health authorities have for many years opposed raw-milk consumption and fill their websites with warnings about its dangers, the crackdown on dairies represents a change in tactics, says Pete Kennedy, a lawyer for the Weston A. Price Foundation. “They’re now going after the supply side,” he says, since growing numbers of consumers are ignoring the warnings.

Part of the reason for the growing skepticism is that Kennedy last year used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain data from the US Centers for Disease Control showing that from 1973 to 2005, an average of fifty-nine people became ill from raw milk each year--a drop in the bucket compared with the 14 million the CDC says are known to contract food-borne illnesses each year.

Absent a serious health risk, agriculture agencies are charged with encouraging expansion of local farming. New York’s Ag and Markets says its “mission is to foster a competitive food and agriculture industry that benefits producers and consumers alike.” CDFA says it “strives to support...innovation and agricultural diversity.”

Hundreds of small dairies could benefit financially from agriculture department assistance in making the transition to raw-milk production. The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund estimates it helps two or three dairies each week convert from conventional production to raw-milk herd-share legal arrangements. But when it comes to small dairies trying to take advantage of an opportunity to become viable businesses, mission statements seem to get tossed out the window.