Dairy and livestock mega-farms are known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
Many CAFOs choose the tri-state region of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana because of its affordable land, access to water, favorable climate, and simpler regulations.
Farmers have been moving here from the Netherlands for a few years, in part because environmental laws in the European Union have become so stiff, according to information from the Ohio State University Extension.
Some of the nation's top scientists, including those from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, have urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to look harder at health effects of long-term exposure to air pollutants from the large farms.
The American Public Health Association, the nation's largest group of public-health officials, has called for a moratorium on the operations.
Toledo Blade
The Clinton Position:
Tightening Controls on CAFOs - Hillary believes that we can strike a better balance between animal agriculture and protecting our environment and rural quality of life. She recognizes the hazards that CAFOs pose to health and the environment, and strongly supports local control over CAFO siting decisions. She also supports federal rules to control air and water pollution from corporate factory farms, and believes we should take steps to ensure that conservation funding reaches more family farms.
The Obama Position:
Regulate CAFOs: Obama's Environmental Protection Agency will strictly regulate pollution from large CAFOs, with fines for those that violate tough standards. Obama also supports meaningful local control.
Prevent Anticompetitive Behavior Against Family Farms: Obama is a strong supporter of a packer ban. When meatpackers own livestock they can manipulate prices and discriminate against independent farmers. Obama will strengthen anti-monopoly laws and strengthen producer protections to ensure independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices.
Both support oversight of the MegaFarms and support for Family Farms.
Clinton Advisors:
Joy Philippi (co-chairwoman of HRC rural campaign effort) was, until March, president of the National Pork Producers Association (NPPC) and owns and operates a giant hog CAFO on her land in Nebraska. She is still on the NPPC national board of directors.
Obama Advisors:
Obama has assembled a team of agriculture and rural economic development experts to help craft his rural policies.
- Gary Lamb, of Chelsea, Iowa, has farmed for 55 years and has served as president of the Iowa Farmers Union, chairman of the Iowa State Committee of the Farm Service Agency and as an agricultural liaison for Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
Lamb said that reforming farm programs will be an important step to strengthen small family farms rather than large agribusinesses.
Source
At a Rural Issues Forum in Adel, U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today said that Washington lobbyists and special interest groups were working to block key reforms that would help family farmers and renewable fuel producers and increase conservation. Obama said he came to Adel to listen to real-life experts on rural issues before outlining his final policy.
"Washington lobbyists are working in Congress to block the rural reforms you need," Obama said.
Current Trend Rural Voters:
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama’s win in Wisconsin Tuesday underscored his rising popularity among rural voters, a constituency that some political observers say has been neglected by national Democrats.
After winning about 37 percent of the rural vote on Super Tuesday, Obama captured 51 percent of the rural vote in the so-called Potomac primaries Feb. 12 and 55 percent of Wisconsin’s rural vote, according to an analysis by the Center for Rural Strategies.
"It certainly does look as if Obama is trending toward more rural support than he had on Super Tuesday, and Clinton seems to be trending toward less rural support," said Tim Marema, vice president of the strategies center, a Kentucky-based nonpartisan organization that studies rural politics.
Obama won 65 percent of Virginia’s rural vote Feb. 12, according to CNN exit polls -- success Rep. Rick Boucher predicted.
Candidate Experience:
The Clinton Campaign claims 35 years of experience.
The Obama Campaign does not.
The Clinton 35 Year Experience:
Since the early 1970s, when he refused money from big business in a failed run for Congress, Bill Clinton had matured into a master political fund-raiser. Throughout the 1980s, the governor had done what many politicians do: take personal loans, use them for campaigning and then raise money to repay the loans later. Clinton raised several hundred thousand dollars this way from influential supporters like Don Tyson, the head of Arkansas's powerful Tyson foods. CNN
Tyson Food is the the world’s largest chicken industrial factory operation.
Tyson was an early supporter of Mr. Clinton's campaigns in Arkansas. Though he opposed Mr. Clinton's gubernatorial re-election campaign in 1980, Mr. Tyson returned to the Clinton camp in later campaigns.
James B. Blair, general counsel of Tyson Foods.placed many of the trades that helped Hillary Rodham Clinton invest in the cattle futures marke. In 1978, weeks before election day, Mrs. Clinton invested about $1,000 in the commodities market. In the next 10 months, she would clear $100,000, an unheard-of return. There were no official investigations of the trading and Clinton was never charged with any wrongdoing.
Clinton CAFO Legislative Experience:
WASHINGTON - March 8 - The Sierra Club today welcomed parts of the Clinton Administration's plan to curb water pollution from Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), but expressed disappointment that the proposal doesn't go farther to clean up the industry's practices.
SNIP--
"The Clinton Administration's proposal for livestock factories is a mixed bag," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. "The Administration plan tackles a terrible problem, but fails to offer solutions for the most troubling air and water pollution aspects of these livestock factories".
.....the plan fails to protect groundwater, curb air pollution, ensure citizens can participate in granting permits to new CAFOs, and deal with pig factories' giant lagoons of raw manure.
SNIP-
These lagoons are built on an enormous scale, with one in Oklahoma covering 11 acres and holding more than 42 million gallons of hog manure. In 1995, a North Carolina lagoon burst, spilling 23 million gallons of raw sewage into the New River -- an amount more than double the Exxon Valdez oil spill. That spill obliterated the river's aquatic life.
Sierra Club MARCH 8, 1999
Tyson' Environmental Record
During the past decade, Tyson has been involved in several lawsuits related to air and water pollution. In June 2003 the company admitted to illegally dumping untreated wastewater from its poultry processing plant near Sedalia, Missouri, pleading guilty to 20 felony violations of the federal Clean Water Act. As part of the plea agreement, the company agreed to pay $7.5 million in fines.
SNIP-
The United States Environmental Protection Agency began the investigation into the discharges in 1997, and federal officials served two criminal search warrants at the plant in 1999. According to EPA and U.S. Department of Justice officials, Tyson continued to illegally dump wastewater after the search warrants were executed, prompting an EPA senior trial attorney to remark that: "Having done this work for nearly 20 years, I don't recall any case where violations continued after the execution of two search warrants.
Source Wikipedia
Obama Experience:
None of the above
What can we expect.
Will Clinton continue to be supportive of Mega-Farms and CAFOs?
Does her choice of Mega-Pig Farmer Joy Philippi (co-chairwoman of HRC rural campaign effort) indicate that she will make good on her promise to be tough on CAFOs?
Will Obama keep his promise to fight lobbyist and special interest groups and support small family farms rather than large agribusinesses?
The rural voters of Ohio (remember them from 2000 and 2004?) hold the key. Presently Northwest Ohio and the surrounding tri-state area are deluged with CAFOs from the Netherlands that are fleeing tougher environmental laws than they face in America.
Fifteen large-scale operations are in Hillsdale and Lenawee counties, and 30 operate or have permits within a 90-minute drive of Toledo. They are specialized, and each is home to thousands of dairy cows or hogs; chicken operations sometimes eclipse a million beaks. The Toledo Blade
My Humble Opinion:
The Clinton MO (Modus Operandi)
is to promise voters one thing and support corporate interests instead.
Clinton campaign promises in Ohio are historically suspect, as I wrote in a previous diary (500 recs) on an Ohio environmental issue.
The Obama MO (MOmentum)
is for change.
It is time for a change. NOW!