FROM A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE, there is a lot of blame to go around when assessing the far-reaching devastation caused by animal factory food production. First is our failure to put laws in place, or the passage of laws that grant factory farms free passes on animal rights and environmental violations. Then there is a lack of enforcement of laws that do exist. The European Union has shown global leadership with legal reform. It’s our job to follow their lead and then go even further.
In the state of California, the historic nature of the 2008 election went far beyond the White House. For the first time, residents of the most populous state in the union went to the polls to cast their opinion on the welfare of farm animals. The ballot included Proposition 2, a statewide referendum poised to ban veal crates, battery cages for egg-laying hens, and gestation crates for pigs by mandating that animals have sufficient space to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs, and turn around freely. Animal welfare, environmental, and public health organizations throughout the country championed the measure as an effective way to end animal abuses and blatant food safety violations, and to set the stage for additional state and federal initiatives. While supporters of Proposition 2 organized grassroots efforts throughout the state, the industry launched its own smear campaign in a desperate attempt to continue their severe factory farming confinement practices.
Hidden behind the misnomer “Californians for Safe Food,” the factory farming industry launched a public campaign rife with scare tactics. Misleadingly promoting the use of confinement crates and cages as a means to protect the public from bird flu, salmonella, and a host of other diseases, it called Proposition 2 “unnecessary, risky and extreme.”1 The campaign appealed to people’s wallets by asserting that Proposition 2 would cost $600 million and bankrupt the California egg industry.2 Donations poured in from agribusiness corporations and industrial farms, mounting to more than $8 million. Nearly 60 percent came from outside the state of California,3 an example of corporate factory farming creating a loss of local democratic control.
Fortunately, California residents saw through industry-funded fearmongering. Proposition 2 passed by an overwhelming vote of 63.5 percent, with nearly twice as many people voting for the statute as against it.4 It was a historic first step to end some of the worst abuses of factory farming in the United States. With nearly 12 percent of the total U.S. population, California by its vote on Proposition 2 sent a message to the rest of the country and our lawmakers that people care about animal welfare and want action. While Proposition 2 should be celebrated as a victory for animals and democratic local control, its necessity highlights the nation’s huge factory farming problem. If federal legislation and regulations were enforced, if government required the industry to pay for its true environmental costs, and if our agencies were fully funded to regulate factory farms, initiatives like Proposition 2 would likely be unnecessary.
Numerous U.S. laws and regulations claim to oversee factory farms. Unfortunately, inconsistent adoption and enforcement along with blatant industry exemptions from a variety of rules have created regulatory loopholes and incessant violations, leading many to believe that laws regulating factory farms don’t even exist. In fact, dozens of environmental and animal welfare statutes on both a state and federal level at least purport to address some portion of the overwhelming problems caused by factory farms.
ENVIRONMENTAL STATUTES The Clean Water Act (CWA)5 is the main law charged with regulating water pollution, including toxic animal manures at factory farms; however, application has thus far been undercut by loose enforcement and widespread industry exemptions. The Clinton administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attempted to fix this problem and create a regulation holding concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) accountable for cleaning up their waste.6 The Bush administration immediately vacated this regulation and in 2003 issued its own rule, creating major CWA loopholes, such as exempting “land applied waste” (manure spreading) as a point source of pollution.7 When faced with a legal challenge, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with environmentalists on several counts, holding that the rule failed to hold CAFOs accountable for their waste. The court, however, sided with industry on the argument that only CAFOs that generate “actual discharges” must apply for permits.8 In practice, this left a significant number of CAFOs outside of the CWA permit process, creating a self-certifying system in which CAFOs can claim they are not discharging pollution and thus do not need a permit.
In response to the court decision, the EPA published a new rule in November 2008. While the new rule requires permits for discharges from land applications of manure,9 it remains riddled with loopholes. The rule relies on factory farm operators to self-determine whether their waste dumping activities are considered “discharges” and subject to regulation under the CWA.10 The new rule effectively allows CAFOs to claim that waste not directly pumped into rivers or streams is not a “discharge” requiring a permit. The rule concurrently established a voluntary permitting system for CAFOs proposing to not discharge; yet voluntary permits are not open for public participation or regulatory review and do not exclusively prohibit CAFOs from being able to obtain “nondischarge” status even after a documented discharge. The result of this regulatory rigging is that the CWA requirements cater to factory farming and allow CAFOs virtual self-regulation at the expense of the environment and human health.
When it comes to regulating CAFO air pollution, the situation is no brighter. Globally, a shocking 18 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions come from the livestock industry, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, although some experts feel the contribution could be as high as 51 percent.11 Increasingly, scientific studies are demonstrating that factory farms exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions and concentrate toxic air emissions into local areas,12 which adversely impact rural neighborhoods and farm worker health.13
The Clean Air Act (CAA)14 is the major piece of federal legislation charged with enhancing air quality and promoting public health and welfare.15 The CAA establishes a cooperative state-federal scheme for overseeing and improving the nation’s air quality.16 While the CAA does not exempt agricultural sources from its substantive or procedural mandates, factory farms have historically evaded regulation. They are considered “stationary sources” under the CAA and are thus obligated to comply with the CAA’s “New Source Review” permitting requirements. Whether a CAFO facility actually triggers these permit programs, however, is currently being litigated.17
While some CAFO air pollutants are regulated under the CAA and are therefore subject to its mandates, the most significant—nitrous oxide, methane, carbon dioxide, and ammonia—are not.18 Hydrogen sulfide, a deadly toxic gas produced during manure degradation, is subject to only minimal monitoring and sickens or kills farm workers yearly.19, 20 Until recently, excessive releases of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide were regulated under the toxic air emissions reporting requirements of both the Superfund law—the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)21—and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).22 Unfortunately, a late-term Bush administration regulation exempted the reporting of such toxic air emissions from CAFOs.23 The Bush-era EPA noted that “[t]he Agency believes that a federal response to such notifications is impractical and unlikely,”24 thereby setting the precedent that laws not easily enforced can be eliminated at the expense of the environment, farm workers, and communities in dangerous proximity to sickening and potentially deadly levels of toxic air emissions.25 In early 2009, the Center for Food Safety, with other environmental and public interest organizations, filed suit challenging the legality of this exemption.26
ANIMAL WELFARE STATUTES Regulation of farm animal welfare at a federal level is almost nonexistent in the United States. The Animal Welfare Act, the most notable federal legislation, protects animals only as instruments of interstate commerce and entirely excludes factory farm animals and fish.27 As a result, horrific animal abuses that could imprison someone if performed on a domestic animal are perfectly legal and acceptable for farm animals.
Ironically, farm animal welfare is most protected at the time of the animal’s death. The Humane Slaughter Act aims to prevent needless suffering and slaughtering of conscious animals.28 Lax enforcement, in part because of the more than 9 billion animals slaughtered yearly,29 allows factory farms to disregard slaughter laws. Unfortunately, even if the Humane Slaughter Act was enforceable, the law explicitly exempts chickens, which represent over 95 percent of animals slaughtered for food in the United States.30
State anticruelty laws often suffer from the same flaws as federal laws.31 In the past two decades, factory farm interests have convinced states to add “common farming exemptions” (CFEs) to state statutes, legitimizing farm animal abuse. The exemptions use “common,” “customary,” “established,” and generally “accepted” practices within the industry to justify inhumane treatment.32 For instance, the Nevada anticruelty laws “do not prohibit or interfere with established methods of animal husbandry, including raising, handling, feeding, housing, and transporting livestock or farmed animals.”33 These CFEs empower the farming industry to self-determine farmed animal cruelty for their own benefit, rather than in the best interest of animal welfare.34
Public interest organizations, including the Center for Food Safety and the New Jersey Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, paved the way to challenging such regulations with litigation in New Jersey when that state amended its animal cruelty law.35 The organizations challenged numerous provisions of the regulations, including a CFE for all “routine husbandry practices.” The court determined that the protection of routine husbandry practices was arbitrary and capricious, because it failed to comply with the law stating that practices must also be humane. Such challenges to CFEs are highly dependent on language specifically written into the exemptions, and the New Jersey Supreme Court noted that this type of challenge might not prevail in other states because many states chose to not require practices to be humane.36
Even when state anticruelty laws do not contain CFEs, enforcement is rare. State anticruelty laws are criminal statutes, which status prevents private citizens from enforcing them.37 Instead, local district attorneys have exclusive enforcement abilities, but limited resources and priorities for animal welfare prosecutions, resulting in little enforcement and few prosecutions.
Despite the current climate, there is new hope in the battle for state welfare protections. As public awareness of animal welfare issues has grown, an increasing number of states have passed laws to end the worst animal abuses at factory farms. Prior to California’s Proposition 2, Florida, Arizona, and Oregon had banned pig gestation crates, and Arizona and Colorado had banned veal crates.38 These laws are notable steps toward a nationwide commitment to animal welfare.
ANTIMONOPOLY REGULATIONS In addition to blatant violations and exemptions for factory farms under our nation’s environmental and animal welfare laws, a significant portion of the CAFO problem lies in the structure of the industry. The vertically integrated nature of the animal agriculture system and a lack of antimonopoly enforcement have enabled livestock processors to exhibit immense control over the entire system. Large-scale CAFOs are often tied directly into processors and distributors, yet small-scale livestock producers face dwindling markets and rely on a handful of large corporations to buy, process, and sell their product, increasing the economic power that processors hold over producers. As of 2004, only four firms controlled 80 percent of beef slaughter, 64 percent of hog slaughter, and 57 percent of sheep slaughter in the United States.39
Congress enacted the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA)40 to safeguard the livestock industry against monopolies and collusion. The law provides that it shall be “unlawful for any packer or swine contractor . . . to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person or locality in any respect whatsoever.”41 The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) administers the PSA but unfortunately has never defined what “undue and unreasonable preferences” actually mean. As a result, courts have interpreted the law to mean that undue preferences must have anticompetitive impacts to be a violation of the PSA. This interpretation of the PSA forces farmers suing for “competitive harm” to prove how the behavior of one company has negatively impacted the competitiveness of the entire industry.42 Recently, however, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a plaintiff does not need to prove an adverse effect on competition to prevail, a conclusion in tension with sister appellate courts.43 It appears that the Supreme Court or a congressional action will be needed to decide the issue.
VEGGIE LIBEL LAWS In 1996, Oprah Winfrey devoted an episode of her talk show to mad cow disease and learned that some American cattle were fed ground-up meal from dead livestock, potentially exacerbating mad cow disease.44 The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has a voluntary ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding; however, Oprah’s guest, Howard Lyman, insisted he had personally witnessed the practice and that there are USDA statistics to back it up.45 Oprah then made history after decrying: “It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!”46 Oprah did not realize that her words would land her in a lawsuit47 that utilized “veggie libel laws,” also known as “food disparagement laws,” which make it easier for food industry interests to sue critics, opponents, and concerned citizens for speaking out against industry practices. Veggie libel laws have been passed in thirteen states: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. According to these laws, industry can file a claim against any individual if it suffers damages as a result of this person’s disparagement of a perishable food product.48 Veggie libel laws are controversial free-speech inhibitors, and the constitutionality of these laws remains uncertain. Still, publications about the food industry have been delayed because of the fear these laws generate,49 and lawsuits have been filed against individuals speaking out against food safety.
While U.S. regulators have undertaken significant efforts to protect and defend industrial factory farming at the expense of public health, animal welfare, and the environment, other governments have chosen to regulate animal agriculture in a different way. In particular, many European countries and the European Union as a whole have become a blueprint for animal production, establishing an oversight system that protects industry interests and animal welfare, the environment, and public health at the same time. While not perfect, the European model offers many examples and opportunities that the United States could rely on in overhauling its own system.
THE EUROPEAN UNION REGULATORY SYSTEM AND ANIMAL WELFARE LEGISLATION Historically, the United States has utilized environmental statutes to regulate factory farms; conversely, the European Union (EU) has regulated these farms more often through animal welfare directives and continues to implement new regulations and enforce those already in place. Within the EU system,50 directives outline a final goal but give member states the ability to implement rules how they see fit, often resulting in more stringent requirements.51 The European Convention on Farm Animals laid the foundation for farm animal welfare in the EU by regulating pain and suffering and outlining general welfare conditions, freedom of movement, and environmental conditions. Enforcement of the convention has been implemented through daily inspections to monitor both animal welfare and technical equipment.52 Several farm animal welfare directives have since followed, including the establishment of the Welfare Quality Project, which aims to develop a single, clear regulatory framework for animal health. The recent adoption of the Animal Health Strategy under the motto “Prevention is better than cure”53 demonstrates the continued interest of the EU in advancing and evolving animal welfare statutes.
SPECIES-SPECIFIC WELFARE PROVISIONS While the EU is developing its broader animal welfare policy, it has also enacted species-specific directives to phase out some of the cruelest practices, including gestation crates, veal crates, and battery cages, all still common in the United States. Such directives are markedly changing the way factory farms are run by reducing the number of animals that can be handled, inspected, and cared for daily. In the case of pigs, the European Commission enacted two welfare directives: one reducing confinement54 and the other eliminating and reducing painful procedures like tail docking, castration, and early weaning.55
The chicken and cattle industries have also been a focal point to stop animal welfare abuses in the EU. Recent directives established stocking density rates for broiler chickens, allowing 30 percent more space per bird than in the United States, and included recommendations on farm worker training and requirements for lighting, feeding, litter, noise, and ventilation.56 Other regulations stopped the introduction of new battery cages as of 2003 and banned all battery cages as of 2012.57 Norway has effectively banned beak clipping and burning58 by requiring a veterinarian to conduct all surgical procedures and medical treatment, and the United Kingdom prohibits the deprivation of food, water, and light.59 And in 2008, the EU established minimum standards for the protection of calves by effectively banning veal crates.60
EUROPEAN UNION SLAUGHTER LEGISLATION The EU also has long-established welfare practices for slaughter, and more recent regulations have continued to evolve the EU standards. In 2008, the EU proposed a regulation, developed with input from a variety of stake-holders, that increases responsibility for animal welfare by directing operators to recognize physical comfort and to prevent injury, disease, pain, aggression, lack of feed or water, and adverse interaction. It also regulates killing methods and worker competency by requiring that personnel handling and/or slaughtering animals must possess a certificate of competence.61
ANTIBIOTICS AND GROWTH HORMONES European countries have also made significant progress in reducing or eliminating the use of unnecessary antibiotics in animal production. Antibiotics are given to farm animals to treat illness, prevent disease, or promote growth. The use of antibiotics to promote growth, also known as nontherapeutic use, has created significant controversy because of its link with antibiotic resistance, and the perpetuation of unhealthy and unsafe farm conditions. Some European countries have banned the use of a variety of antibiotics frequently used for people. In the early 1970s, the United Kingdom banned the use of penicillin and tetracycline for growth promotion. Later, Sweden took the initiative one step further by banning the use of all growth-promoting antibiotics in farm animals.62 The most studied case, however, is the Denmark ban.
In 1998, Denmark banned antibiotic growth promoters in pigs and chickens and began pioneering reductions in agricultural use of antibiotics by assembling the world’s most comprehensive data on antibiotic use and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.63 The Danish ban created significant declines in resistant bacteria in pork and chicken. For example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in those animals dropped from 60–80 percent to 5–35 percent.64 Based on such impressive results, the WHO recommended a ban on antibiotics for growth promotion in 2003. That same year, the EU passed a regulation banning the use of growth-promoting antibiotics in animal feed. While critics often point out that the Danish ban led to a rise in antibiotics used therapeutically, Denmark’s overall antibiotic use has declined more than 50 percent, while overall productivity has increased by 43 percent.65
Since the early 1980s, the EU has also criticized the use of hormones in factory farming and introduced legislation banning the practice. The EU prohibited the use of hormones for nontherapeutic purposes in 1985 and banned the importation of U.S. beef in 1988 to avoid importing hormone-treated meat.66 The issue is controversial, especially in the United States, where there is no such ban and hormone and antibiotic use in livestock production is widespread. While the EU no longer bans all U.S. beef, the EU continues to ban imports of hormone-treated beef and only allows beef imports that are certified as produced without the use of hormones.67
ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION The EU’s initiatives on animal production go beyond animal welfare and public health to also include tracking and regulating the environmental effects of agriculture. The Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution is an EU initiative that brings existing air quality legislation under a single umbrella, focusing on five key pollutants, including ammonia. The strategy proposes to broaden clean air laws to include more sectors like agriculture and to reduce ammonia emissions from fertilizers and manure. It is based on an earlier Nitrates Directive, which recognized that “common action is needed to control the problem arising from intensive livestock production.”68 The legislation directed member states to identify vulnerable zones and to establish codes of good agricultural practice and action programs to reduce pollution.
The EU also recognizes agriculture as a major contributor to climate change and has spent two decades trying to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Agricultural emissions decreased by 20 percent from 1990 to 2005 as a result of a decline in livestock numbers, more efficient application of fertilizers, and better manure management. The reduction of farming emissions is much higher than the overall EU emissions reductions of about 8 percent.69 Early identification of sources of greenhouse gas emissions coupled with legislative action achieved dramatic results that are yet to be realized in the United States under any uniting federal greenhouse gas reductions act.
While the EU has had challenges in implementing animal legislation, it has made significant strides in adopting progressive laws to better address the environment, human health, and animal welfare issues involved with factory farms. The United States has a variety of opportunities to initiate policy changes that go above and beyond the EU model.
STRENGTHEN AND ENFORCE EXISTING ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS Many rules and regulations exist to address the environmental and health concerns of factory farms in the United States, yet these laws are rarely enforced. Factory farms are not monitored or inspected on a routine basis, making it relatively easy to ignore laws and skip enforcement.70 Government agencies are not allocated sufficient resources to effectively monitor regulatory compliance, and some laws actually allow for industry self-regulation. To effectively regulate animal factories, the existing regulatory framework must be strengthened to eliminate industry self-regulation and animal farming exemptions. As a first step, the government agencies charged with overseeing farms—including the USDA, the FDA, and the EPA—must receive appropriate funding so they can adequately enforce existing environmental laws, with the ultimate goal of protecting the environment and human health.
Additional recommendations to strengthen and enforce existing environmental laws include, but are not limited to, the following:
•Place a moratorium on new factory farms and on expansion of existing facilities by the EPA until adequate environmental and health safety standards are in effect.
•Develop a standardized federal approach for regulating air pollution from factory farms under the Clean Air Act.
•Require all factory farms to treat sewage.
•Allocate appropriate funding and introduce legislation to allow for the tracking and reporting of water and air emissions from factory farms for a national collection database.
•Amend existing regulations that allow for industry self-regulation, such as National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting rules under the Clean Water Act.
•Enact legislation and implement regulations, including regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from animal production as a source of emissions and a significant hot spot for mitigation.
EXPAND FEDERAL AND STATE ANIMAL WELFARE LAWS A 2007 poll indicates that 75 percent of the U.S. public would like to see government mandates for basic animal welfare measures.71 Animals raised for food that are treated well and allowed to exhibit natural behavior are healthier and safer for human consumption.72 While the cruelest practices are banned or are currently being phased out in the EU, there are no federal anticruelty laws addressing farm animal welfare in the United States. Animal welfare measures must be instituted at both the state and federal level to improve food quality and safety—for example: (1) minimum federal humane farming legislation that acts as a floor, not a ceiling, permitting states to continue to pass stricter anticruelty legislation, and (2) state anticruelty legislation that quickly phases out the cruelest farming practices—gestation crates, farrowing crates, veal crates, and battery cages. Adding citizen suit provisions to these laws will enable individuals, not just state attorneys general, to have enforcement power.
PROMULGATE ANTIBIOTICS LEGISLATION According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, animal producers in the United States use as much as 84 percent of all antimicrobials in the United States.73 The World Health Organization has noted that “this ongoing and often low-level dosing for growth and prophylaxis inevitably results in the development of resistance in or near livestock, and also heightens fears of new resistant strains ‘jumping’ between species.”74 Furthermore, scientific evidence suggests that ending the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals has important public health benefits75 and does not adversely affect food safety, environmental quality, or consumer food prices.76 While the FDA admits that “antimicrobial drug residues present in food from food-producing animals may cause adverse effects on the ecology of the intestinal microflora of consumers,”77 very little is being done to reduce antimicrobials in U.S. animal agriculture. It is therefore critical that the U.S. government (1) phase out and ban current use of antimicrobials for nontherapeutic purposes, especially those that are important for human medicine, such as penicillins, tetracyclines, and stretogramins, and (2) ban new approvals of antimicrobials for nontherapeutic uses.
REFORM CROP AND ANIMAL SUBSIDIES A variety of crop and environmental subsidies exist that either directly or indirectly benefit factory farms. In the United States, most animals in CAFOs eat a diet based on corn and soy, heavily subsidized and cheap for factory farms. While chicken and hog farms benefit from crop subsidies,78 large cattle operations are most subsidized by cheap grain production. The 168 largest beef feedlots, averaging over 32,000 animals each, sell more than 64 percent of feedlot cattle and represent about 74 percent of beef CAFOs. On average, each feedlot receives about $2.2 million in grain subsidies annually, and nearly $35 billion was given to factory farms between 1997 and 2005.79 Unfortunately, a lack of national data keeping makes it nearly impossible to document the total payments disbursed, often creating loopholes in which wealthy farmers receive subsidy payments they are not qualified to receive. Furthermore, the recent boom in corn ethanol production and subsidies, unwarranted because of the demonstrated inability of corn ethanol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,80 also provides indirect subsidies for factory farms. Distiller grains, a by-product of the ethanol industry, sold to factory farms as a feed supplement, increased 37 percent between 2007 and 2008 and by 63 percent between 2007 and the expected 2009 usage.81
Recommendations to reform animal and crop subsidies include, but are not limited to, the following:
•Reduce crop subsidies for large commodity crops, including corn and soy, and redirect money toward pasture-based and organic animal production.
•Continue to require a pasture standard in organic certified animal products.
•Work to reduce or phase out corn ethanol subsidies, which contribute distiller grains to animal diets at a cheap cost to factory farms.
•Establish a national data-keeping system to track crop subsidy payments and put a check on subsidies to the largest farms outside the income limit.
The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) began in 1996 as a means to provide a cost share and incentives program for farmers who were engaged in conservation practices such as wetlands preservation, grassland management, and tree planting on highly erodible croplands.82 Initially, the funding for EQIP was given on a cost-effective basis, and payments were capped at $10,000 per year or $50,000 over five years. Notably, payments could not be used for the construction of animal waste storage facilities. In the 2002 farm bill, EQIP funding changed dramatically as the annual cap was completely eliminated, making it feasibly possible for one facility to receive $450,000 in EQIP payments in one year. Funding changes also made it increasingly easy for factory farms to receive funding under the EQIP program, since Congress designated that at least 60 percent of the EQIP payments must be used for livestock-related practices. At the same time, Congress reversed the former restriction on payments for manure storage facilities and prohibited considering cost effectiveness when reviewing EQIP applications. As a result, CAFOs were no longer excluded from EQIP funding and have been heavily subsidized by the EQIP program since 2002.
To reverse the practice of allowing factory farms to receive payments for merely cleaning up their pollution, we recommend the following:
•Establish new EQIP caps and focus payments on cost efficiency, not just the presence of pollution. Caps will force factory farms to clean up their own pollution and not rely on government funding to do so.
•Reduce EQIP payments for construction and expansion projects at factory farms that allow farms to get bigger on taxpayer dollars, and focus more funding on management-based conservation practices.
•Appropriate money to track EQIP contracts by livestock size, type, manure amount, and funding size to better regulate programs and eliminate subsidies to CAFOs.
INCREASE TRANSPARENCY Factory farms remain mysterious and guarded entities, and congressional mandates have allowed this secrecy to continue by explicitly prohibiting opportunities for public participation, right-to-know, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. In the 2002 farm bill, a section titled “Privacy of Personal Information Relating to Natural Resource Conservation Programs” prohibited the USDA from releasing information about contracts received through programs like EQIP.83 In practice, this makes it next to impossible to understand the ways in which funding has been used. There is also an increase in denying public participation in the regulatory process, most recently in the 2008 CAFO discharge rule that prevented public participation in the voluntary permitting system.
Recommendations to increase transparency and the public right to know include the following:
•Increase the public’s right and ability to access information regarding Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and EQIP programs, through FOIA or otherwise.
•Promote the importance of including mandatory third-party inspection provisions in new state and federal legislation.
•Challenge the constitutionality of veggie libel laws in states, as well as laws that make photographing factory farms illegal.
The passage of Proposition 2 in the 2008 election demonstrates that there is reason to be hopeful about the future of factory farm regulations in the United States. The residents of California exercised their democratic right to reform our political system and stood strong against industry interests that have received a free pass for far too long. Yet it is clear that we cannot and should not have to rely on individuals and states to address endemic national problems associated with industrial factory farms. The status quo of factory farming can no longer be propped up by ineffective and unenforced policies at the expense of our animals, the environment, and public health.
In Europe, regulating factory farms through animal welfare, environmental, and health and safety provisions is a priority and offers a basic blueprint for the ways that the United States can alter its most egregious practices. For too long the U.S. regulatory system has allowed factory farms to stay hidden from public view and out of our political discussions. The American people continue to voice their opposition to factory farms by shopping at farmers’ markets, purchasing organic products in unprecedented numbers, and exercising local control by passing local and statewide ordinances. But public action must be coupled with mandating national policies to end subsidies to animal farm factories that are desecrating rural areas, damaging public health, and harming our environment. Simultaneously, regulations already in place in the United States must be expanded and reinforced with appropriate funding. Recent victories such as Proposition 2 have provided an ideal climate for change. Failure to act will allow industrial factory farming to persist despite well-intentioned individuals and local regulations.