Frequently Asked Questions
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1. What do all the acronyms mean - CAFO, AUs, LFMA?
The acronym CAFO originated in the late 1970s as a definition of a regulated “point source” of pollution under the federal Clean Water Act.1[1] The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines CAFOs as facilities that (1) stable or confine certain numbers of animals, often thousands of them, for more than 45 days in any 12‐month period and (2) do not have vegetation on any portion of the lot or facility.2[2] AUs or animal units represent the number of livestock in a facility. CAFOs are defined as facilities that house over 1,000 animal units (referred to as AUs). In terms of swine, that’s 2,500 hogs over 55 pounds. In terms of dairy, that’s 700 cows. Both the Runway Ridge LLC site in Bernadotte Township and the Memory Lane Acres LLC site in Isabel Township would each house 3606.48 AUs (animal units), which translates to 8,052 hogs over 55 lbs and 12,856 pigs less than 55 lbs for a total of 20,908 hogs. The Livestock Facilities Management Act (LFMA) outlines specific rules and requirements for livestock facilities and is overseen by the Illinois Department of Ag. Visit their website for more details about the act and the specific siting criteria used to evaluate applications. 2. What are the human health impacts of CAFOs? Rural farm children traditionally have been less likely to develop asthma, but large CAFOS change that. In a study conducted in Keokuk Co. Iowa of 644 children, 55.8% of children who lived by large swine farms had asthma symptoms. Children who lived on farms without large swine facilities had significantly lower rates of asthma. The odor is not only offensive, but makes people sick. How often are people exposed to these emissions? Within 2 miles of CAFOS, both resident self‐reports and air quality measurement show that on 50 percent of the days randomly tested there was odor detected3[3]. Those exposed to CAFO emissions are 4 more times more likely to report headaches, 6 times more likely to report eye irritation, and 7.8 times more likely to report nausea than those not expose to these emissions4[4]. These odors affected residents' ability to sleep, be outside or entertain guests at their home. Studies also show residents who live nearby CAFOs experience increased psychological distress and decreased perceptions of control over their health and well‐being5[5]. Click on this Chicago Tribune link for an article dated August 3, 2016, David Jackson, “The Price of pork: Cheap meat comes at high cost in Illinois.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/pork/ Carmen Cordova stated in a blog that a CDC report released in 2013 highlights the growing public health crisis that threatens our health. Her article headline reads, Where superbugs come from: CDC report reiterates that misuse of antibiotics in agriculture plays a role. [14] Another article from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reads, Hog Workers Carry Drug‐Resistant Bacteria Even After They Leave The Farm.[15] Moreover, an article in the Iowa City Veteran Affairs Research News suggests the increasing population of swine raised in densely packed facilities and exposed to antibiotics may raise the risk of drug‐resistant germs such as MRSA transmitted to people. MRSA has been found in hog confinements and employees have been infected.[16] We are concerned about these health risks of factory confinements. It appears that the issues may get worse since a New York Times article states, Antibiotics in Livestock: FDA Finds Use is rising. [17] Want more information? Read the 2017 John Hopkins report (Fulton County, Illinois) for research-based data detailing the health concerns with factory farms. 3. How do these facilities impact property values? In a Missouri study, the residential value property loss near a CAFO is estimated at 88.3%.6[6] Other studies show that some farms, including horse and vegetable farms, dropped in value 50‐100%.7[7] Residential properties within three miles of a CAFO experienced a value loss of about 6.6%.8[8]. Want more information? Read the document titled, "Kilpatrick - Animal Operations and Residential Property Values" available at http://www.myappraisalinstitute.org/webpac/pdf/TAJ2015/TAJ_WI15_p041-050_Feat3-AnimalOperations.pdf 4. Do CAFOs bring money to farmers and the community? NO. Historical and recent studies show that when the number of farmers in an area declines, the rural economic well‐being does too.9[9] CAFOs push farmers off the land. Farmers become trapped in contracts with larger firms that eliminate open markets. Big companies, like Tyson or Seaboard, squeeze contract farmers’ profits until they can no longer afford to stay in business.10[10] As a result of ever expanding industrialization of agriculture, only 11% of rural American households earn their income from farm activities.11[11] That means the bulk of rural Americans don’t make money off of farming, and count on other income for sustenance today. Those residents end up paying the price for CAFO profit, although they’ll never see the pork come home. Most recently some CAFOs aren’t operated by contract farmers, but owned by investors who hire laborers to work in the facility. The nameless owners leave communities forced to cope with CAFO’s negative externalities like air pollution, contaminated water, and decreased property values. Sometimes, the investors aren’t only counties, but state’s away, and hire laborers to work at the confinements while their hands stay clean.[12]. Click on this link for an article in the Chicago Tribune, August 3, 2016, David Jackson and Gary Marx, entitled “Illinois contract pig farmer: Work is low‐paying, physically punishing.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/pork/ct‐pig‐farms‐operators‐met‐20160802‐story.html The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service reported in a 2013 study that large scale hog farms only generated .57 jobs per 1000 hogs. Outside the hog CAFO, those 1000 hogs resulted in a .16 loss in jobs. And of course, those minute numbers are only the short term ones. As other authors have shown, taking animals off the land into confined buildings also takes people off the land, leading to rural exodus and economic decline. 5. After these facilities leave, who’s left to clean them up? Local, state, and federal tax payers will be footing the bill when a site is abandoned/closed. Once the company leaves the area, the community and state are left with the costs of cleaning up contaminated property. Cleaning up U.S. hog and dairy CAFOs nationally could approach $4.1 billion13[16]. Go online and look up hog confinements for sale. 6. What about pollution and contaminants? Click on this link for an article in the Chicago Tribune, August 3, 2016, David Jackson and Gary Marx, entitled “Deadly spills of pig waste kill hundreds of thousands of fish in Illinois.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/pork/ct‐pig‐farms‐pollution‐met‐20160802‐story.html From the Tribune article: “Confinements with multimillion‐dollar annual revenues often paid just a few thousand dollars in fines after causing massive fish kills. Many went to court to challenge authorities; since 2005, the Illinois attorney general has filed or resolved at least 26 pollution lawsuits against swine confinements. Some operators polluted repeatedly.” The track record for hog confinements in west central Illinois speaks for itself! Source: http://www.ruralresidentsforresponsibleagriculture.com/ |
Did you know?
The 20,000+ hog confinements proposed for our townships would be almost SEVEN times bigger than the the Cedar Crest project (Table Grove) with 3000 hogs and FORTY times larger than the Bear Creek (Lewistown) facility in our county with 500 boars. In our opinion, these so called "farms" are factories and are not the family farms that have existed for many generations in our township and county. Need to know more?
Visit our RESOURCES area for links to helpful organizations as well as recent articles & reports that highlight concerns and issues associated with factory farms. |
References
[1] (Federal Clean Water Act 1972)
[2] (Code of Federal Regulations 2003)
[3] Wing, S., R. A. Horton, S. W. Marshall, K. Thu, M. Tajik, L. Schinasi, and S. S. Schiffman. “Air Pollution and Odor in Communities Near Industrial Swine Operations.” Environmental Health Perspectives. 116(10): 1362-1368. (2008).
[4] Schiffman, S.S., C. E. Studwell, L.R. Landerman, K. Berman, and J.S. Sundy. “Symptomatic Efforts of Exposure to Diluted Air Sampled from a Swine Confinement Atmosphere on Healthy Human Subjects.”Environmental Health Perspectives. 113(5): 567-576. (2005).
[5] Bullers, S. “Environmental Stressors, Perceived Control, and Health: The Case of Residents Near Large-Scale Hog Farms in Eastern North Carolina.” Human Ecology. 33(1). (2005).
[6] Mubarek Hamed, Thomas Johnson, and Kathleen Miller, “The Impacts of Animal Feeding Operations on Rural Land Values,” University of Missouri- Columbia Community Policy Analysis Center Report R-99-02 (May, 1999).
[7] Kilpatrick, J. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Proximate Property Values. The Appraisal Journal. (2001).
[8] Mubarek Hamed, Thomas Johnson, and Kathleen Miller, “The Impacts of Animal Feeding Operations on Rural Land Values,” University of Missouri- Columbia Community Policy Analysis Center Report R-99-02 (May, 1999).
[9] Durrenberger, Paul and Kendall Thu. 1996. “The Expansion of Large Scale Hog Farming in Iowa: The Applicability of Goldschmidt’s Findings Fifty Years Later.” Human Organization 55(4):409–15.; Goldschmidt, Walter. 1978. As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness. Montclair, NJ: Allanheld, Osmun; Lyson, Thomas A. and Rick Welsh. 2005. “Agricultural Industrialization, Anti-corporate Farming Laws and Rural Community Welfare.” Environment and Planning A 37:1479–92.
[10] Boyd, William and Michael Watts. 1997. “Agro-industrial Just-in-Time: The Chicken Industry and Postwar American Capitalism.” Pp. 192–225 in Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring, edited by D. Goodman and M. Watts. London, England: Routledge; Davis, John E. 1980. “Capitalist Agricultural Development and the Exploitation of the Propertied Laborer.” Pp. 133–54 in The Rural Sociology of Advanced Societies, edited by F. H. Buttel and H. Newby. Montclair, NJ: Allenheld, Osmun.; Heffernan, William D. 1984. “Constraints in the Poultry Industry.” Pp. 237–60 in Research in Rural Sociology and Development, vol. 1, edited by H. Schwarzweller. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press; Heffernan, William, Mary Hendrickson, and Robert Gronski. 1999. Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture System. Report to the National Farmers Union; Mooney, Patrick H. 1983. “Toward a Class Analysis of Midwestern Agriculture.” Rural Sociology 48(4):563–84; Morrison, John M. 1998. “The Poultry Industry: A View of the Swine Industry’s Future.” Pp. 145–54 in Pigs, Profits, and Rural Communities, edited by K. M. Thu and E. P. Durrenburger. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press; Striffler, Steven. 2005. Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Stull, Donald and Michael J. Broadway. 2004. Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
[11] http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/factsheets-reports/strengthening-the-ruraleconomy/the-current-state-of-rural-america
[12] Ashwood, Loka, Danielle Diamond, and Kendall Thu. "Where's the Farmer? Limiting Liability in Midwestern Industrial Hog Production." Rural Sociology 79.1 (2014): 2-27.
[13] Union of Concerned Scientists. “CAFOs Uncovered – The Untold Costs of the Confined Animal Feeding Operations.” (2008)
[14] Cordova, Carmen Where suberbugs come from: CDC report reiterates that misuse of antibiotics in agriculture plays a role; www:nrdc.org/; Sept 16,2013
[15]John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health news release, Hog Workers Carry Drug-Resistant Bacteria Even After They Leave The Farm, Sept 9,2014
[16] VA Research Currents, US Dept of Veteran Affairs, In Iowa City VA study, proximity to swine linked to higher MRSA rates; February 12, 2014
[17] Tavernise, Sabrina, Antibiotics in Livestock: FDA Finds Use Is Rising, New York Times article, October 2, 2014
[1] (Federal Clean Water Act 1972)
[2] (Code of Federal Regulations 2003)
[3] Wing, S., R. A. Horton, S. W. Marshall, K. Thu, M. Tajik, L. Schinasi, and S. S. Schiffman. “Air Pollution and Odor in Communities Near Industrial Swine Operations.” Environmental Health Perspectives. 116(10): 1362-1368. (2008).
[4] Schiffman, S.S., C. E. Studwell, L.R. Landerman, K. Berman, and J.S. Sundy. “Symptomatic Efforts of Exposure to Diluted Air Sampled from a Swine Confinement Atmosphere on Healthy Human Subjects.”Environmental Health Perspectives. 113(5): 567-576. (2005).
[5] Bullers, S. “Environmental Stressors, Perceived Control, and Health: The Case of Residents Near Large-Scale Hog Farms in Eastern North Carolina.” Human Ecology. 33(1). (2005).
[6] Mubarek Hamed, Thomas Johnson, and Kathleen Miller, “The Impacts of Animal Feeding Operations on Rural Land Values,” University of Missouri- Columbia Community Policy Analysis Center Report R-99-02 (May, 1999).
[7] Kilpatrick, J. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Proximate Property Values. The Appraisal Journal. (2001).
[8] Mubarek Hamed, Thomas Johnson, and Kathleen Miller, “The Impacts of Animal Feeding Operations on Rural Land Values,” University of Missouri- Columbia Community Policy Analysis Center Report R-99-02 (May, 1999).
[9] Durrenberger, Paul and Kendall Thu. 1996. “The Expansion of Large Scale Hog Farming in Iowa: The Applicability of Goldschmidt’s Findings Fifty Years Later.” Human Organization 55(4):409–15.; Goldschmidt, Walter. 1978. As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness. Montclair, NJ: Allanheld, Osmun; Lyson, Thomas A. and Rick Welsh. 2005. “Agricultural Industrialization, Anti-corporate Farming Laws and Rural Community Welfare.” Environment and Planning A 37:1479–92.
[10] Boyd, William and Michael Watts. 1997. “Agro-industrial Just-in-Time: The Chicken Industry and Postwar American Capitalism.” Pp. 192–225 in Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring, edited by D. Goodman and M. Watts. London, England: Routledge; Davis, John E. 1980. “Capitalist Agricultural Development and the Exploitation of the Propertied Laborer.” Pp. 133–54 in The Rural Sociology of Advanced Societies, edited by F. H. Buttel and H. Newby. Montclair, NJ: Allenheld, Osmun.; Heffernan, William D. 1984. “Constraints in the Poultry Industry.” Pp. 237–60 in Research in Rural Sociology and Development, vol. 1, edited by H. Schwarzweller. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press; Heffernan, William, Mary Hendrickson, and Robert Gronski. 1999. Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture System. Report to the National Farmers Union; Mooney, Patrick H. 1983. “Toward a Class Analysis of Midwestern Agriculture.” Rural Sociology 48(4):563–84; Morrison, John M. 1998. “The Poultry Industry: A View of the Swine Industry’s Future.” Pp. 145–54 in Pigs, Profits, and Rural Communities, edited by K. M. Thu and E. P. Durrenburger. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press; Striffler, Steven. 2005. Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Stull, Donald and Michael J. Broadway. 2004. Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
[11] http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/factsheets-reports/strengthening-the-ruraleconomy/the-current-state-of-rural-america
[12] Ashwood, Loka, Danielle Diamond, and Kendall Thu. "Where's the Farmer? Limiting Liability in Midwestern Industrial Hog Production." Rural Sociology 79.1 (2014): 2-27.
[13] Union of Concerned Scientists. “CAFOs Uncovered – The Untold Costs of the Confined Animal Feeding Operations.” (2008)
[14] Cordova, Carmen Where suberbugs come from: CDC report reiterates that misuse of antibiotics in agriculture plays a role; www:nrdc.org/; Sept 16,2013
[15]John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health news release, Hog Workers Carry Drug-Resistant Bacteria Even After They Leave The Farm, Sept 9,2014
[16] VA Research Currents, US Dept of Veteran Affairs, In Iowa City VA study, proximity to swine linked to higher MRSA rates; February 12, 2014
[17] Tavernise, Sabrina, Antibiotics in Livestock: FDA Finds Use Is Rising, New York Times article, October 2, 2014