The 2008 Farm Bill included reforms to protect small and medium-sized farmers who raise cattle, hogs, and chickens from unfair treatment at the hands of meatpackers and poultry companies. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration proposed rules (known as the GIPSA Rule, after the agency) to protect poultry and hog farmers from unfair contract terms–like retaliating against poultry and hog growers who speak out about abuses–and ensured that cattle and hog producers could get a fair price from meatpackers for their livestock.

Nearly three years later, the fair livestock rules have been shredded and there is plenty of blame and shame to go around. The Obama administration failed to show leadership on this issue and reneged on President Obama’s campaign pledge to “fight to ensure family and independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices.”

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack caved to meatpacker money and power by issuing significantly watered down rules–after nearly 18 months of foot dragging to issue the final rules at all. USDA’s final proposal indefinitely postponed any efforts to protect independent cattle and hog farmers and issued a much weaker set of protections for contract chicken and hog farmers. Many Democratic Senators on the Agriculture Committee–including Chairman Debbie Stabenow from Michigan–stood on the sidelines and refused to stand up for livestock producers in their states.

But the final attack came from the duplicitous House Republicans who included sneaky language in the agriculture appropriations bill that prevents USDA from finalizing or developing any rules on livestock markets and only allows the pending rules to address a few of the crucial reforms to poultry contracts. This essentially means that House Republicans, who claim to believe in a “free-market,” have empowered the meat industry to rig a competitive market through unfair and anti-competitive practices that are widespread in the livestock industry. While they mouth support for family values, small businesses, and the family farmer, their failure to allow the fair livestock rules to be implemented is two-faced and un-American. The policies they have supported by doing so will drive even more small and midsized independent producers out of business and increase the monopoly power of the meatpackers.

By prohibiting USDA from finalizing the fair livestock rules, House Republicans didn’t just vote against a new regulation that would have prohibited commonplace abuses in the meat industry. They voted against the family livestock producer by signing off on:
• Unfair and deceptive practices
• Abusive contracts
• Retaliation against farmers who speak out about abuses
• Sweetheart deals for factory farms that receive higher prices for livestock than independent farmers
• Secrecy so diabolical that it forbids the USDA from providing farmers with sample contracts that have fair terms and pricing.

Farmer and consumer advocates will not give up the battle to prevent the rapacious meat industry from destroying family farms and the future for a sustainable food system. The next farm bill must ensure that farmers are paid fairly and prevent meatpacking and food processing companies from running roughshod over farmers and consumers. It’s time for those who talk about the market with reverence, but who support non-competitive practices, to stop being hypocrites. Our coalition is hopping mad and don’t think for a minute we are going to let Big Meat and complicit politicians get away with this outrage.

But if Thanksgiving is truly about offering gratitude for what we have, it seems fitting to also be grateful to the turkey that many of us will eat for dinner. We ought to think about how that turkey lived before ending up on our tables. With that in mind, let’s first take a look at the life of a turkey in an industrial farm.

Turkeys on factory farms are hatched in incubators mostly on large farms in the Midwest or the South. A few days after hatching, turkeys have their upper beaks snipped off. Once the beak is removed, the turkey can no longer pick and choose what it wants to eat. In their natural environment, turkeys are omnivores. But in a factory farm, turkeys are fed a steady diet of corn-based grain feed laced with antibiotics.

Industrially produced turkeys spend their first three weeks of life crammed into a brooder with hundreds of other birds. In the fourth week, turkey chicks are moved from the brooder to a giant window-less room with 10,000 other turkeys where bright lights shine 24 hours a day. With the lights constantly blaring, natural sleeping, eating, and fertility patterns are completely disrupted and the turkeys are, for the most part, kept awake and eating non-stop. Turkeys have an instinct to roost, or to clutch something when they sleep, but on the floor of a crowded room there is no such opportunity. If this is starting to sound like torture to you, you’re on the mark.

As a result of these unhealthy and crowded living conditions, farmers must feed the turkeys a constant supply of antibiotics. Pesticides are also widely used to inhibit the spread of disease. Antibiotics are also known to promote weight gain in farm animals and this connection is being made in humans now as well. In an effort to maximize the more profitable white breast meat, farmers have genetically selected and bred the white broad breasted turkey, which become so top heavy that they can no longer stand or reproduce and as a result, all industrial turkeys are created by artificial insemination. Turkeys are then brought to slaughter, often in a brutal way.

If that wasn’t enough to make you reconsider your Butterball, there’s more. Thanksgiving is also a time when we honor the abundance of the harvest represented by the bounty on our tables. But supporting a Big Turkey farm (or any factory farm) contributes to the devastation of our natural environment and imperils the safety of our food supply.

According to the USDA, factory-farmed animals in the U.S. produce 61 million tons of waste each year–130 times the volume of human waste. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that hog, chicken, and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states. Polluted runoff from factory farms and other industrial farms is the biggest water pollution problem in the U.S., according to the EPA.

Human health is impacted in other ways by factory farming. Just this past August, Cargill announced a recall of 185,000 pounds of ground turkey due to Salmonella contamination. With recalls and food-borne illnesses on the rise as a result of conditions in factory farms, it seems wise to avoid these foods for that reason alone.

Factory farmed meat is also implicated in long-term health consequences. Resistance to antibiotics is now a growing concern among many in the medical field and it is largely due to the 29 million pounds administered to factory-raised animals every year. As it stands today, one out of six cases of Campylobacter infection, the most common cause of bacterial food poisoning, is resistant to the antibiotic most used to treat it. And nearly all strains of Staphylococcal infections have become resistant to penicillin, while many are developing resistance to newer drugs as well. Indeed, 80 percent of all antibiotics used in this country are used on factory-farmed animals according to an FDA report.

And finally, there is the nitty-gritty of nutritional value in these factory-farmed foods. Studies show that pastured-based meat and dairy are far more nutritious than their conventional counterparts. They are richer in antioxidants; including vitamins E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C and contain far more Omega-3 fatty acids. Turkeys that are raised on grass and allowed to roam around and practice normal turkey behavior are healthier, safer to eat, good for the environment, and get to live a happy life. Our best option is to eat high quality meat and a lot less of it.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s be grateful to the turkey that we’re eating and opt out of supporting a system of abuse and environmental destruction. Eat a pasture-raised turkey or make a vegetarian alternative for this year’s Thanksgiving feast.

Eat Wild is a valuable resource for pasture-raised meat and animal products. Brooklyn Based also lists pasture-raised turkeys available for sale in New York City. Slow Food USA has information and resources for heritage breed turkeys. Meatless Monday offers 10 tips for cooking a meatless Thanksgiving.

A petition has been created by Occupy Big Food to tell Butterball—the number one producer of turkeys in America—that Americans are no longer going to purchase turkeys that are inhumanely treated, or support a factory-farm system that creates dire environmental and health consequences. Please go to Occupy Big Food for more information and sign the petition here.

When most people think of factory farming they typically think of feedlots, hog factories or chicken operations–not massive open net pens growing millions of fish in our oceans. However, factory fish farming will soon pose many of the same threats to the environment and to consumers as its land-based counterparts.

Growing fish in a crowded environment in open net pens or cages and giving them antibiotic-laced feed inevitably leads to pollution. The waste, which includes excess feed, antibiotics and the chemicals used to treat the cages, flows directly into the ocean and, ultimately, on to our plates.

Food & Water Watch’s new report reveals that if the government used factory fish farming to reach its stated goal of offsetting the U.S. seafood trade deficit (that is, importing less seafood than it exports), 200 million of these fish would need to be produced in ocean cages off U.S. coasts each year. Calculations show that this could result in the discharge of as much nitrogenous waste as the untreated sewage from a city nearly nine times more populous than Los Angeles.

The environmental issues don’t end there. Escapes from open ocean pens are common, and when farmed fish escape they can compete or interbreed with wild fish, altering natural behavior and weakening important genetic traits. They can also spread disease to wild fish. Washington State and California, for example, are now dealing with a highly contagious disease that is linked to factory fish farms and is threatening to wipe out their wild salmon populations.

Currently, there are only a handful of factory fish farms operating in U.S. federal waters, although there are many closer to the shore in state waters (like those off the coast of Washington State and California). However, just this year the federal government announced a new national aquaculture (fish farming) plan that promotes the increase of these unsustainable farms farther out in the ocean, in federal waters. What’s worse, the government announced it will be bringing these fish farms to the already besieged Gulf of Mexico.

What happens when a hurricane hits the Gulf and tears through these massive fish farms, releasing millions of fish? The last thing we need is another “big industry” disaster in Gulf waters.

It’s important that we let Congress know that we don’t support factory farming–on land OR in the ocean, and that we educate ourselves on other types of more sustainable fish farming, like recirculating, land-based fish farms. These closed-system farms often incorporate plants that purify the water; fish escapes are impossible since the farms are on land; and consumers aren’t threatened by the types of antibiotics, pesticides and other toxins necessitated by crowded, ocean farm conditions. For more information, check out our report: Fishy Farms: The Government’s Push for Factory Farming in Our Oceans.

Photo: Courtesy Food & Water Watch

Having spent several years working to raise awareness about the problems created by factory farms, I’ve fielded a whole lot of questions about industrial livestock production–so many, in fact, that I’ve often considered publishing a pocketsize list of factory farm FAQs.  You know, a little something to inspire lighthearted cocktail party conversation or to use as an icebreaker during first dates.  Instant commercial success, guaranteed.  Anyway, at the top of the list would be the question, “where are these factory farms?”

Surprisingly enough, despite the wonders of internet-accessible government records and powerful modern mapping technology, there’s no easy way to find the exact locations of all the industrial livestock operations in the US.  See, it turns out that the folks who own factory farms–which damage the environment, sicken neighbors and ruin rural communities–aren’t too keen on publicizing their whereabouts.  And government agencies aren’t too keen on undertaking projects that upset Big Ag.

So it was thrilling when Food & Water Watch decided to produce its own factory farm map a few years ago.  But even more thrilling is the fact that FWW released an updated version of the map today, which you can find at factoryfarmmap.org.  Version 2.0 features a slick new interface, more detailed graphics and, most importantly, inclusion of the latest data!

Since federal, state and local regulatory agencies are often unable and/or unwilling to provide information about the locations of factory farms, Food & Water Watch used the USDA’s Census of Agriculture to calculate the number of mega-livestock facilities in each county.  (As someone who loves to geek out on technical details, I’m excited to report that users can read all about FWW’s data compilation process in the methodology section.)

While the map doesn’t pinpoint the exact address of each factory farm, its county-by-county analysis provides an outstanding visual representation of national and state distribution trends.  It’s also lots of fun to tinker around with; users can filter by species (see where all the hog factory farms are located!), zoom in to the state level (find out how many factory farms exist in your county!) and to pull up maps depicting conditions in 1997, 2002 and 2007 (learn how poultry production shifted over the past decade!).

For those who prefer cold hard stats to cartographic imagery, here are some not-so-fun facts from Food & Water Watch’s analysis of the data:

• In five years, total animals on factory farms grew by 5 million, or more than 20 percent.
• Cows on factory dairy farms nearly doubled from 2.5 million cows in 1997 to 4.9 million in 2007.
• Beef cattle on industrial feedlots rose 17 percent from 2002 to 2007.
• Nationally, about 5,000 hogs were added to factory farms every day for the past decade.
• The growth of industrial broiler chicken production added 5,800 chickens every hour over the past decade.
• Egg laying hens on factory farms increased by one-quarter over the last ten years.
• Over a decade, average-sized layer chicken operations have grown by 53.7 percent to 614,000 in 2007.

Hopefully this compelling depiction of the agricultural transition from farm to factory will ultimately inspire dramatic change in our food system.  In any event, I’m pleased to note that it provides the answer to the first question of my forthcoming Factory Farm FAQ pocketsize reference guide:

Q: Where are factory farms located?

A: See factoryfarmmap.org.

Originally published on Ecocentric

It’s also far from the first time an equipment failure has killed thousands of animals—a similar incident killed 3800 pigs less than a year ago. So let’s look the causes behind these tragedies, and what it would take to keep another incident like this from ever occurring.

One of the points I regularly make in my writing is that while factory farming is loaded with horrific cruelties, very little of it is a result of outright sadism. Instead, nearly all the pain and suffering that farmed animals endure is a result of efforts made by factory farms to cut costs to the bone. It turns out that many of these cost-cutting practices entail the infliction of great amounts of suffering.

We see the link between cost cutting and animal suffering in veal crates, battery cages, and gestation crates—which allow factory farms to pack the most possible animals into a single facility. We see it again in practices like tail docking, beak searing, and dehorning: these painful mutilations are performed to reduce injuries that occur when animals are overcrowded. And we see it yet again at slaughter: the horror stories that regularly emerge about birds and pigs being dropped into scald tanks or butchered alive have everything to do with packing plants that rush slaughter in an effort to minimize labor costs.

All of the above examples are well-known to anyone who has spent any time learning about factory farming. But, as with each of the above items, this week’s death of 60,000 chickens likewise has its roots in industry cost cutting.

At issue is the fact that, by their very design, factory farms are intended to run on autopilot. Between water pumps, feed conveyors, ventilation fans, and so forth, everything is in place to keep tens of thousands of animals alive unattended for weeks or even months at a time. There’s often  consequently no financial reason to keep a single employee on the premises, for the sake of guarding against something going catastrophically wrong. It makes no financial sense, since it’s cheaper to simply purchase insurance that would cover the cost of dead animals, in the event of a catastrophic equipment failure.

It would be comforting to think that when factory farm mechanisms break down the animals die quickly and painlessly, but I doubt that’s the case.  Yet media coverage frequently creates the impression that there’s not much suffering associated with these equipment failures. For instance, in its coverage of the 60,000 chickens who died this week, the Associated Press reports:

Andy Elmore with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture says the chickens probably died within minutes of the fans going out.

Dead within minutes? I think that’s unlikely. Perhaps I’m projecting my personal anxieties and phobias onto the situation, but I have to think the ordeal these animals suffered is something akin to being put into a dry sauna and having someone lock the door.

A friend of mine who does as much for farmed animals as anyone I know thinks that birds brought to commercial slaughterhouses may die even more painfully than those lost to equipment failures, but I think his position misses the point. If, as a society, we’re going to raise and slaughter animals in brutal factory farm environments, the very least we owe these animals is a guarantee that their bodies won’t be discarded by the tens of thousands due to equipment failures.

But if this problem is left to the market, that’s exactly what will continue to happen and nothing will change. Factory farming is a game of squeezing pennies, an industry in which everyone but the lowest-cost producers are driven from business. The number of dairy, pork, poultry, and egg producers has dropped by more than 90 percent over the past half-century.

No wonder, then, that whenever factory farms are confronted with the opportunity to spend money to reduce animal suffering, they’ll cut corners every time. In this case, rather than spend a tiny amount of money to safeguard their animals from equipment failure or fire, they spend a tinier amount of money to buy insurance that will compensate them financially should trouble arise.

So what we get is a situation where, every once in a while, thousands or even tens of thousands of animals die horrifically, because nobody is on the scene when the food, water, or ventilation systems break down. In essence, much of America’s meat, milk, and eggs are produced at factory farm ghost ships—places where animals are kept in unspeakable conditions, with absolutely no human supervision for days or weeks at a time.

That this is common practice, and is forbidden nowhere by state anticruelty laws, is an obscenity. We can debate which industry practices are too cruel to perform, but there can’t be any legitimate debate about whether it’s morally acceptable to keep tens of thousands of animals in one building, a single power outage or equipment breakdown away from a gruesome death.

Let’s do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation to determine what it might cost to protect all these animals. It’s not uncommon for a chicken grower to keep upwards of 100,000 birds on a single property. At about 3.8 pounds of meat per bird, that works out to 380,00o pounds of meat produced every six weeks. Six weeks of 24-hour supervision comes to 1008 hours. Multiply that by the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and you get $7308.   Divide $7308 by 380,000 pounds of chicken and you get an added cost per pound of less than two cents.

Now it should be inserted here that there’s no need to have 24-hour supervision at alternative chicken and pork farms offering top-notch welfare. At these facilities, there’s no chance that an equipment failure could lead to the deaths of every animal on the premises; the animals just aren’t packed together in ways that makes them completely vulnerable. But at factory farms, having a worker present at all times is the only line of defense the animals have against a needlessly horrible death. So if you want factory farmed meat, milk, or eggs, the cost of having an employee on duty 24-hours should be the minimal price of admission.

So how do we go from here to there? Groups like the Humane Society of the United States, Mercy For Animals, and Compassion Over Killing are constantly pushing animal agriculture to phase out its worst cruelties. It’s time for ghost ship factory farms to be put high on the list of agricultural abuses that need to go.

The meat, milk, and egg industries are overseen by trade groups that exert great influence within their sectors. Unfortunately, these groups consistently come out against even the most minimal and reasonable cruelty bans. And no doubt, they’d oppose even the simple measure of initiating standards to ban ghost ships within their industries. That said, the call to ban ghost ships is something that these trade groups can’t oppose without appearing loathsome, so animal advocates need to get these organizations on record about this ongoing problem.

The time has come to outlaw factory farm ghost ships: each one is a large-scale disaster waiting to happen. In the end, deaths arising from financially motivated animal neglect are as morally wrong as deaths caused by deliberate cruelty. The sensible response to tens of thousands of animals dying due to equipment failure is not for the owner of the farm to receive a check from his insurance company; it’s for the owner to get a free ride to the county jail in the back of a squad car.

Originally published on Vegan.com

At Farm Aid, we consider these questions seriously. After all, our mission is to keep family farmers on their land. So, what do we mean when we say family farmer? How do we identify a factory farm? Is there any real definition to these terms?

No Clear Lines in the Soil

In one sense, there’s not. As farming in the United States becomes increasingly consolidated and industrialized, the face of agriculture is rapidly changing. Terms like “family farm” and “factory farm” are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and the lines distinguishing between one kind of farming and another are readily blurred.

For example, 98% of all the 2.2 million farms in the United States meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) definition of a “family farm.” USDA considers a “family farm” any farm where the majority of the business is owned by the operator and his or her relatives: that is, by a family.

But this does little to characterize most family farms or the threats they face. For example, a farm itself is defined by USDA as any operation selling $1,000 or more of agricultural products in a year.[1] Plenty of people take issue with even this definition, since it’s decades old—$1,000 today isn’t nearly what it was when this threshold was first created. Beyond that, it allows for nearly anyone who’s dabbling in growing food or raising livestock for sale, regardless of whether they consider farming their primary occupation, to be classified as a farmer. In fact, over 1.3 million farms counted by USDA are operations where the owner is not looking to make a living from farming.[2] That means only about 900,000 US farms are operated by full-time farmers who derive their livelihood from the land.

Meanwhile we are rapidly losing our full-time farmers from our landscape. Since the 1970s, the number of farms in America has dropped by nearly a quarter.[3] Most of these were midsized family farms growing grain or raising livestock—sectors that were, and still are, becoming increasingly dominated by fewer, larger farms. This concentration has historically squeezed profit margins for family farmers, forcing them to “get big or get out.” The 2007 Census of Agriculture showed that 80,000 midsized farms were lost since 2002. Meanwhile, the biggest farms got larger and more industrialized, with just 6% of farms producing 75% of our food.[4] These dynamics reflect a system designed to promote only the biggest and most industrialized of farms, frequently at the expense of family farmers, our economy, health, and the environment.

As new financial pressures mount and sectors reorganize, many family farmers find themselves trapped in a system they would otherwise reject. They often lament that most people misunderstand what it truly takes to farm in the United States, feeling pressured into industrial practices that harm themselves, our soil and water, our food itself and the economies that support them.

I’ll say first that Farm Aid has a keen understanding of these dynamics, and works daily to provide resources for farmers in both crisis and transition. Our mission is to keep family farmers on their land, and our 1-800-FARM-AID hotline and Farmer Resource Network are there to help all family farmers. We’re not here to draw lines in the sand—not because we’re afraid of a little controversy, but because doing so would oversimplify the nature of agriculture in today’s world.

Our vision is not just for the farm itself, but for the whole food system. We still find it incredibly meaningful and important to distinguish between the industrial system that dominates agricultural production in the United States, and our vision for a family farm-based food system.

Defining Factory Farms and the Industrial Food System

The term “factory farm” is often used interchangeably with concentrated animal feeding operation, more commonly referred to as a CAFO. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies CAFOs as large[5] livestock facilities that raise animals in confined settings. According to EPA, these facilities “congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland.”[6] The EPA designates 19,149 U.S. farms as CAFOs, though it estimates hundreds of thousands more facilities that confine animals, but are not large enough to be classified as CAFOs, exist in the United States.[7] These operations produce the bulk of our meat, poultry and dairy in the United States.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that CAFOs leave staggering bills behind for taxpayers, including:

• $26 billion in reduced property values from odor and water contamination;
• between $1.5 billion and $3 billion annually in drug-resistant illnesses attributed to the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production;
• $4.1 billion in soil and groundwater contamination from animal manure leakage.[8]

Yuck. These externalized costs mean that the prices paid at the grocery store are not reflective of the true costs of industrial meat production to our environment and public health. Furthermore, the very powerful corporations who dictate the sorts of production practices that are responsible for these costs are not made to foot the bill.

While the term factory farm is restricted to livestock production, large-scale industrial food production dominates all sectors of agriculture, including livestock, but also row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat and our many fruits and vegetables. Over half a century of research indicates that factory farms and other large-scale industrial farms have many negative effects on the communities that house them, including greater income inequality (meaning the rich get richer while the poor get poorer), lower community employment, population decline, increased crime and social conflict, increased need for public social services, unstable family units, and diminished civic participation, to name a few.[9]

While USDA statistics suggest most of these operations are family farms, it is likely that the family farmers caught in the industrial food system do not enjoy full ownership or control over their farm operations and managerial decisions—something many experts cite as critical elements in defining a family farm.[10] Among the largest threats to their power are contract arrangements with large agribusinesses that dictate their decisions, farm management practices and debt requirements.

Most poultry companies, for example, urge new farmers to build at least four poultry houses, based on the company’s own specifications, in their contract agreements. At about $300,000 per house, this requires farmers to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get started. The poultry company, on the other hand, gets off the hook without any risks associated with this investment. Very commonly, companies will later require farmers to make additional, costly changes to their poultry houses at the farmer’s expense. It’s clear to see who’s getting the short end of the stick in this relationship.

So do most of our nation’s farm operations have a family at the helm? Sure. But as we note frequently, the industrial system of agriculture is mostly benefiting a small handful of food corporations, processors, and other middlemen. The system is neither resilient nor profitable for the majority of family farmers who are left with a smaller and smaller slice of the pie, as just the largest and most industrial operations are able to thrive.

Factory farms and the industrial system are not inevitabilities, but rather the products of misguided policies. Our family farmers deserve and our future depends on a better system—one we call a family farm-based food system.

So with that, let’s move on to what gets us up and out of bed every morning here at Farm Aid.

Farm Aid’s Vision for the Family Farm

In the end, Farm Aid’s use of the words family farm and factory farm is meant to distinguish between how agriculture is controlled and owned and to illuminate who’s really benefiting. Like many in the field, we define a family farmer as someone who makes the management decisions, provides the bulk of the labor on the farm, and looks to make all or most of their living from farming. But we also extend our vision for family farmers and their farms to include the critical roles they play in their community, economy and environment.

As Farm Aid’s President Willie Nelson often reminds us, family farmers are the backbone of the nation and the first rung on the economic ladder. Since the family is tied to the land, they also have a vested interest in the economic vibrancy of their community, social and ecological wellbeing of place, and are natural stewards of the land. Many farmers maintain that part of being a family farm means leaving the land in better shape than they found it, increasing the chance of the next generation enjoying bountiful harvests.

Hence, environmental stewardship, community involvement and preserving the heritage of family farming also make up our ideal of what it means to be a family farmer. Not every family farmer does all of these things, but they have the potential to do so. In times of financial crisis, food scares, public health crises, and climate change, protecting and fostering this potential is one of the most important jobs we eaters can do.

Keeping family farmers on the land—all of them—is our only hope for a better system of agriculture in this country. We work every day to keep these farmers thriving, but also to grow the Good Food Movement, which encourages consumers to choose local, sustainable and humanely-raised foods, deepens relationships between producers and consumers, and incorporates the values that promote social, environmental and economic health in our food system. Every time you buy organic, locally-grown, humanely-raised and non-GMO food, you are getting us that much closer to realizing our vision for a family farm-based food system that benefits farmers and eaters alike, as well as the communities and environments that support them.

Such a vision is one we can all rally behind and here at Farm Aid, we’re happy to keep banging that drum for change.

Sources:

1. USDA ERS (2009). “Farm Household Economics and Well-Being: Glossary.” Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://www.ers.usda.gov/BRIEFING/WellBeing/glossary.htm

2. Included in this number are “retirement” and “rural residence” farms as counted by USDA. These farms are operated by individuals who do not consider farming their primary occupation. Numbers are taken from USDA ERS (2010). Structural Characteristics, for All Farms, by Farm Typology, 2008. Agricultural Resource Management Survey, USDA Economic Research Service.

3. According to USDA, there were 2.9 million farms in the US in 1970. By 2008, the number had dropped by one-quarter to about 2.19 million. Data pulled from Dimitri, C., Effland, Anne (2005). Milestones in U.S. Farming and Farm Policy Amber Waves. Washington, D.C., USDA Economic Research Service andUSDAERS (2010). Structural Characteristics, for All Farms, by Farm Typology, 2008. Agricultural Resource Management Survey, USDA Economic Research Service.

4. 2007 Census of Agriculture.

5. The Environmental Protection Agency provides a broad definition fo ranimal feeding operations (AFOs), which it defines as facilities that raise animals in confined settings. Defining a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) comes down to a matter of size. Depending on the animal species, usually poultry, swine, dairy or beef cattle, the number of animals confined determines whether a farm is an AFO or a CAFO, and whether it is a small, medium or large CAFO. The EPA estimates 450,000 AFOs exist in the United States, of which 19,149 are designated CAFOs. Size classifications for CAFOs are available at: www.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/sector_table.pdf.

6. EPA (2007). “Animal Feeding Operations-NPDES Frequently Asked Questions.” Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/faqs.cfm?program_id=7.

7. EPA (2010). NPDES CAFO Rule Implementation Status — National Summary. Washington, D.C., Environmental Protection Agency. April 9, 2010.

8. Union of Concerned Scientists (2009). The hidden costs of CAFOs. Earthwise, Union of Concerned Scientists. Spring 2009.

9. Stofferahn, C. W. (2006). Industrialized Farming and Its Relationship to Community Well-Being: An Update of a 2000 Report by Linda Lobao. Prepared for the State of North Dakota, Office of the Attorney General. Grand Forks, North Dakota, University of North Dakota.

10. USDA ERS (2009). “Farm Household Economics and Well-Being: Glossary.” Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://www.ers.usda.gov/BRIEFING/WellBeing/glossary.htm

Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before.

And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it’s today.  We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. And this is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert.  But it’s not a cause for alarm.

So, the question is: what does science say about the causes of the current swine flu epidemic?

The first place to start is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has a dedicated section on Swine Flu. As of April 27, 1:00 PM ET, there were 40 confirmed cases of swine flu infection in the United States – 7 from California, 28 from New York, 1 from Ohio, and 2 from both Texas and Kansas. This is double the number from yesterday, and more than four times the number of confirmed cases on April 25^th.

Over at the World Health Organization, Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan just raised the level of influenza pandemic alert to Phase 4 – which means that there are “verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause ‘community-level outbreaks.’”

The largest unanswered question remains: where are these infections coming from?

During a CDC press briefing on April 26^th, Daniel Steinberger from CBS News asked: “ Can you confirm reports that there may be officials in Mexico who are investigating industrial-scale hog facilities as a potential source, or CAFOs?”

The CDC’s Dr. Anne Shuchat responded:

No, I can’t confirm that. I can say that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with other parts of the government on animal sources. You know, were doing that as a routine part of this kind of investigation. We’re at the point where we don’t have information about illness in pigs related to this virus, but that would be a normal thing to be looking into.

This despite the Q&A on the CDC website that says “Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen.”

But here’s where things get really strange: this strain of the swine flu virus is not just from pigs.

In an interview with Dr. Mike Hansen, a Senior Staff Scientist with Consumers Union, he said “What’s unique here, is that this is not a straight-up swine flu. This has genetic material from swine, avian, and human influenzas…they haven’t found anything like this in any pigs yet.”

Dr. Hansen pointed out that this might indicate a link to a small mixed farming situation, where pigs and perhaps ducks are kept, rather than a larger industrial farm. “So that means that in a certain ironic sense, the big CAFOs might not be the problem,” Hansen continued. “Until we know more….if we point in that direction too much initially, and that’s not where the flu is coming from, then they can use that to sort of discredit the critics of CAFOs. CAFOs are bad for a number of environmental and human health reasons, and that’s why so many groups are fighting them. What’s good is more ecologically logical agriculture, and CAFOs surely aren’t that. But until we know more we need to be testing both big and small pig farmers.”

Other groups are also making the case that we need to study the problem more aggressively. The nonprofit Food & Water Watch sent a letter today to congressional leaders in the House and Senate, asking them to look into the source of the virus, the pathway for transmission between hogs and humans, and conditions inside hog confinement operations that could foster the growth and mutation of the influenza virus into more virulent strains.

The letter continues:

“Swine flu is not the only impact on public health impact from pork production that is worthy of examination by your committees. Another crucial topic is the discovery of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in U.S. hog facilities, a finding that follows on the discovery of these antibiotic-resistant bacteria on hog farms in Canada and the Netherlands. A growing body of research is establishing the link between the trend of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the use of antibiotics in livestock production. In fact, recent studies of E. coli bacteria on operations using non-therapeutic antibiotics find that anywhere from 30 to 80 percent of bacterial samples are resistant to one or more antibiotics. These bacteria can be transmitted from livestock to humans through direct contact between animals and workers or farm families; through human contact with animal waste, which can leach into water sources or be carried by flies; or on the meat that consumers purchase in retail stores.”

Finally, in response to the connections first reported on Grist and the Biosurveillance blog, Smithfield Farm reported in a press release that “Based on available recent information, Smithfield has no reason to believe that the virus is in any way connected to its operations in Mexico.”

According to Meatingplace.com (an on-line community for red meat and poultry processors in North America), Smithfield is “cooperating with Mexican officials to assist the investigation of the possible sources of the outbreak of the disease and will submit samples from its swine herds to the University of Mexico for testing.”

A report in the Guardian links La Gloria, a small town in eastern Mexico 12 miles from the Smithfield plant, as the possible epicenter of the recent outbreak. The article cites that “60% of the town’s population…has been affected.”

Dr. Hansen weighs in: “If 60% of the population of a town near a huge swine facility got sick with this flu and those are among the first cases seen (e.g. close to ground zero), then that really does point a strong finger that something in that area could be the problem.  At the very least, there should be a very specific investigation of the Smithfield facility that involves significant testing of those pigs for swine flu.”

We’ll just have to wait to see how all of this pans out over the coming days. But with the stakes as high as they are, we need to make sure we are following the science of the problem and not let our personal opinions about these controversial topics cloud the facts of this outbreak.

Today, a free-range dissenter ended up in the op-ed pages of the New York Times, seemingly to defend factory farmed pork. (One wonders if the NYT was attempting to temper the excellent coverage Nicholas Kristof has had of pigs and MRSA of late)

John McWilliams’ argument — that the exposure to disease which brought pigs into the factory farm setting in the first place still exists, and therefore in re-implementing free-range we are no better than we started — has little to base in reality. This is a classic shill, as the study that he cites (Foodborne Pathogens and Disease) was funded by the National Pork Board, a group that defends the interests of industrial pig operations.  If the New York Times had bothered to fact-check, they might have seen that the parasite trichinia found “present” in two of the free-range pigs was actually only antibodies (The Center for a Livable Future goes into more detail), which leaves us uncertain whether they carried the disease or not, and renders McWilliams’ argument moot.

Aside from this, though, McWilliams is missing the point. Locavorism isn’t about free-range, its about getting closer to the source; shaking the hand that feeds you and thereby knowing, even seeing, where your food comes from.  The reason there are no worthy studies cited in McWilliams’ piece is because grass-fed farmers often run size-manageable and responsible operations.  They don’t cut corners precisely because they are held accountable by the community.

I’m thinking about two things here. First, where are the media in this story? And second, can these contrarian attacks help us build the movement, or are they purely a distraction?

In this instance it seems that the New York Times, in its desperation to sell papers, fell into the trap of story building over truth-finding. On Grist, Tom Laskawy wrote a great piece on the counter-productive and even dangerous world of FUD — the corporate tactic of creating Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in the consumer so as to sell the status quo. As Laskawy points out, this Times op-ed falls right in line with the tenets of FUD — a result of the Times’ use of false equivalency. In other words, in the interest of creating drama, many newspapers of note have failed to vet stories properly — creating the false appearance that the arguments on both sides of a story are equal and leaving it up to the reader to make sense of it.  What we get then is always a confused and nihilist public, uttering things like, “but didn’t you see that piece in the New York Times, free-range is not necessarily better.” The question is, then, how do we reclaim the media, and disseminate real information to consumers?

I think its a tough one to answer.  What I do know, is that at the farmer’s market, the answer lies with the beginning and the end of the food chain. Government needs to step in and lead on food issues with a better food policy agenda.  We’ve seen the beginnings of such a plan, with the White House garden and Kathleen Merrigan’s appointment as Under-Secretary of Agriculture — but these could end up being distractions. We must focus on the decentralization and diversification of the food system — starting with rethinking farm subsidies and hospital, school and military procurement — and insist that scientists get public sector funding and freedom to do real scientific studies (For the hell of it, lets start by really testing GMOs). The media also needs to press the reset button (Maybe this will happen on its own with the closure of so many papers) — this is our press, for goodness sake, not the voice box of industry. In the meantime, every eater has a responsibility to ask where their food is coming from, and when confused, to dig deeper and ask more questions.  These changes at the top and bottom are interdependent, and will not occur unless simultaneous.

Finally, I do think it is possible for opposition to make us stronger, and more able to articulate what it is we stand for and why.  In his recent book, Getting Green Done, Auden Schendler writes that we must take a long hard look at the bumpy road to implementing sustainability — and learn from our mistakes — something that at times we are afraid to do for fear of backlash. In the food movement, for example, we’d ignored food justice issues for a long time.  But through criticism that our movement was elitist, and that better food was only for the rich, we have begun to unravel this thinking and work towards building a more inclusive and fair food system.

Of course, we don’t always get a fair debate with our detractors. But it is still my hope that we can emerge from these arguments a more steadfast movement.

COOL labeling had been slow to take effect after being part of the 2007 Farm Bill.  Currently, it exempts foods that have undergone a physical or chemical change (cooking, curing, smoking) or that have been processed (breaded, chocolate-covered, blended).  Will Obama consider that consumers have a right to know where there food is coming from, even if it is value-added? On the new rural agenda, it just states, “Implement Country of Origin Labeling so that American producers can distinguish their products from imported ones.”  The devil is in the details, so we will have to wait and see.

The biggest doozy that Obama will hopefully deal with soon is EQIP.  EQIP is billed by the USDA website as “the largest conservation program for working agricultural lands.” But a failure of the program has been the big fat check (up to $450,000) for large CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), who only voluntarily regulate the manure spewing forth from thousands of head.  The New Your Times reported on EQIP last week — detailing the results of changes in the 2002 Farm Bill that encouraged large industrial operations to seek ever-growing subsidies.  While EQIP also provides funds for soil erosion and sediment control as well as irrigation water management and grazing land practices, animal waste management practices (manure lagoons) make up the largest payments, at $179 million.

Agriculture policy expert and Ethicurian blogger Elanor Starmer gives more of the messy details in the report she authored last month [PDF] entitled “Industrial Livestock at the Taxpayer Trough: How Large Hog and Dairy Operations are Subsidized by the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.”

The bottom line is that we are sponsoring Big Ag to make a mess of our waterways, pollute our air and feed us the meat of fat, hormone-injected cows and pigs. Starmer’s report gives suggestions for better enforcement, like capping subsidies at $150,000 and encouraging transparency on how EQIP money is being used.

So what will Obama do?  His current agenda includes stronger regulation for CAFOs: “Strictly regulate pollution from large factory livestock farms, with fines for those that violate tough standards. Support meaningful local control.”

But this isn’t quite the hardline he took in his campaign’s Real Leadership for Rural America [PDF], where he said on the subject the he planned to:

Limit EQIP Funding for CAFOs: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that we should help farmers find the resources to comply with environmental requirements. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) provides important financial support to farmers seeking to improve the environmental quality of their operations. Unfortunately, the 2002 Farm Bill lifted the cap on the size of livestock operations that can receive EQIP funding, enabling large livestock operations to receive EQIP payments and subsidizing big CAFOs by as much as $450,000. Barack Obama and Joe Biden supports reinstating a strict cap on the size of the livestock operations that can receive EQIP funding so that the largest polluters have to pay for their own environmental clean up.

Let’s hope he remains as stern in his conviction.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has placed a 60 day hold on the pending regulations, and says he intends to conduct the reviews properly and as quickly as possible.  Let’s hope that amid all of the demands being placed on Obama in these crucial early days, he will make room for food issues at the table.

Meanwhile, Vilsack has been busy naming USDA positions, and unfortunately has not yet included any of the Food Democracy Now! Sustainable Dozen.  There is some speculation, however, that the Deputy Secretary position could be filled by Chuck Hassebrook or Karen Ross.  New USDA staffers include Bart Chilton, who will stay commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Carole Jett, who will be Vilsack’s deputy Chief of Staff, and Dallas Tonsager, who will likely be named USDA Undersecretary for Rural Development.   Here’s hoping that the USDA takes note, and brings some sustainably-minded individuals on board.