Preliminary Match: Fight CAFO the Great
Fighting the approval and creation of Confined Animal Feeding Operations is a very, very tough fight.
Why? Well, it's hard to believe it could happen in America, but across the country, state and local zoning laws have been jerryrigged to prevent citizens from organizing, stopping, or relocating CAFOs (the calls to action at that link are out of date, but the basic information is not). Ask the Brouse's of Thief River Falls how hard it is to fight a CAFO. They found out the hard way.
So while this match is a big fight, we don't consider it a "title bout" -- not without a class action suit or national push to create a federal law guaranteeing Americans their basic right to fight against manure lagoons being built in their back yards. Sadly, it's going to be a CAFO-by-CAFO fight.
The best way to fight CAFO is to sahe information. So if you have info to share about CAFOs, you can help us fight by:
* Creating a Fair Food Fight blog and sharing information about CAFOs being built in your area. We'd love to create a hub of information among citizens caught in a CAFO's sights.
* Posting news about national CAFO issues and policy issues. Help spread the word about what work is being done at the EPA and USDA level to fight
* Posting pics or videos of CAFOs near you, so people can see with their own eyes what CAFOs are like.
Join Fair Food Fight and help us fight CAFO the Great!
Now that the American public seems to be waking up to the reality of CAFOs (witness their primetime coming out party), shining a light on CAFO myths and excuses seems like the next logical step on the path to eradicating them for good. This post is the first in what I hope will be a running series doing just that.
A few days ago, Tom Laskawy over at Grist landed a beautiful blow to the CAFOmen's favorite myth: "sustainable farms can't possibly feed the world." Turns out, apparently, that it is possible. And, we wouldn't even have to give up meat! Read more...
On October 27th, Idaho's Magic Valley-based Times-News blared: "Dairy's Social Impact Studied." The article, not surprisingly, is a joke.
Rather than do his journalistic homework and compare the actual methods and data found in the so-called "study" (which you can access in full here) with the researchers' and industry's glowing spin--dairy was the Magic Valley's economic lifeboat during this economic downturn, uninsured underpaid dairy workers don't overly burden hospitals, and similar familiar tripe--the writer, Joshua Palmer, clearly takes what they have to say for granted. Read more...
Fighting a confined animal feedlot operation (CAFO) in your region? Looking for good articles about the fight between ginormous feedlot operations and small family farms? Need a good gross-out? Here are four articles that may provide talking points, bullet points, and/or insight into the issues swirling around CAFOs.
Bacon as Weapon of Mass Destruction, by Arun Gupta, The Indypendent. Sheer, partisan CAFO-bashing. Choice quote: Read more...
Here's an interesting way to attack the mess created by containment feedlots (CAFOs) - skip the Ag Committee and address it as a health concern. Specifically, "ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans." That's what the Obama administration is looking to do, according to a New York Times article today. Read more...
Hrm. New research says that pigs might be able to contract novel H1N1 swine flu and that the virus could become endemic (entrenched) in pig farms. Via the excellent infectious disease news source CIDRAP: Read more...
