Iowans Agree: Factory Farms Should Pay  

Members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) hail a recent report called “CAFOs Uncovered” by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. The report analyzes the obvious and not-so-obvious costs that taxpayers and consumers are forced to pay to keep the factory farm industry afloat.

Margaret Mellon, director of UCS’s Food and Environment Program, stated, “If CAFOs were forced to pay for the ripple effects of harm they have caused, they wouldn’t be dominating the U.S. meat industry like they are today.”

The report states that, “misguided federal farm policies have encouraged the growth of [factory farms] by shifting billions of dollars in environmental, health and economic costs to taxpayers and communities.”

The executive summary of the report states that factory farms “are not the inevitable result of market forces. Instead, these unhealthy operations are largely the result of misguided public policy that can and should be changed.”

“This is another study that confirms what CCI has been saying for years,” said CCI member Garry Klicker from Bloomfield. “The Environmental Quality Incentives Program should be used to help family farmers protect our air and water, not as another form of corporate welfare for factory farms. We also need environmental protection laws that force factory farm polluters to pay for their clean up and report their toxic emissions.”

That’s why members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement are asking Governor Culver to veto the odor study, HF 2688, a bill that requires taxpayers to foot the bill of nearly $23 million to study factory farm odor mitigation techniques over the next five years. This report is another reinforcement that factory farms get too much taxpayer funding, and the odor study delays enforcing much-needed standards. The report also highlights the need for clean air standards for hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, which are toxic to human health.

The full report can be viewed here