Missouri should follow Dade County’s example
By KEN MIDKIFF
Published Friday, November 30, 2007 (http://www.showmenews.com/2007/Nov/20071130Comm002.asp)

Dade County commissioners got it right.

By imposing strict regulations on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), they acknowledged the many scientific studies showing harm to human health.

CAFO proponents seize on the fact that no study has yet documented a direct link between a CAFO and a human death. They claim that just because a CAFO goes in next door is no indication that you’re going to die from the emissions.

That is scant relief to those living next door to one of these air-fouling, water-polluting facilities. There is no question that CAFOs are harmful to human health. Those living nearby are more concerned about stink than death.

A published Iowa State University study shows a vast increase in asthma and asthma-related illnesses in school-age children living near a CAFO. The closer to the CAFO, the more asthma. Asthma rate increases of up to 50 percent were reported in this peer-reviewed study. Other studies show a dramatic increase in flu-like illnesses. Many of the emissions from CAFOs are indeed harmful, with hydrogen sulfide leading the pack.

Yet, as reported in this newspaper, there are those who refuse to equate regulating CAFOs with protecting public health. It is mere wishful thinking on the part of a dairy farmer in Dade County that agriculture shouldn’t be regulated on the basis of public health. He was more right than he realized: Real farmers don’t raise animals for meat, milk and eggs in huge buildings where they (the animals) never see the light of day and where manure is measured in tons.

Moark/Land O’ Lakes in Newton and McDonald counties has 3.2 million laying hens cooped up in tiny cages. Likewise, Premium Standard Farm (PSF) has permits to raise hundreds of thousand of hogs. Tyson’s, George’s and Simmon’s raise broiler chickens by the millions. These aren’t farms.

CAFOs are a hazard to human health and should be regulated as such.

As yet, we have no huge dairies operating in this state; that fate is reserved for our Cheesehead friends to the north and to folks in several Western states (Idaho, New Mexico, California, Oregon and Washington have the most). Likewise, we have no beef feedlots to speak of; those are around Amarillo,Texas, the Oklahoma Panhandle and western Kansas.

That’s not to say that there aren’t those busily engaged in trying to encourage Big Dairy or Big Beef operations in this state. The College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri has a department of commercial agriculture that - ignoring the dire health, environmental and economic impacts of CAFOs - advocates "get big or get out." Why the MU Extension Service is involved in promoting CAFOs and bad health is beyond me, but the dairy farmer in Dade County was identified as an Extension Service leader.

Our health department, presumably at the direction of our governor, turns a blind eye to the harmful health aspects of CAFOs. The Department of Natural Resources has adopted a policy of "protect polluters, not the environment" and hands out permits like handing out candy at a parade.

It is time that state agencies in charge of protecting human health and protecting the environment start recognizing that CAFOs harm both.