The Future of Factory Farming: Barack Obama and the "Rural Agenda"

Part 1 - Campaign Pledges

Today, most Americans get their meat, dairy and eggs from hyper-productive, industrialized, anonymous "confined animal feeding operations" (CAFOs) located hundreds or thousands of miles away from their home. Will it always be this way?

No one can predict the future -- especially when it comes to such a complex, emotional and volatile issue as how our food is produced. No one can know exactly what the typical American animal farm will look like in 10 or 20 years: Whether we will have all-CAFOs, all-the-time; a complete return to small, diversified, localized food production; or some type of patchwork hybrid in between.

Many of the people profiled in my upcoming book, Animal Factory -- from which this article was adapted -- would like to see CAFOs fade away entirely, in the obsolete manner of the 8-track tape player, ditto machine, or other clunky, outdated technologies we used to consider indispensable. But I am not convinced that is going to happen any time soon.

My one prediction is that animal factory operators -- under pressure from consumers, voters, environmentalists, community activists, regulators, politicians, scientists, journalists, animal welfare advocates, and even celebrities -- will continue to reform their operations by applying new technologies to help make their CAFOs less objectionable to their neighbors and the general public.

But that doesn't mean they will reform themselves into universal acceptance, either.

What does the future hold for factory farming? Much of that answer lies with the Obama administration, and especially his appointees to the USDA and EPA.

Barack Obama was elected on a platform that boasted an impressive "Rural Agenda," rich with promises to deliver stiffer controls on air and water pollution coming from CAFOs. He also vowed to reform the current system of corporatized food production, to allow for fair and free competition among smaller farmers. He pledged to limit federal subsidies and curb the excesses of "vertical integration," in which large conglomerates control each aspect of animal production and marketing -- everything from conception-to-casserole.

Obama's CAFO-reform agenda was carefully crafted with academic ammunition culled from at least two major papers on animal factories, both of which clearly informed the new president's rural blueprint for change -- change that has yet to be realized.

In November, 2006, Environmental Health Perspectives published the series, "Environmental Health Impacts of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations," and it made one thing exceedingly clear: Most independent scientists agree that CAFOs cause pollution and hurt communities. The challenge is to find ways to mitigate those harmful effects.

"Traditional crop-livestock farms were balanced," the authors concurred, "in that livestock manure supplied nutrients to grow the crops to feed those livestock." But in industrialized settings, nutrients from feed are drawn in from a wide area to a single concentrated landmass, "resulting in soil accumulation and runoff of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other pollutants," and pollution of the air and water.

A serious lack of oversight is the main problem: "The industrialization of livestock production over the past three decades has not been accompanied by commensurate modernization of regulations to protect the health of the public, or natural public-trust resources," the scientists warned.

Then, in April, 2008, the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Production released its own scathing indictment on CAFOs. It was no exaggeration to label the Pew report a slam-dunk for the anti-animal factory forces.

"Putting Meat on The Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America" was probably industry's worst dream materialized. The paper had one stark, bottom-line message: CAFOs pose "unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and the welfare of the animals," a press release from the Pew Commission said.

"Commissioners have determined that the negative effects of the system are too great and the scientific evidence is too strong to ignore," the statement continued. "Significant changes must be implemented and must start now."

The Commission issued a number of recommendations -- all of which were cheered by activists, and roundly booed by industry. Chief among them were: Phase out non-therapeutic antibiotics; improve disease monitoring and tracking; improve waste regulations; phase out intensive confinement; increase competition in the livestock market; and improve animal welfare.

But Obama was also hearing directly from small farmers and rural residents, who desperately sought a candidate who would help them reign in the virtually unchecked growth of CAFOs in their states. It all began in Iowa, the caucus state.

In January of 2007, Chris Petersen, a hog farmer, President of the Iowa Farmers Union, and a leading rural activist, joined a gaggle of Democrats to meet with Obama himself. The group was tiny: Conventional wisdom held that Hillary Clinton would win handily in this first, critical round of voting.

But Chris was impressed with the newcomer, who clearly spoke like someone from an agricultural state, even if he was a Chicagoan. Obama talked about his CAFO votes in the Illinois State Senate, including bills to impose stricter limits on illegal water discharges and emissions of nitrogen, phosphorous, hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.

Chris chimed in. "Mr. Obama," he said, "I think you need to tackle this problem from the top down, and by that I mean you need new antitrust and competition laws. And you need to establish complete transparency in the marketplace."

In animal agriculture, the meat processor controls all the cards, the pig farmer told the future President. Processing is the all-important gate between producer and consumer. The fewer the processors, the more narrow the gate; and whoever controls the gate, controls the system and the flow of goods through it. Some companies own both the animals and the processing plants, and wield enormous and unfair advantage over independent producers in their area.

Without access to processing, an animal has no market value.

Plainspoken Chris pleaded with Obama for help in creating a national "packer ban" -- to prohibit processing companies from owning the animals they slaughter. "This is real Teddy Roosevelt stuff," he said. "You know, 'split 'em up and make 'em compete.' If you tackle this from the top down, many of the problems -- environmental, rural, jobs, pollution, food safety -- will go away."

Then, in November of 2007, Chris helped organize the "National Summit on Agriculture and Rural Life" in Des Moines. Barack Obama wowed the crowd, and so did John Edwards. And it wasn't just their personal charisma and passion -- something that seemed to elude Clinton, (who spoke on a webcam). Obama called for a $250,000 dollar limit on farm subsidies and vowed to reform USDA. "When I'm President, I'll have a department of agriculture, not simply a department of agri-business," he said to roaring approval. "Large corporate hog polluters should be required to pay for their own pollution -- and not be bailed out at the taxpayer's expense!"

The crowd ate it up; Obama flashed his famous grin. And then he hit a homer, as far as Iowa Democrats in the room were concerned. If elected, Obama promised, he would convene a major national summit on rural issues within 100 days of taking office.

In the end, Obama and Edwards won the day. They both called for local control, stricter pollution regulations for CAFOs, a packer ban, a cap on farm subsidies, new antitrust and transparency laws, and the return of production decisions to farmers who own the land.

As for Clinton, she never really caught on among the anti-CAFO faithful. The last straw for many came in December, when she named a recent former head of the National Pork Producers Council, Joy Philippi, as co-chair of "Rural Americans for Hillary."

Indeed, one could argue that Hillary Clinton might have won the nomination if she had taken a more aggressive stance against CAFOs before the caucuses. Philippi cost Clinton votes she badly needed in rural precincts to make the vote close statewide. Meanwhile, voters started drifting away from Edwards in the final week, possibly out of candidate fatigue. Ascendant Obama, however, made significant inroads among anti-CAFO voters who were deserting Edwards -- and now Clinton -- in large numbers.

Ten months later, Obama was elected with 53 percent of the vote, winning such CAFO-heavy states as Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and, most surprising of all, conservative North Carolina and deep-red Indiana.

Across the country, rural activists held their breath and waited for the new president to keep the campaign pledges that helped him win so much support in the heartland.

Tomorrow: Part Two - White House Realities

Adapted from "Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Hog, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment," to be released by St. Martin's Press in early 2010.

 

Comments

[vermont farmer]

Obama may not be doing anything about factory farms but can't you give him a little slack he has a lot of more important things on his plate.

Mainly, my whole point is that if you do not like the way farms are run you should A- Stop eating meat, drinking milk, wearing clothes, and many more. or B- run your own farm, provide yourself with every resource you need and treat your animals anyway you see fit.

myself on the other hand, am going to keep on living on my farm, treating my animals as i see fit, and buying milk, meat and other products to support my fellow farmers because i know they are working their hardest to take care of their animals and make a living. In my experiance the size of the farm has very little to do with the health of the herd.

Get over yourselves, if you don't like how farms are run, buy one and run it however you please. untill then do not judge others.

FARM ON!

[Melchedekan]

Barack Obama's agenda is a CORPORATE AGENDA. You're all so delusioned by idea's of Obama being the ultra-patriot savior of America. You're dead bloody wrong. He's going to continue the operations of the past administration, making only slight tweeks to keep the easy American at bay and content in their delusion. Then he's going to run for re-election, and even though he'll still be waging war in the middle east in our name, waging a war on drugs, and allowing a free pass to the criminal bankers, HE'LL STILL probably get re-elected by Idiot America, desperately gripping onto their idea that Obama has their best interests in mind.

[letsmakesense]

Obama made promises to the rural folks he has no intention of keeping. He is a backer of Codex Almentarius. Codex Almentarius is a global cartel designed to outlaw organic farming, remove all nutrients from our food supply and hand over the control of natural remedies to the pharmaceutical giants.
www.natural-health-information-centre.com/codex-alimentarius.html
Wake up America and watch Obama Deception and Fall of the Republic on you tube.

[kellypdx]

though i do sooo miss the smell of a freshly-dittoed piece of paper, i agree, these CAFOs are a disgusting and shameful disgrace. how someone can profit off the misery of animals, and come up with filthier and more inhumane treatment of animals---is beyond me! i'm all for people being free to make millions, in fact i'd like to do that myself, but i have standards.

it's really sad and frightening to see how low we have become in this country---CAFOs, money over people, americans dying b/c they have no health care, teabaggers, rush limbought and his ilk, FOX news, right-wing hypocritical republicans, wall st speculators gambling and rewarding themselves with OUR money... this complete disregard for a TRULY living creature spotlights yet another hypocrisy of so many americans these days----we'll fight for a mass of unborn cells, but skrew the living who have no health care and the "non-human".

[PaulJAgriculture]

Come on. People in "CAFO" states aren't waiting for CAFOs to go away, they are waiting for jobs. Second, it's the market demand, stupid. Food has largely stayed at a low cost BECAUSE of efficiency improvements in agriculture. People (at least us normal, non-6 figure income folks on a budget) won't be able to afford meat protein with agriculture structured as the hyper-enviros envision.

Of course, that's probably the underbelly of this movement for these folks ... price meat out of wide availability and force a reduction in animal consumption.

In the end reform will come, a bit more than the industry wants but not to the degree you would desire. No one will be happy, and that's just fine.

[NevaforLeadership]

The cause: population!

How many protest against distasteful farm practices and global warming, then go home to more than two children?

[GO-BAMA]

That's a common misconception. There are 7 billion people in the world. In the US alone, 50 billion cows are slaughtered every year. Our obscene volume of wasteful consumption has far more to do with this problem than population does. In fact, it's a non-issue, really.

[amber15]

"Without access to processing, an animal has no market value."

This one sentence describes the major argument between AR ppl and farmers.
The day that farmers, humans who eat meat and those that make money from dead animals are able to understand why animals are worth MORE than market value and what it is Animal Rights are trying to say is the day that the world in general will rise to a new level of human existence and begin to support practices that benefit the planet, animals and humans.
Right now humans are the greedy species at the expense of animals and the planet.

[GO-BAMA]

Thanks for helping to move the debate forward, instead of miring it in self righteous pontification.

[BettyMcDonalds]

nice topic.

[Gatogorra]

Thank you, David. I hope the "good noices" this administration has made on the issue pan out.

[Josephius]

Looking forward to the book. I'm definitely 'in' the day it's available. This is a subject mater we should all be focussed and aware off. Corporate farming is a big deal!

[nowGo4ward]

I think I have to agree with you! In fact you've just encouraged me to pre-order a second copy to loan to friends who also want to read up on what they may be consuming daily.

[grumpyfarmer]

I wish that I could use more than 250 words to express my thoughts. I actually agree with much of this article, but the CAFO thing can be misleading. I think by all definitions I run a family farm, all the work is done by my family, and it has been in our family for 6 generations. I have both cattle and hogs, never over 450 cattle and 400-500 hogs. However, strictly speaking, my operation does include a feedlot, and often times it is the smaller farmers that cannot afford to deal with new regulations. What has been the undoing for smaller livestock producers is "captive supply" controlled by packers. Quite simply, guys like me are more of a nuisance to the packers than anything else, and they could care less whether we can sell livestock or not. What I would like to see are more local food processing of all kinds, where farmers do not have to deal with huge corporations all of the time.

[Liquidambar]

I would agree with all that you said, more space for the poor animals, and all, but I do not want to fall into some trap set up by environmentalists. I read an article in the Scientific Americana that compared eating aspargus flown in from South America to eating beef. They said that eating the beef gave off more green house emissions than eating the aspargus.
I am afraid!
I am afraid that me and my family will end up eating turnips, while the elites will end up eating both the steak and the aspargus.
Me and my family have been damaged by vaccines and have acquired autoimmune mitochondria disorder, we have to have a low carb diet!
I want it to be healthy but putting 75 dollar tax on each beef cow and 180 dollars for each dairy cow for a cap and trade bill has me scared!

[amber15]

your filled with fear and misguided information.
The human body will fine, in fact better on a plant based diet than an animal based diet. Your body will do just if you DO RESEARCH to discover the multitude of food varieties out there that taste wonderful and are BETTER for you. Every day co.s are producing new plant based food products, vegetarian books are available with delicious recipes.
Your buying into hysteria and myths, WAKE UP and give up the beef myth!

[pemmom]

That is absolutely NOT true. Not everyone does well on a vegetarian diet. We are NOT herbivore nor are we carnivores. We are omnivores, we eat all things. When did "we" decide that eating as our bodies clearly were designed was a bad thing? If you want to be a vegetarian, do so. Many cannot afford to eat a balanced vegetarian meal, with the necessary supplements to bring it into balance.

CAFO's should be enviornmentally correct, but the Pew Commission's report was debunked by the AVMA as using faulty studies and information. One only needs to drive through the western states to see the use of open lands and cattle and sheep grazing to see that not EVERY farm or ranch is a CAFO in the US. As far as the 50 billion stat, how much goes overseas?

[wolfguide]

New Yorkers can do something now. There is a bill pending in the New York State Assembly (A.08163) that would ban hen battery cages, veal crates and tethering, and pig gestation crates on New York farms effective January of 2015. Michigan just passed a similar law but provisions of it don't go into effect until 2019.

The New York bill is opposed by the Chairman of the Agriculture Committee (William Magee) and the bill is sitting in in his committee. The New York Farm Bureau opposes the bill and owns Bill Magee. A groundswell of citizen activity is necessary to overcome the status quo. Read more about it at www.ab8163.com.

This issue is exploding all over the country (except at the federal level) and New Yorkers are fortunate to have the opportunity to make affirmative change.

Rick Tannenbaum
The Hilltop Initiative
www.ab8163.com

[nhokkanen]

People who promote CAFOs or profit from them deserve permanent coach status on flights. A brief object lesson in the importance of being able to extend one's legs when confined, no matter whether one is human or animal.

[Gatogorra]

You have a way of putting things. That would have my vote.

[foe2Hg]

Go get em DK! Safe vaccines ( your "Evidence of Harm") and safe food ("Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Hog, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment") - who wouldn't want that?

Familiar and parallel issues with good guys and bad guys, too. I pre-ordered your book back in Oct - can't wait, and I'm guessing part 2 of this HuffPo is showing some of those campaign pledges not being upheld. How come these Industry folks (food-vaccine) have so much power?

Muckraking them is just what is needed!

Teresa Conrick