Federal farm law: CAFOs, "stewardship" purchasing

Andrew Martin of the Chicago Tribune has a piece on the push against CAFOs/factory farms and the industry's push back. Martin, coauthor of a recent article on "Hog Wars", focuses on political doings over pollution from poultry farming. Specifically, factory farmers are making the issue federal. After a similar attempt in Oklahoma failed, a bill to exclude manure from the definition of "hazardous substance" for the federal Superfund statute is gaining cosponsors in the House, ninety in the last three months. (Legal background here; two fine, if slightly dated, explanations of poultry pollution are this United Poultry Concerns factsheet and this Peter Goodman article.) According to Martin, H.R. 4341 is designed to head off not lawsuits by local citizens, but suits by municipal and state governments, most notably a lawsuit by Oklahoma AG Drew Edmonson. The folksy anecdotes in Martin's piece and in the Tulsa World's report on discovery in the Oklahoma lawsuit make clear that this is indeed an institutional struggle, with everyone claiming to represent the "little guy." Needless to say, though we still say it a lot, any potentially benefits accruing to nonhuman "little guys/gals," namely less crowded conditions in non-factory farms, are on no one's mind. Alright, it's on a few folks' minds...

The Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing Act has been introduced in the House. It would require government-purchased animal food and fiber to be from animals who were given adequate shelter, food, water, and veterinary care. There is no exercise requirement (something that would sink a factory farm), but it does require an animal be given "sufficient space . . . [to] walk, move his or her head freely, rest, and turn around completely and fully extend all limbs or wings without touching any part of an enclosure." As the HSUS notes, these requirements are "quite modest." They are also revolutionary, from a welfarist perspective, insofar as they state some minimum care requirements for animals at a point other than when they're being killed or when they're being transported. (They're not really protected there either, see here and here.) Tucked into the law is also what would amount to a ban on government purchases of foie gras (a cause everyone can get behind) and some language suggesting that "downers," animals so sick they cannot walk, must be killed "promptly," rather than shipped for slaughter. H.R. 3931, which would mandate prompt killing of downers, is still in committee.

Comments

[Larry Parker]

Enjoyed your post. It's always good to see someone championing the rights of farm animals who cannot do so themselves. So very many of them are having to endure such suffering that it is heartbreaking. Please check out my new blog on the matter (vanguardproductions.blogspot.com). Within a matter of weeks, I should have a "Links to Other Blogs" sections and will be definitely including your site in this. Keep up the good work.