Smithfield money won't sway Koster's judgment. (Wink.)

What? Just because Chris Koster introduced a bill in the state senate in 2007 to wipe out what little local control there is over factory farms and just because he is now pursuing an unnecessary appeal to a judicial ruling creating two mile buffer zones around state parks and historic sites–just because of that history, I say, Ken Midkiff doesn’t trust our attorney general to take Smithfield money and still enforce a consent judgment against the corporation? You’re such a cynic, Ken.

Hampac – Smithfield’s political PAC – gave $2,500 to Chris Koster’s 2008 campaign to become Missouri’s Attorney General.  Koster accepted the money even though the State of Missouri has a 1999 Consent Judgment against Premium Standard Farms (PSF), which has been owned by Smithfield since May 2007. 

 

Koster is now Missouri’s Attorney General and his office is responsible for ensuring that PSF/Smithfield implements the ongoing dictates of the court-ordered judgment resulting from the 1999 litigation.

 

PSF/Smithfield owns and operates eleven mega-hog facilities in northern Missouri subject to the 1999 Consent Judgment.  A follow-up state Consent Judgment was entered in 2004, extending the deadline to install operational “Next Generation Technology” until July 2010.

 

“We checked the files of the Missouri Ethics Commission, after reviewing Hampac’s funding to Missouri campaigns.  Smithfield/Hampac brags about its political success in Missouri,” stated Ken Midkiff, Chair of the Missouri Clean Water Campaign. 

  

“Accepting this money reeks as unethical.  We believe that Attorney General Koster should return this tainted money immediately,” concluded Midkiff.