Rural opposition to CAFOs faced two onslaughts in the latest legislative session. Led by the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, opponents of the corporate takeover of the countryside in Missouri stopped one attack and went down to defeat on the other.

For the second year in a row, Rep. Tom Loehner, R-Koeltztown, introduced the “Right to Raise Animals”, both as a statute and as a constitutional amendment. HCS and HJR 86 read this way:

Upon voter approval, this constitutional amendment, in order to protect Missouri’s agricultural economy, affirms the right of Missouri citizens to raise domestic animals in a humane manner that promotes the health and survival of the animals without the state imposing an undue economic burden on their owners. No law criminalizing or regulating crops or the welfare of animals will be valid unless based upon generally accepted scientific principles and enacted by the General Assembly.

By specifying that Missourians be allowed to “raise domestic animals in a humane manner”, the bill took a jab at the proponents of Prop C, which regulates puppy mills. It voices the resentment of many farmers, who felt that Prop C implied that rural people don’t treat their animals humanely.

I don’t think that attitude was implied by Prop C, but since rural people took it that way, CAFO opponents had to expend energy fighting a bad bill. The bill had two vague phrases (“undue economic burden” and “generally accepted scientific principles”) that would have prompted endless litigation. Had the bill become a constitutional amendment, the inane wording would have been cemented into our state constitution. A more important problem than the phrasing, though, is that the bill would have made it much more difficult to assert local control over CAFOs, because any attempted regulation would have been construed as “undue economic burden” for the CAFO owners.

Opponents made thousands of phone calls, sent thousands of e-mails and met with legislators to explain their objections to this dangerous attempt to limit local democracy. In the last week of the session, Loehner’s bills failed to gain traction.

But the minions of the Farm Bureau won a big one in passing a bill that limits the rights of rural property owners to sue CAFOs. Shame on Gov. Nixon for signing this travesty. Here’s what I wrote about the bill in February:

A public hearing without the public. That’s the best kind, if you have a particularly (pardon the pun) stinky bill. And HB 209, which would limit the rights of Missouri family farmers, landowners and communities to get redress in the courts against CAFOs, reeks. It smells of Republicans doing exactly what government is not supposed to do–protect the wealthy and powerful, in this case Big Ag, against legitimate lawsuits from the rest of the citizenry.

The public hearing that wasn’t took place on blizzard day, last Tuesday. While hundreds of concerned citizens who’d have showed up for the hearing were hunkered down in their homes during the onslaught of ice and as much as 18 inches of snow, the House Agri-business Committee met and passed HB 209 out of committee. This bill would prevent property owners who sue CAFOs from collecting anything more than “fair market value” for any devaluation of their property. First off, once a CAFO invades a neighborhood, nobody knows anymore what “fair market value” is, since property values tend to shit a brick once one is even threatened, much less actually installed. Property owners in the historic village of Arrow Rock, who tried to prevent a CAFO from being built, were advised to get an assessment of their property immediately. It was probably already devalued, though, simply because a CAFO was seeking a license for that area.

But beyond the issue of what property is worth are other issues. What’s it worth if a farmer whose family has been on the land for six generations has to sell because the air is so bad that his family can’t go outside and enjoy picnics anymore? Or because one or more family members now have severe asthma? What’s that worth? Nothing, according to this bill. People will not be allowed to sue over health impairment or quality of life issues.

So, for CAFO opponents, is the session a draw? I can’t say that. They lost on the lawsuit bill and held their ground on attempts to limit local control. They organize and fight valiantly, but Corpublicans have all the money and well over half the legislators. Nevertheless, the people at Missouri Rural Crisis Center and their troops will go into battle again next year to protect family farmers. I respect them.

Photo courtesy of Farm Sanctuary

A public hearing without the public. That’s the best kind, if you have a particularly (pardon the pun) stinky bill. And HB 209, which would limit the rights of Missouri family farmers, landowners and communities to get redress in the courts against CAFOs, reeks. It smells of Republicans doing exactly what government is not supposed to do–protect the wealthy and powerful, in this case Big Ag, against legitimate lawsuits from the rest of the citizenry.

The public hearing that wasn’t took place on blizzard day, last Tuesday. While hundreds of concerned citizens who’d have showed up for the hearing were hunkered down in their homes during the onslaught of ice and as much as 18 inches of snow, the House Agri-business Committee met and passed HB 209 out of committee. This bill would prevent property owners who sue CAFOs from collecting anything more than “fair market value” for any devaluation of their property. First off, once a CAFO invades a neighborhood, nobody knows anymore what “fair market value” is, since property values tend to shit a brick once one is even threatened, much less actually installed. Property owners in the historic village of Arrow Rock, who tried to prevent a CAFO from being built, were advised to get an assessment of their property immediately. It was probably already devalued, though, simply because a CAFO was seeking a license for that area.

But beyond the issue of what property is worth are other issues. What’s it worth if a farmer whose family has been on the land for six generations has to sell because the air is so bad that his family can’t go outside and enjoy picnics anymore? Or because one or more family members now have severe asthma? What’s that worth? Nothing, according to this bill. People will not be allowed to sue over health impairment or quality of life issues.

Once again, Republicans are selling their souls to wealthy corporations who can easily afford to defend themselves. Once again Republicans are selling out ordinary people, who have to risk everything they own if they take one of these monoliths to court. So if HB 209 passes, the possible return for taking that kind of risk would be a pittance. This bill is a top priority for the Farm Bureau and for Speaker Tilley this session. Premium Standard neither needs nor deserves that kind of favoritism.

Now. Before your blood returns to normal temp. You can easily e-mail your rep to vote no on this travesty. Just click here, then click on “No Special Favors for Factory Farms” and fill in your info. Every representative, even Democrats but especially Republicans, needs to hear from us on this one.

It would be easy to write off these comments about the Puppy Mill proposition and the Humane Society as simply the usual rightwing irrationality:

Egg farming is now facing extinction because vegan activists and terrorists are determined to abolish animal agriculture in our country.

–Missourians for Animal Care

If the HSUS gets Prop B passed in Missouri, “they will come after livestock…’and shut agriculture down.“

–State rep. Brian Munzlinger

“HSUS has decimated the egg industry forcing chicken farmers out of business … HSUS eliminated the pork industry. (Wondering why pork prices are going sky high?) They’ve also crippled numerous other agribusinesses – dragging connected industries down with them.”

–Tea Party member Joseph Wurzelbacher

But instead of just hooting derisively at these nutjobs, you might do well to understand the economic motivation for their drivel, because money always drives right wing politics. Joe the Plumber, with his grandiose claim that HSUS is “using the referendum process to slowly, systematically eliminate food production in the United States”, is more than just a bozo with an end-of-the-world Ouija board; he’s part of agribusiness’s campaign to block any interference with its stranglehold on agriculture. Joe is referring to  ballot initiatives that passed in Florida and California. A 2002 Florida vote banned pork producers from keeping pregnant sows in gestation crates–in other words, penned up so tight that they couldn’t move. The 2008 California Proposition 2 banned “the confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.”

The profits of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in those states suffered, and CAFO owners became indignant that the meddling Humane Society had gotten citizens boohooing over a few ill treated pigs, for god’s sake. Big ag also resents maudlin tree huggers for whining that CAFOs pollute and then refuse to pay for the damage. The Missouri Sierra Club, for example, yammers about McDonald County having plants operated by Tyson, Simmons and MoArk, with CAFOs for all three corporations. Every water body in that county is on the impaired water bodies list.  And, not content with moaning about cruelty to animals and damage to the environment, activists complain that CAFOs harm human health with the hormones and antibiotics that they pump into those animals. Ask any exec at Tyson, and he’ll tell you that those namby-pambies are always harping about the wrong stuff.

Well. Cargill, Con-Agra, Purina, Monsanto, Nabisco, Kellogg, Nestle–the whole multi-billion dollar food/feed/distribution industry–aren’t about to let a few marginal, relatively impotent sentimentalists bellyache loud enough to interfere with their hegemony. So here’s the plan: be a victim and instill fear. (Stick with traditional Republican values.) Act as if li’l ole HSUS and PETA (with its anti-fly-swatting ideology) could cripple American agriculture. Pretend they want to starve everybody.

Say what?!

I know, but that’s their story, and you know how tenacious Republicans are about sticking to an insane assertion until it finally takes hold.

Case in point: I sat at the state Senate hearing last spring about the proposed puppy mill reform and heard every member of the ag committee–including Democrats Wes Shoemyer and Frank Barnitz–vent about urban interference in rural matters. They bemoaned what a tough time they’re having, as farmers, making ends meet. Would that be because CAFOs are driving them out of business? It would. But they don’t seem to notice that.

By the way, there’s no indication that the Humane Society intends to target CAFOs in this state. Hell, it probably won’t even get a toehold on cruelty to puppies. The Republican legislature is laying plans to override the voters’ will. Rightwing paranoia that the puppy mills are an opening salvo against all agriculture in the state makes no more sense than their claims, in 1998, that banning cockfighting would end all hunting and fishing. But hey, who remembers that silly claim anymore? That fight is ancient history.

We’re in the now. And right now, regulating puppy mills in Missouri will starve all Americans. And don’t you forget it.  

Last night, Rachel Maddow interviewed an environmental scientist from Tulane University who described the process by which the Gulf of Mexico is dying.  Everyone is focused on the oil damage, but there has been a “dead zone” around the mouth of the Mississippi River for years caused by the chemicals that farmers use in the watersheds that empty into the river.

Reading this article about how the EPA is finally going to investigate the pollution caused by concentrated animal feeding operations (factory farms,) I’m reminded of those futuristic novels of the 70’s that predicted the death of the planet.

We knew about all of these problems 40 years ago, and we were making headway on solving some of them.  E.g., electric cars in California, educating women about birth control, cleaning up the rivers and lakes, recycling, protecting wetlands, etc.   Then came  the Reagan era and the masterminds of deceptive language who wrote his scripts.  All of a sudden our problems were all caused by “welfare queens” and greedy unions.  It was “morning in America” and to hell with the rest of you.  I got mine and that’s all that mattered.  “Greed is good.”  “Shop til you drop.”

So now we’re obese and bankrupt.  Someone said of the oil disaster, “The ocean is crying.”  Mother Earth is trying to tell us something.  Meanwhile, the media perseverate on whether President Obama is “angry enough.”

I used to think that electing Democrats would help change things for the better. But the masterminds of deceptive language are still at it, and MSM just repeats their nonsense.  I’m not feeling very optimistic right now.  What do you think?

HJR 86, the brainchild of Rep. Tom Loehner, R-Koeltztown, (pictured testifying at Senate hearing) had been rewritten nine times, that’s a 9, as of Wednesday morning before the public Senate hearing on the proposed constitutional amendment. But what HJR 86 really needed was to be eighty-sixed. It was godawful on more than one level, but especially because the perfected language in the House–and I use the term “perfected” ironically–tells anti-CAFO activists that they can kiss any local control over factory farms good-bye. Only the (currently in the pocket of the Farm Bureau) state legislature can do any regulating:

[N]o law criminalizing or regulating crops or the welfare of domesticated animals will be valid unless based upon generally accepted scientific principles and enacted by the General Assembly.

[emphasis mine]

But that language is gone from the Senate version. Senators, especially those on the Ag Committee, thought better of it when they found themselves bombarded with phone calls and e-mails from irate rural Missourians. (This is not the first time those folks have–please forgive the pun–saved our bacon on this issue.) The Senate version, as of Wednesday morning, read:

[N]o state law criminalizing or otherwise regulating the welfare or breeding of any domesticated animals shall be valied unless it has been enacted by the general assembly or promulgated by administrative rule and unless it is consistent with scientific and economic standards generally accepted within the agricultural community.

[emphasis mine]

“Administrative rule” is a fancy-schmancy term granting some local control.

That change in wording means that there is one serious flaw in this bill that’s now unlikely to survive the legislative process. Leaving only two others. Of course, if the senators eliminate the other two, the whole bill would evaporate. Which would be the best possible solution.

And what would those other problems with HJR 86 be?  See if you can figure it out. Because I’m not explaining it until my next posting on this bill.

Update: I was wrong about the House bill eliminating local control. If I had paid better attention, I’d have noticed that the beginning of the sentence I quoted from the perfected bill specifies such control:

Notwithstanding that this section shall in no way prohibit or limit the right of any county or city to enact ordinances, no state law criminalizing or otherwise regulating crops or the welfare of any domesticated animals shall be valid unless based upon generally accepted scientific principles and enacted by the general assembly.

[emphasis mine]

Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia, called me to point out that he had that language added to the House bill. Good for him! (And a raspberry for me.) Thanks, Chris.

(Even with local control intact in both the House and Senate versions, though, the bill is still a turkey.)

It’s one thing for our little enterprise here to call Chris Koster on the carpet for appealing a case that everybody but Big Ag wanted to see left alone. In 2008, a judge ruled that a two mile buffer zone should protect Arrow Rock Historic Village from a hog CAFO. By extension, that ruling would protect other historic sites and state parks. But Koster wants to get that ruling struck down.

Now the two biggest media outlets in the state are criticizing him too. The Kansas City Star ran two editorials (Count ’em: one and two) telling him to lay off. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reprinted the second Star editorial, the one that begins: “Attorney General Chris Koster’s latest bid to open up Missouri to more factory farms stinks.”

Will Koster think this negative attention stinks? Enough to drop the appeal? I guess we’ll see. No wonder so many Democrats still call him Koster the Imposter.

A large part of the CAFO battle in this state is about who controls where the factory farms can be located. Big Ag wants only the legislature–Republican controlled–to have that power. Environmentalists and many rural residents want local control, on the assumption that the locals shouldn’t have to tolerate environmental damage and devalued property. A skirmish in that battle has arisen over the question of whether anybody besides the legislature can create CAFO free buffer zones around historic sites and state parks. The resulting controversy involves both Chris Koster and Jay Nixon.

The controversy began with a fight at the historic village of Arrow Rock near Columbia. The town, which makes most of its income from the tourist trade, went to court in 2007 to prevent a 4800 hog CAFO from being built nearby. In August of last year, Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce ruled that there would be a two mile buffer zone to protect the historic village.

The hog CAFO, as it turned out, wasn’t built, so the buffer zone was a moot point, but Matt Blunt’s Department of Natural Resources, carrying water for Big Pig, as usual, appealed the decision anyway. The bad actors didn’t want a precedent of buffer zones set.

Environmentalists were pleased, therefore, to hear candidate Jay Nixon assert, when he spoke in Arrow Rock before the election, that the role of the DNR is to regulate polluters near historic sites and state parks. Indeed, the DNR is mandated by law to protect those sites. So environmentalists and anti-CAFO activists figured that if and when Nixon was elected, the DNR would drop the suit and the precedent of buffer zones would remain.

But it hasn’t happened that way. Somehow the appeal against buffer zones has wound up in the attorney general’s office with Chris Koster, who is reluctant to let it drop. When he was a Republican, Koster had a history of opposing any local control of CAFOs. In 2007, he introduced a bill (SB 364) that would have taken away the only vestige of local control over CAFOs. Environmentalists pressured their senators, and the bill–even in a Republican controlled Senate–never came to a vote.

Although environmentalists supported Koster in last year’s election, figuring he’d be easier to work with than Gibbons, they’re not finding their efforts for him well rewarded. Koster told the Columbia Tribune that he believes, in the interest of unity and predictability, that only the legislature should be able to create buffer zones. He concedes that Nixon and the current officials at the DNR would probably like to see the appeal dropped, but he contends that “Allowing circuit judges and local county health departments to ‘draw their own boundaries is an increased threat to agriculture.'”

A threat to agriculture? Not exactly. Not unless you define “agriculture” as Smithfield Farms. Which Koster apparently does. Referring to Koster’s switch to the Democratic Party early last year, some environmentalists are still referring to him as “Koster the Imposter.” I don’t blame them. As long as he continues to favor corporate controlled agriculture in this state, I’ll continue to think of him as a Republican.

In Catch-22, Major Major’s father was a wealthy alfalfa farmer who had gotten rich by having the government pay him not to grow alfalfa and who used his money to buy more land, with the result that he “soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county.” (p.86)

The parallel may not be exact but consider: pork and poultry CAFOs are asking the USDA to buy up–to the tune of $75 million in the last six months–the extra meat they’re producing that they can’t sell. Meanwhile, the USDA is guaranteeing loans to pork and poultry producers who want to build new CAFOs or expand existing ones.

Major Major’s father would approve. True, CAFOs aren’t getting paid not to raise hogs, but they are getting paid to raise hogs nobody wants–and getting paid to raise even more hogs nobody wants. Similar principle.

And while the USDA is buying up their excess product–even as it helps them to overproduce even more–the little guy keeps getting squeezed. He’s not getting these subsidies. Oh well, who cares, right?

If you care, then know that The Missouri Rural Crisis Center is getting the word out about the dodge that the CAFOs have going on and is urging Missourians to sign on to a letter to Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack.

If Vilsack were really on top of the job, he would have noticed and rectified this double dipping already, but it’s our job to nudge him in the right direction.

Go. Sign.

A New York Times article reprinted in the Sunday Post-Dispatch was headlined: Banks aren’t using federal bailout money to make more loans. The writers hammered that point home with example after example:

Speaking at the FBR Capital Markets conference in New York in December, Walter M. Pressey, president of Boston Private Wealth Management, a healthy bank with a mostly affluent clientele, said there were no immediate plans to do much with the $154 million it received from the Treasury.

“With that capital in hand, not only do we feel comfortable that we can ride out the recession,” he said, “but we also feel that we’ll be in a position to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves once this recession is sorted out.”

Last Thanksgiving, St. Louis ACORN activists made the same point as the Times article when they gave Wachovia the Turkey of the Year Award for not using bailout money to slow the mortgage crisis. Might I just point out the obvious: If none of the banks are willing to lend, then they won’t have a recession to get through; they’ll have a depression. And the luxury cruise ships of our economy, like Wachovia and Boston Private Wealth Management, will sink along with a lot of rowboats with peeling paint.

How does it happen that one of the most active Democratic organizations in the state is in Springfield, the buckle on the Bible Belt? Springfield has Missouri State University, but it also has Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Baptist Bible Graduate School, Central Bible College, and Evangel College. Tell you what else it has: an office building that is the Democratic headquarters in Springfield with a full time executive director. St. Louis should be so lucky.

The Greene County Democratic Party Chairman has been Craig Hosmer. But he was recently elected chairman of the state party’s central committee, so his position as county chairman is being taken over by Art Kessler, a thirty year member of the local carpenters’ union.  Kessler is just one of those working stiffs stepping up for the party. Here’s hoping he can maintain the terrific organization Hosmer leaves behind. And here’s further hoping that Hosmer is just as successful as central party chair as he has been in Springfield.

Former state senator Maida Coleman (SD 5 in St. Louis City) is mailing out from her former office in Jeff City a good-bye to her constituents–a twelve page color newsletter. She hopes to run as an independent, most likely against Francis Slay, in the April 7th mayoral election.

All over the state, opponents of Missouri CAFOs have been firing between circled Conestogas and waiting for the cavalry to arrive. In historic Arrow Rock Village, for example. Early in 2007, the Department of Natural Resources granted Dennis Gessling a permit to build a 4,800 hog concentrated animal feeding operation two miles from the little town near Columbia–a town that relies on its decades-old summer theater performances and tourism to survive.

Local citizens organized and by October of 2007 had filed suit against the DNR and Doyle Childers, its director, for failing in one of the Department’s mandated duties, the requirement that it protect state historic sites and parks. The pioneers could hear far off bugles, barely audible above the gunfire that fall, when Jay Nixon, the man everyone figured for the next governor, spoke at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Missouri Parks Association:

“I believe that our state is headed in the wrong direction on many fronts, including the protection and preservation of our natural resources, our parks and our historic sites. [emphasis mine]

The settlers held off the assault from Gessling by convincing Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia S. Joyce to rule in their favor. On August 25th of last year, Joyce criticized the DNR for failing to protect the historic site and established a fifteen mile buffer zone, prohibiting CAFOs within that zone.

Although the ruling applied only to Gessling–and despite the fact that his permit expired on August 30th without the proposed facility being built–in September Big Chief Childers of the DNR, in cahoots with the Missouri Farm Bureau and a group of agriculture organizations, filed motions objecting to the ruling. Judge Joyce, still critical of DNR failure to protect historic sites, reduced the buffer zone to two miles.

So not only did the DNR fail in its duty to protect Arrow Rock, it … persisted in pushing for a ruling to benefit a CAFO that wasn’t going to be built? Yes, and in fact, it’s still fighting that battle, even though Dennis Gessling has, months since, walked away from the whole mess.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has confirmed that on Dec. 18, 2008, the agency filed an appeal with a the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District asking it to overturn a ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce regarding a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) proposed but never built by the Gessling family of Saline County.

Doyle Childers has resigned, effective January 12th, but DNR spokeshole Kara Valentine skates past the notion that a Democratic governor would drop the appeal.

Valentine said that while she doesn’t foresee the new administration changing or dropping the appeal, she said, “they may have thoughts on the direction that they want the appeal to go.”

Valentine “doesn’t foresee” Nixon dropping it? “Doesn’t foresee it?” Well, I foresee it. She’s definitely not in Kansas anymore. She’s surely got to know that Nixon said:

“We must join together to protect our parks as well as our rural farmland from the factory farm and the resulting emissions, runoff and smells. [emphasis mine]

So Miss Kara assumes that Nixon will be eager to ride Doyle’s hobby horse and pursue an appeal to save a CAFO that’s already dead–contrary to Nixon’s stated position opposing CAFOs. Right. Okay, that one ain’t gonna happen. But before you decide that such self-delusion proves the lady is non compos mentis, consider what Farm Bureau President Charles Kruse said after he and his cohorts pressured Judge Joyce to amend her August ruling:

“We are pleased the judge modified her August ruling by clarifying it applies only to the proposed Gessling operation near Arrow Rock, Missouri; however, the fact is there remains no demonstrated need to impose a buffer over and above what is already required by state law and this ruling could set a needless and harmful precedent.

“Harmful precedent.” The situation in a nutshell.

Look. Jay Nixon’s administration may be the cavalry. Think of press conferences as his bugle. For ammunition, he has the power to appoint the Director of the DNR and to use the veto pen if the Republican lege acts up. But Big Ag is better funded than the Injuns were. And it has the sort of legal weapons that could have made Crazy Horse governor of the Dakota territory.

Oh, and don’t forget Big Ag’s willingness to speak with forked tongue:

“Missouri Farm Bureau attempted to intervene in this case as we cannot ignore the fact that production agriculture in the U.S. is under attack. Our nation’s family farmers and ranchers are facing challenges on every front. Regulations whether imposed by administrative rule or court order, must be based on science and fact, not emotion, misinformation and legal technicalities,” Kruse said.

Conflating Big Ag with family farmers is 180 from the truth. And Big Ag is under attack? It’s had the legislature, the boy gov  and the DNR in its hip pocket for the last four years. But the bit that makes me splutter is the insinuation that opposition to CAFOs is not based on science.

Not?

based?

on?

science?

Give me a break.

Those lying, delusional bastards who run rural families out of business and poison the environment want sympathy from their victims?! Breathe, girl, breathe. And remember that the cavalry is coming.

Thank goodness for that, but I don’t look for the Farm Bureau to lay down its weapons just because a Democratic governor has sounded the charge.