Agriculture has a new attack being launched on it by the United States Humane Society, the Association of Irritated Residents, Friends of the Earth, and other assorted environmental do-gooders.  It is not as if we in agriculture do not have enough challenges with extraordinarily low prices for dairy, pork, and now even corn. 

On September 21, a group of environmental organizations filed a 68-page petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which, if implemented, could achieve the environmental organizations’ goal of shutting down concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) in the United States. If you think this assertion is a bit strong, I suggest you read the petition here. 

The petition is too long and legally complicated to fully discuss in this column so I will be following up with more columns on the charges made in the 68 pages.  In the petition the environmental groups want to control, among other things, the diet you feed to your animals, the pH of manure, and the time and temperature that animal waste is in storage. They also want you to switch from farm animal production systems that are reliant on grains to systems that use pasture-raised, organic or full cycle farming systems.  

The petition declares that “mitigating the animal agriculture sectors’ significant yet unappreciated role in climate change and other air pollution problems is vital for the health and the sustainability of the planet, the environment, and its human and nonhuman inhabitants.”  

To read the entire article, link here.