Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
“Increased numbers of CAFOs in an area
often are associated with declines in
local economic and social indicators (e.g.,
business purchases, infrastructure, property
values, population, social cohesion),
which undermine the socioeconomic and
social foundations of community health,
particularly in poor and African American
rural communities.” 29
—Excerpted from the American Public Health
Association's Precautionary Moratorium on New
Concentrated Animal Feed Operations
the contamination of local water supplies, extremely foul-smelling
air, the drying up of local wells and the degradation of local roads
and bridges.”
In Illinois, Jay Coffman spoke out after a hearing on a 2,000-pig
confinement operation that was trying to open in his community:
“I suppose some see me as a radical, because I strongly disagree
with what is happening to our county. I think that, as a group,
we are concerned about serious health issues associated with
these individual CAFOs, as well as CAFOs collectively. The hog
producers are trying to basically wrap their argument and point
of view up in the farming/ag industry, but this is not traditional
agriculture. This is industrial agriculture, and there are serious
differences.”
Willard Jones, a neighbor of a pig factory farm in Alabama, told
his local paper, “It's a very unpleasant situation, from the odor and
the big black flies and the runoff from the spraying of the fields that
gets into the creek and tributary. . . . The water is dark brown to
black. It doesn't look healthy at all.”
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