THE LIES WE BURY: The myths we tell ourselves about American farming
The billions of animals farmed each year in the US for food generate nearly 2.5 billion pounds of untreated waste EVERY DAY, and a lot of it is washed away into rivers and streams. Yet, the Environmental Protection Agency appears to be fine with that. On top of this, farms are also exempt from the Animal Welfare Act, leaving billions of animals raised for meat, eggs, and dairy raised in terrible conditions on factory farms. Big Ag often argues its exceptional status is justified because farming is indeed exceptional, given the essential nature of its product: food. But we don’t apply exceptionalist logic to any other industry, such as energy production that, like food, is also highly polluting and essential to human flourishing.
KENNY TORRELLA: If you were to guess America’s biggest source of water pollution, chemical factories or oil refineries might come to mind. But it’s actually farms — especially those raising cows, pigs, and chickens. The billions of animals farmed each year in the US for food generate nearly 2.5 billion pounds of waste every day — around twice as much as people do — yet none of it is treated like human waste. It’s either stored in giant pits, piled high as enormous mounds on farms, or spread onto crop fields as fertilizer.
And a lot of it washes away into rivers and streams, as does synthetic fertilizer from the farms growing corn and soy to feed all those animals. “These factory farms operate like sewerless cities,” said Tarah Heinzen, legal director of environmental nonprofit Food and Water Watch. Animal waste is “running off into waterways, it’s leaching into people’s drinking water, it’s harming wildlife, and threatening public health.”
Yet in practice, the Environmental Protection Agency appears to be largely fine with all that. When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, it explicitly directed the EPA to regulate water pollution from “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or factory farms, among other businesses. But according to Food and Water Watch, fewer than one-third of the largest factory farms are actually regulated — and lightly, at that. Earlier this month, the EPA told Food and Water Watch it’s going to stay that way. The EPA rejected a 2017 joint petition from the group and other environmental organizations, calling on the agency to better regulate factory farms under the Clean Water Act.
The kind of regulatory evasion that allows for so much water pollution is just the latest example of what food industry reformers call “agricultural exceptionalism,” which lets the sector operate under a different set of rules than other parts of the economy, leading to widespread abuse in the food system. It’s fueled by romanticized myths about farming that mask the original sins of American agriculture — most notably slavery and mass land expropriation from American Indians — and the modern-day issues of mass pollution, animal cruelty, and labor exploitation. And it’s come to affect virtually every part of how food gets from the farm to your table.
Rather than regulate more factory farms for pollution, the EPA said in its recent decision that it will set up a committee next year to further study the issue for 12 to 18 months. The agency denied an interview request for this story, but a spokesperson said in an email that “a comprehensive evaluation is essential before determining whether any regulatory revisions are necessary or appropriate”…
On top of exemptions from critical environmental and labor legislation, farms are also exempt from the Animal Welfare Act, leaving billions of animals raised for meat, eggs, and dairy — almost all of whom are raised in terrible conditions on factory farms — with virtually no federal protections. The federal law that’s meant to reduce animal suffering at slaughterhouses exempts chickens and turkeys, which make up 98 percent of land animals raised for food…
Agricultural exceptionalism trickles down to the state level, too. Most states exempt livestock from anti-cruelty laws, and many states have passed “ag-gag laws,” which criminalize activists and journalists for simply recording what goes on at farms. Most state environmental agencies — including in progressive states like California — don’t do much to regulate farm pollution…
While the entire food sector benefits from agricultural exceptionalism, animal agriculture is especially privileged. Meat and dairy producers get far more subsidies than farmers growing more sustainable foods, like beans, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. A recent analysis from Stanford University researchers found that livestock farmers receive 800 times more public funding than non-animal farmers”…
Big Ag often argues its exceptional status is justified because farming is indeed exceptional, given the essential nature of its product: food. But… we don’t apply exceptionalist logic to any other industry. Energy production, for example, is highly polluting but essential to human flourishing, just like food, so we push to make our laws and economy limit the industry’s externalities and scale renewable forms of energy. Exemptions are granted to the agricultural industry not because we’ve ever really been at risk of famine, but because of the powerful myths we tell ourselves about farming. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: