Testimony of Tom Garrett

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Tom Garrett.  I live in Albany County, Wyoming on the ranch which my grandfather first homesteaded in 1885.  I serve as consultant on rural affairs to the Animal Welfare Institute and as Wyoming representative on the Western Organization of Resource Council’s taskforce on CAFOs.  Years ago, during the 1970s and early “80’s, I headed a conservation lobby in Washington, D.C. and was deeply involved in international conservation as well.  This experience has been useful in placing the present situation in perspective.

 

One can only appreciate the dimension of the disaster engulfing rural America by placing it in historical context.  America’s land policies came to rest on Jeffersonian substrate with the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862.  Whatever their failings, the homestead laws helped create what Senator Thomas Hart Benson said they would in 1825: “A race of virtuous and independent farmers, loyal supporters of their country and the stock from which its best defenders must be drawn.”  In 1890, when rural populism shook the foundations of the industrial establishment, 40% of all Americans were family farmers; most, outside of the deep South, owned their own farms.

 

Today, America’s system of family farms is in extremis.  Fewer than 2% of Americans remain on the land; the number declines daily.  The “race of virtuous and independent farmers” is being replaced by a new feudalism, governed from corporate boardrooms, in which contract growers fulfill the role of serfs and migrant workers the role of slaves.

 

What we are witnessing, and stippling out, goes beyond historic change.  It is a profound tragedy, not only for farmers, for rural communities and farm animals, but for the nation.

 

A great lie, fed to the press, propagated and repeated ad nauseum, is that small farmers are inefficient; that they are being overtaken by progress; that their doom, though lamentable, is inevitable.

 

The truth is that industrial agriculture does not work economically unless much of its real cost—environmental costs, socio-economic costs, infrastructual costs—are imposed on others.  The truth is that if existing federal laws, the Packers and Stockyards Act, the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Humane Slaughter Act, the Clean Water Act and sundry other federal and state laws were being honestly administered and enforced, the whole system would unravel.  The corporate takeover is being greased by one of the most powerful and unscrupulous lobbies in American history.  One has to return to the days of Al Capone and his fellow bootleggers to find another industry whose survival depended on the non-enforcement of existing laws.

 

There is nothing new, of course, about the displacement of small farmers by absentee owners.  It has been the cause of numerous revolts and civil wars throughout history, including the Mexican revolution which began in 1911 and has yet, one suspects, to reach its conclusion.

 

Neither is there anything unique about the linkage which has brought about this meeting, namely that which exists between absentee ownership of land and environmental degradation.  In the mid-19^th Century, the great German soil chemist, Justus Von Leibig, showed that the decline of ancient civilizations was preceded (he believed caused) by deforestation and soil depletion.  Leibig pointed out that soil erosion, in Rome particularly, became critical when freeholders who tilled their own land were pushed aside to make way for latifundia, large holdings tilled by slaves.  The theme was elaborated by George Perkins March in his epochal 1864 book “Man and Nature”.  These pioneer thinkers were not wrong; export monocultures driven by absentee capital emerge again and again as central elements of environmental disasters.

 

The industrial agriculture now being practiced does, however, have one unique—and uniquely odious—feature.  That is the mass abuse of farm animals, on a scale and to a degree undreamed of a generation ago or ever before in human history.  While it may seem tangential to the problems addressed here, I ask you to focus on it.  For it is the gross abuse which occurs in so called CAFOs, most particularly in hog factories, were not allowed, the surface water pollution, groundwater contamination, stench and other problems which engage you here would be largely absent.  Abuse of animals is the core evil of industrial agriculture.

 

In hog factories, as you know, animals live their entire lives in huge, densely packed buildings suffused with the overpowering stench of liquefied hog manure.  The atmosphere is laden with hydrogen sulfide and ammonia; the din often exceeds 90 decibels.  Gestating sows stand on naked concrete slats in spaces so tiny that they are unable to even turn around.  The natural life expectancy of a pig is at least ten years; sows in factory farms rarely live more than two and one half years.  Vast numbers die of injuries and infections even greater numbers are culled.  Many still very young sows, slated for culling, are too crippled to even walk to their own deaths.

 

In Sweden, such practices are outlawed on grounds of cruelty.  It is against the law to confine animals in an area too small for them to move about and perform normal motor patterns.  Ample bedding must also be supplied.  These requirements do not prevent Swedish farmers from raising hogs in confinement—there are many large hog barns in Sweden—but there are no farrowing crates or gestation cages and the animals are raised on deep straw rather than on concrete slats.  Because straw bedding makes it impossible to clean barns with hoses, there is no liquified manure.  Hence there are no sewage lagoons, no contaminated acquifers, none of the miasmic stench that hangs over entire counties in the United States.  In fact, hog manure composts so rapidly with straw that even inside the buildings there is little smell.  When the compost is applied to the land there is minimal nutrient runoff; surface waters are not polluted and the full value of the manure as fertilizer is realized.

 

These are not the only advantages.  Hogs raised under these conditions are unstressed, infections and injuries are uncommon, the air is not contaminated with dust and toxic gas.  Accordingly, death loss is low and instead of being “used up” after two farrowings, sows remain productive for years.  Absent the pathogens with abound in American hog factories, it is unnecessary to ply animals day after day with sub-therapuetic doses of antibiotics to keep them alive.  The meat produced is free of residues, bacterial contamination of meat is unheard of and the methods of production do not contribute to the development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.  At the same time, those who raise pigs on straw are spared the respiratory distress and skin infections endemic among workers in U.S. hog factories.

 

By insisting on decent, ethical treatment of farm animals, Swedish authorities have guaranteed a rational system of production: one which does not pollute air and water and degrade the quality of life of citizens living nearby, one which produces clean, uncontaminated meat, one which promotes a stable, viable rural economy and provides a decent workplace.  What a contrast to the situation in America!

 

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I do not doubt that there are persons within EPA who genuinely wish to bring pollution from AFOs under control.  But if there was any question as to whether you are playing the corporate game it was put to rest by the “Self Inspection Agreement” between EPA and the National Pork Producers Council.  I find it hard to imagine that the so called “United Strategy” was not “cleared”—perhaps even “worked out”—ahead of time with large, politically influential producers and processors such as Murphy and Tyson.  Federal regulation of AFO’s can help the very large producer/processors consolidate their grip on the industry by driving minor producers, who are not vertically integrated and can ill afford regulation, out of business.  Federal regulations can also help convince the public and state and county government that the situation is being dealt with and that more draconian state and local action is not needed.

 

Let’s look at the second case more closely.  A grass roots revolt against industrial agriculture—particularly against hog factories—is gaining force in the American heartland.  Wherever voters have been given a direct choice: in South Dakota, in Colorado, in 23 of 24 Kansas counties, they have voted overwhelmingly against the corporations.  Fifty-nine percent of all South Dakota voters and nearly 70% of South Dakota farmers supported Amendment E which bans corporate farming in the state.  As citizens become better organized (and more desperate) the corporate lobby—for all of its money—is finding it harder and harder to maintain control of state legislatures; county commissioners are “acting up”; the press (note particularly the Time series on corporate welfare) smells scandal, (or at least something unsavory) and is less easy to manipulate.

 

In 1887, the railroads, under pressure from the states, went to the Federal government to supplant a patchwork of state regulations with federal regulations that they could predict and control.  Railroad attorney Richard Olney (who soon became Grover Clevelands Attorney General) explained it thusly to the owners:  “The Commission…can be made of great use to the railroads.  It satisfies the popular clamour for a government supervision of railroads, as the same time that the supervision is almost entirely nominal.”  This is the game industrial agriculture has been playing at the state level for years.  Wherever counties have tried to crack down on hog factories, the corporate lobby has gone to state legislatures with bills to override county regulation with nominal state regulation.  In some states: in North Carolina and Illinois, in Iowa where File 519 has convulsed state politics ever since its passage and, most recently, in Kansas, they have succeeded.  Why not, with control slipping at state level, carry this ploy to the national level where—with the present Administration and the present Congress—control is unchallenged?

 

The question in my mind, after reading and re-reading your “strategy” is not whether it is a useful means of combating pollution, but whether EPA has allowed itself to be taken in and taken over by the corporate lobby?  If you intend to salvage your integrity you should jettison the strategy forthwith, detach yourselves from any joint operations with USDA, cease dealing with NPPC which is regarded by most independent farmers, for the best of reasons, as “the enemy” and get serious about doing the one thing you can do, and have unclouded authority to do: regulating point-source pollution.

 

All sewage lagoons should be lined with a genuinely impervious substance—no nonsense about compacted clay being impervious—such as very thick polyetheline liner over bentonite by date certain.

 

All sewage lagoons should be covered by date certain to prevent escape of vast plumes of ammonia and other gasses which they are known to emit and to shield the lagoons from torrential rain.

 

Questionable structures, which are apt to overflow or burst, or which are seeping, should not be left around during a protracted “transitional period” but should be condemned.

 

Spraying sewage on fields absolutely should not be allowed.  Rather the sewage should be injected, probably “chiseled in” at, or below, the rate of agronomic uptake.

 

The course upon which EPA appears to be embarking is almost certain to aid the great corporations in their ruthless assault on what is left of Jeffersonian America.  Simple, rigorous, straightforward regulation of point sources of pollution would distinguish between industrial agriculture and family agriculture, and place the burden where it belongs.