Sonoma County ballot measure would ban large livestock farms
This November, voters in Sonoma County will decide on a first-of-its-kind proposal, known as “Measure J,” to ban large, concentrated animal-feeding operations.
The industrial farms primarily raise chickens, ducks and cattle.
Kristina Garfinkel, a Santa Rosa resident and an organizer with the Coalition to End Factory Farming, said the large operations tend to have poor records when it comes to animal welfare, and spark environmental concerns with the odor and runoff from the lagoons of animal waste.
“They pollute water with nitrates, phosphates,” Garfinkel said. “They also pollute the air through greenhouse gas emissions, and they’re also just perfect vectors to spread very contagious diseases, such as avian flu and things like that.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state monitor the water supply near large farms on a regular basis. The operations are also subject to state rules on animal welfare and often participate in voluntary organic certification programs.
The measure would give the large farms three years to either reduce the size of their herds or flocks, or wind down operations, and would require the county to retrain any workers who lose their jobs.
Randi Black, dairy adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension, said Measure J would cost the county millions.
“There is a pretty large impact on both our local agricultural economy but also on our workforce,” Black noted. “Both being able to be employed but also on our county budget, in order to provide the mandated training.”
A similar proposed ban will be on the ballot in Berkeley this fall, but since the city does not have any such large operations the measure would prevent any future large animal farms from coming in.
“Over the last 30 years we have built a sustainable and organic food system in our community. The generational family farms that exist at the heart of our farming system have always been at the center of this sustainable transformation,” said Albert Straus, of Straus Family Creamery, a local family-owned business likely to be adversely affected by Measure J.
“Today, our regional food community provides high quality food for local residents and organic consumers around the country while also serving as a global example of on-farm environmental stewardship and climate-positive practices,” he added. “Measure J threatens to completely undercut our decades of transformational work.”
Straus is far from alone in his opposition to the measure. An alliance of Sonoma County-based organic and sustainable agricultural and climate-positive practices, businesses, local food systems, and environmental stewardship organizations and businesses announced their opposition to Measure J in a statement released by the California Climate & Agriculture Network.
“Sonoma County is home to some of California’s best agricultural stewards whose farms provide numerous climate and environmental benefits such as storing carbon in soil, limiting energy-intensive urban sprawl, and providing wildlife habitat and open space to recharge groundwater,” said Renata Brillinger, executive director of the Sebastopol-based organization CalCAN. “We are united in our commitment to protecting our local, organic family farms.”
Similarly, Wendy Krupnick, president of the Sonoma County chapter of Community Alliance with Family Farms, observed, “If this measure passes, individuals, restaurants and school cafeterias won’t stop buying poultry and dairy products. And they shouldn’t. These are important parts of many people’s diets,” adding that local consumers should have the choice to buy local products from family-owned farms versus imports from corporations outside Sonoma County.
I hope they are banned. I never saw so much cruelty on the farms in Sonoma county. Petaluma poultry processors are one of the worse….
Why is it legal to hurt others because they aren’t human?
I hope they are banned. I never have never seen so much cruelty on any farm as I have in Sonoma county. Petaluma poultry processors are one of the worse….also the poor cows in veal crates while we drink the milk of their mothers.
Why is it legal to hurt others because they aren’t human?
I am voting Yes On Measure J. Strauss can scale down a bit and do just fine. Factory farming is outdated,unsustainable, and unnecessary. People can find work that is kinder. These arent ‘farmers helping their community food sources’. Big Ag is corporatized internationally and relies on practices that promote violence. If this is your job, its time to learn to type.
We must vote yes on measure J they will say anything to keep doing what they’re doing. The animals deserve better. The dairy industry is the cruelest industry. And we need to protect our water and air. Alfalfa is such a non sustainable product it requires a lot of water 75% of it goes to the dairy’s the other 25% goes to other animals . If we stopped growing alfalfa for one year in California we would have enough water for all San Francisco and close surrounding areas to have enough water for 12,500 years .Dairy is the most unhealthy food that we eat cause cancers digestive issues and many other diseases. We need to stop it all together. Mammal milk is specie specific. And the cows are artificially inseminated and the calf’s are taken away with in 24 hours. The males become veal so it’s also the meat industry. Please vote yes 🙏🏽
This measure is sadly misplaced in its focus. Rather than encourage and celebrate the personal choice to eat vegan, it seeks to push us into this choice by removing healthy, local food options. Who pays the price? Everyday people who are trying to make ends meet. No doubt the proponents of the initiative are pro-choice and believe strongly the government should not stand between a woman and her choices about her body. Yet this initiative does exactly that–it asks the government to stand in between local eaters and local food producers. Rather than trust people to make the right choices for themselves, they impose a set of values (and mistaken ideas about our local food producers) that are held by a small minority of our community. The real irony in Measure J is that its biggest impacts are on some of the world’s most conscientious and sustainable food producers. This is a classic progressive circular firing squad with everyday families caught in the crossfire. Please vote no on Measure J at the ballot box and vote for the future of the food we eat at your local grocery store–that is where the real change can and will come.
So well said, hit the nail on the head. Where you spend your memory best determines who survives in these industries, not the ballot box. I hope everyone voting yes will realize that safe, local, humane options will disappear from or shelves. The big producers nationwide will be our only option. And do we even need to start with fast food? Keep our food local, keep our choices local. Keep our money and jobs local.
https://www.nrdc.org/bio/valerie-baron/big-ag-hiding-plain-sight-and-its-making-us-sick?fbclid=IwY2xjawEiHiBleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHQwwCriM4CAZHrk4_28fOWyR-j1sXoJx24Dac1A2oLnGBVz2euYaJiSzKA_aem_kNy60EO5TSUfJUJObaULOg
CAFOs: What we don’t know is hurting us.
The first, NRDC’s new report CAFOs: What We Don’t Know Is Hurting Us, details the threat these facilities pose as well as the major data void that exists about even the most basic information about them. Agencies charged with keeping people and the environment safe do not know how many of these facilities there are or where they are located.
CAFOs produce a staggering amount of waste, just one can produce as much raw sewage as the city of Philadelphia. Animals confined in CAFOs produce a lot of manure. But unlike with human waste, the standard practice is not to treat CAFO waste. It is stored in lagoons, piles, and other primitive systems. Then, in lieu of treatment, industrial operators apply it to land, theoretically as a fertilizer but very often they apply it in excess quantities, which are harmful. In some places, like North Carolina, they typically spray it into the air (you read that right, they shoot manure into air) as a method of applying it to fields.
The result can be devastating to workers and surrounding communities. The festering waste can run off into surface waters, seep into groundwater, and produce noxious gasses.
Nitrates from the manure can get into drinking water, where they can hurt anyone, but they are particularly dangerous to very young children and fetuses. CAFO waste can cause a dangerous and sometimes fatal medical condition called “blue-baby syndrome,” in which a baby cannot get the oxygen it needs. One study found that nearly half of children living nearby these facilities experience asthma, and noxious odors from the facilities can impact an entire community’s quality of life and mental health. They breed and spread dangerous superbugs. Up to a third of workers in the sector experience asthma and chronic bronchitis.
Despite the risks CAFOs pose, we’ve known for a long time that regulatory agencies aren’t providing proper oversight of these facilities. For example, in 2001 NRDC published a landmark report Cesspools of Shame highlighting the problems with antiquated and ineffective waste management systems. In 2008 the Government Accountability Office found that “EPA does not have data on the number and location of CAFOs nationwide and the amount of discharges from these operations.” In 2011, in response to that finding and pressure from NRDC and other groups, EPA proposed a rule to rectify this problem and collect data on these facilities. However, in 2012, the agency bowed to industry pressure and withdrew the rule, claiming that it could obtain the information it needed from the states.
NRDC set out to see whether it was true that EPA could get the information it needed from the states, requesting the records EPA used and also seeking records from other sources. NRDC used public records laws to request the state data that EPA had when it made this determination. Industry did everything it could to keep this information from seeing the light of day; they even sued to try and stop it, or at least tie this data up in courts for years.
But NRDC pressed on, and working with the Yale Environmental Protection Clinic, we compiled the results of the information collection to try and asses the adequacy of state information, and the results are alarming. NRDC was able to find records about fewer than half of the (EPA) estimated more than 17,000 facilities nationwide. Unfortunately, it is not surprising that this research revealed that state governments have a poor handle on the CAFO problem. The withdrawal of the information collection rule is just one of many failed attempts to bring this industry into compliance with federal law and mitigate its health-harming pollution.
Despite the fact that EPA claimed it could get the information it needed to regulate CAFOs from states, that information (and therefore the information supporting NRDC’s report) is not without its limitations. NRDC’s research confirmed that states present extremely limited data on CAFOs on their websites, and the information NRDC got directly from EPA is from the past. Given these limitations, while the overall outlook remains similar, conditions may have changed in several states between when the data NRDC obtained was collected and the present. For example, Tennessee (a state that scored relatively highly on the transparency index) has recently moved to restrict information available about medium CAFOs (and do not be fooled by the name, “medium” industrial agriculture facilities still produce mega-waste). Nonetheless, this NRDC report represents one of the most complete repositories of data on large CAFOs ever compiled, and this underscores that without active EPA involvement the public will not be sufficiently protected or informed.
NRDC continues to fight the pollution of this industry, focusing on the places hardest-hit. For example, NRDC partners with REACH, an organization of residents directly impacted by hog facilities in eastern North Carolina, where there is some of the densest concentration of hog and poultry facilities in the country. There, as with elsewhere, industrial CAFOs have a disproportionate impact on poor communities and people of color. NRDC, REACH and partners have been fighting for a stronger permitting process with greater transparency and protections for their neighbors. These communities and groups are fighting to hold this industry accountable and level the playing field so responsible farmers can compete.
This vote is not about hog farms in North Carolina, or a CAFO somewhere which produces more waste than Philadelphia.
It’s about operations in Sonoma County, but proponents are trying to stampede voters based on practices elsewhere, even practices not allowed here.
I have been dismayed at the misleading information and tactics used by the pro-J side (in many venues, not just here). The sponsors’ agenda to end all meat eating has been clear, and they have the right to advocate for that; I have some sympathy for that. But their ballot strategy comes from the same mindset that breaks into farms – their moral high ground exempts them from obligations like honesty, because they serve (in their minds) a higher purpose.
They do not win my vote by emotional manipulation, and they have not yet won my vote through intellectual evidence – even though in a different location where the abuses they love to highlight are occurring, I might happily support them. (We have donated to NRDC for many decades because they do some good work).
I think most of all the sponsors of Measure J have failed to earn any trust locally, except among those who are already true believers.
It’s telling how many pro-environment or pro-animal rights groups have chosen not to support this measure.
Hi there, could you share some examples of “misleading information and tactics used by the pro-J side” please? As a volunteer on the Yes on J campaign, I’d be very curious to hear that feedback because I’m not sure what you’re referencing. Thanks!