According to Martin Luther King Jr., “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” So, I would like to comment on your recent article “Wood County dairy farmer is ‘bovine public health official’ for 3,000 dairy cow operation near Wayne” in which a partner of this operation tried to rationalize industrial animal production a.k.a. factory farms to the BG Kiwanis Club.
As they say, facts are stubborn things, but facts are needed more than ever in these troubling times. Please let me elaborate:
First, family farms are owned and operated by a family, where most of the labor comes from family members. Family farmers are natural stewards of the LAND which is usually handed down from one generation to another. Sustainable agricultural systems are environmentally safe, economically viable, and socially just.
Whereas factory farms confine tens of thousands of animals or hundreds of thousands of poultry in industrial BUILDINGS – never on pasture. They emphasize high volume and profit with little regard for their effect on the environment, human health, animal welfare, and the rural economy. According to the EPA, confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs or factory farms) are a leading cause of water pollution in Ohio – – yet EPA refuses to hold them accountable.
According to Mike Ferner, the leader of the Lake Erie Advocates – “factory ‘farming’ is…killing Lake Erie, destroying family farms, confining millions of animals in lifelong cruelty and incubating the next pandemic.”
Therefore, I urge the BG Kiwanis Club to access the LEA website at www.lakeerieadvocates.org and schedule a presentation of their power point – “The 3rd Battle for Lake Erie”. This PPT exposes much more about the dangers of factory farms, especially how millions of gallons and megatons of untreated manure from NW Ohio CAFOs are over applied to tiled farm fields that drain into the western Lake Erie basin every year.
Big Ag tries to defend CAFOs and promote them as the future of animal agriculture, but they are not sustainable. Our food system is dominated by factory farms designed to produce as much cheap meat, milk, and eggs as quickly as possible.
The safety of our food system and the salvation of Lake Erie will only happen if enough people care and support family farms – not factory farms.
Vickie Askins
Cygnet
