Sierra Club Says Millions Spent on Wealthy Hog, Chicken Farms

September 16, 1999

The Sierra Club says "enormous taxpayer giveaways" benefit wealth factory hog and chicken farms and in return, the public gets polluted air and water.

"Governments are spending millions of taxpayers dollars to bring a pollution nightmare into our neighborhoods," says Ken Midkiff, coordinator of the Sierra Club's Clean Water Committee. "In state after state, while factory farms rake in the financial benefits, Americans are paying the environmental, health and social costs."

The Sierra Club has issued a study on the subject that says concentrated animal feeding operations have benefitted from millions of tax dollars for road improvements, railroad spurs, worker training and waste-water treatment plants.

In return, the report charges, residents must boil tap water, inhale horrendous odors and sell family farms. "This money is not creating economic development," says Midkiff, "it is creating environmental destruction."

The large farms are often controversial in local areas, but their advocates say they also bring benefits not highlighted in the Sierra Club report. These include jobs in the facilities, additional local economic activity, increased demand for area farmers' crops that are used as feed, and lower meat and poultry costs for consumers. Advocates of large-scale livestock and poultry production assert that environmental damage may actually be more common from smaller operations, which are less regulated and not always able to make capital investments to prevent pollution.

The report profiles Cagle's, Inc., Kentucky; circle Four Farms, Utah; DeCoster Farms, Iowa; Murphy Family Farms, Illinois; Perdue Farms, Maryland; Premium Standard Farms, Missouri; Prestage Farms, Mississippi; Seaboard Corporation, Oklahoma; Smithfield foods, North Carolina, and Tyson Foods, Inc., Arkansas.

It is available on the Internet at http://www.sierraclub.org/cafos/report99/.