05/19/2019 / By Jhoanna Robinson
Over 50 groups are clamoring for Iowa lawmakers to mark as urgent the passing of a landmark legislation to enact a moratorium on factory farm expansion in a state that is home to more than 10,000 farm factories.
Krissy Kasserman, the national factory farm campaigner at Food & Water Watch, is of the opinion that factory farming is detrimental to the air and water and that a moratorium on the erection of said farms should begin.
Dozens of local, state, and national organizations said that a ban on new and expanded factory farms would serve as “an opportunity to evaluate the public health, economic, and societal impacts of factory farms while providing Iowa’s communities with important statutory protections from further expansion of this industry.”
According to the letter to a member of Iowa’s General Assembly on Thursday, February 9:
“Family farmers and rural residents are often left feeling like prisoners in their own homes, unable to hold family gatherings or hang laundry outside to dry due the overwhelming stench and air pollution.
Retirees are left with the realization that their homes and their properties – often their nest eggs – are depreciated due to the decline in property values associated with living next to a factory farm.
Research has shown that Iowans living near factory farms are more likely to experience respiratory problems, headaches, diarrhea, burning eyes, nausea, and more serious health problems as a result of factory farm air pollution.” (Related: Factory farming and modern food production dangers exposed.)
The letter said that Iowa is experiencing a “serious water pollution crisis,” quoting from a 2014 research that discovered 750 bodies of water in the state that contained pollutants or manifested conditions that are linked to factory farming “including E. coli, excessive algal growth, and diminished aquatic life.”
The groups put the blame on the Environmental Protection Agency and state officials who were remiss in their duties in properly regulating factory farms and making sure that such businesses adhere to local and state laws so that there are no detrimental effects to health and environment.
According to an editorial that was published in the Des Moines Register last fall regarding the establishment of factory farms, “Pressing pause may be the only way Iowa can catch up to this fast-growing industry.”
For more stories on how pollution harms the environment, visit Pollution.news.
Sources include:
Tagged Under: contaminated water, Ecology, environ, factory farm, factory farming, farm expansion, food production, harvest, hog operations, iowa, sow operation, Water contamination
COPYRIGHT © 2017 CLEAN WATER NEWS