Study Uncovers Factory Farm Tax Breaks at Taxpayers' Expense

Iowans Agree: Factory Farms Should Pay  

Members
of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) hail a recent report
called “CAFOs Uncovered” by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS),
the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment
and a safer world. The report analyzes the obvious and not-so-obvious
costs that taxpayers and consumers are forced to pay to keep the
factory farm industry afloat.

Margaret
Mellon, director of UCS’s Food and Environment Program, stated, “If
CAFOs were forced to pay for the ripple effects of harm they have
caused, they wouldn’t be dominating the U.S. meat industry like they
are today.”

The
report states that, “misguided federal farm policies have encouraged
the growth of [factory farms] by shifting billions of dollars in
environmental, health and economic costs to taxpayers and communities.”

The
executive summary of the report states that factory farms “are not the
inevitable result of market forces. Instead, these unhealthy operations
are largely the result of misguided public policy that can and should
be changed.”

“This is another study that confirms what CCI has been saying for years,” said CCI member Garry Klicker from Bloomfield.
“The Environmental Quality Incentives Program should be used to help
family farmers protect our air and water, not as another form of
corporate welfare for factory farms. We also need environmental
protection laws that force factory farm polluters to pay for their
clean up and report their toxic emissions.”

That’s
why members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement are asking
Governor Culver to veto the odor study, HF 2688, a bill that requires
taxpayers to foot the bill of nearly $23 million to study factory farm
odor mitigation techniques over the next five years. This report is
another reinforcement that factory farms get too much taxpayer funding,
and the odor study delays enforcing much-needed standards. The report
also highlights the need for clean air standards for hydrogen sulfide
and ammonia, which are toxic to human health.

The full report can be viewed here