You Know You Live near a Factory Farm When Your Kids Go Fishing with a Pool Skimmer

Farmers and regulators are the same people

Concerns about conflict of interest and ethics have no place in the agricultural decision making process. Whenever issues of agricultural pollution go public, or large manure spills hit the headlines, the Soil and Water Conservation Committee becomes omnipresent, appearing at every conference and quoted in every article — but what is this committee? The name causes people to think that their commitment is to the protection of our natural resources, but this is not the case — their commitment is to the protection of agriculture’s image, and its interests. By New York State law, three out of the Committee’s five voting members have to be farm: One from the Farm Bureau, one from the Grange, and one Representative-At-Large for Farm Interests. And as an influential component of every task force responsible for cleaning up our lakes and waterways, they make sure that no goals are set, and no regulatory steps are taken that restrict the profitability of industrial farming in New York. You can’t judge a committee by its cover story.