IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 5
In nearly every case, as if there were a blueprint, the pattern of corporate
invaders is similar. Dr. Laura DeLind describes this pattern succinctly in
her summary of the grassroots protest by Farm Environment Defense
Foundation (FEDH) against Jackson County Hog Producers (JCHP), a tensite,
480 sow-per-site operation in Jackson County, Michigan. 141
http://www.iatp.org/hogreport/sec5.html (27 of 38)2/27/2006 3:50:13 AM
Although the FEDH won its battle, the victory was bittersweet. As the
JCHP had presented itself as simply another beleaguered farming
operation, the battle became "reinterpreted by agribusiness as an assault on
the 'right to farm' of all farmers regardless of scale and organizational
management." 142 This reinterpretation led to development of state right-tofarm
guidelines that disadvantaged rural residents and smaller farmers.
Further, the right-to-farm argument: 143
recast a complex agro-environmental issue into an issue of
individual entitlement. Within this context, it mystified the
social and political dimensions of the original issue by
reducing them to a set of technical problems (i.e., odor,
surface water contamination) amenable to individually
managed solutions. It likewise concealed the class
divisions that were developing between corporate farmers
and family farmers (and in this case rural residents
generally) by polarizing producers and nonproducers,
agriculturalists and environmentalists.
Buried in the technical arguments that put the debates into the hands of
"experts" far removed from the consequences are the critical issues of the
loss of state and local democracy and the capitulation of public institutions
to corporate interests.
The mixed outcome of the struggle in Jackson County, Michigan serves as
a warning against allowing agribusiness to reduce the original issue to a
set of technical problems, each of which can be solved individually. 144 As
this report shows, the factory farm problem has many dimensions. It
cannot be solved by the resolution of one or more individual technical
problems.
Some Strategies and Action Alternatives for Improving the
Social Accountability of Animal Production
1. Fight the activities of agribusiness and animal factory supporters
that influence legislators to weaken state anticruelty statutes to
allow practices, which would be considered cruel if applied to
dogs or other pets, to be used with farm animals.
Proactively, hold referenda or ballot initiatives to ban certain cruel