IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 7
Clean Water Fund has been effective in Minnesota and Colorado in
building a grassroots political base and implementing campaigns to
change local, state, and federal agriculture and environmental policies.
Clean Water Fund is implementing a broad-based consumer campaign to
build grassroots political power and create a training program for
organizers in strategic parts of the country.
Dakota Rural Action is an 11-year-old grassroots, nonprofit, nonpartisan,
membership organization of low and moderate-income rural people whose
mission is the empowerment of disenfranchised individuals and
communities through direct action organizing. DRA has also organized to
reform state and county institutions and regulations that govern the siting,
regulation, and enforcement of large-scale hog confinement facilities.
Through community organizing and statewide issue campaigns, DRA has
initiated local zoning ordinances in previously unzoned counties. It has
worked with county governments to improve existing zoning laws. It has
held local and state politicians accountable to open meeting laws and has
participated in public hearings to improve the state's general permit for
concentrated livestock operations. It also has worked at the state
legislative level to toughen state regulations regarding water quality and
protection, zoning, liability and siting of factory farms.
A number of groups provide useful websites for activists. Families
Against Rural Messes (FARM) is a citizen's group organized in 1996 to
advocate for a fair balance between individual and community, agriculture
and economic development, and industrial and ecological interests in rural
Illinois. Their website helps them educate the general public, their
membership, and legislators about the large-scale livestock industry.
FARM also pushes for new laws to promote responsible agriculture and
regulate large-scale livestock corporations. The Missouri Rural Crisis
Center (MRCC) also maintains a comprehensive website on the impacts of
factory hog farming and provides agricultural content for In Motion
magazine, also available at the MRCC website.
Strategy 6.
Public Health and Worker Safety
Unwise use in human medicine is a source of antibiotic resistance and
must be corrected, but it is not the only source of resistance (see Part 2).
The problem of antibiotic resistance also stems in significant part from the
routine low-level, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals to
suppress disease outbreaks and promote growth. It is important to curtail
inappropriate prescription of antibiotics for human ailments to preserve
their effectiveness in treating human disease. Antibiotics also are very
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