Friday CAFO Review

Kathryn Petry got a letter posted in today’s Pal-Item:

I received information from an AG liaison of IDEM that there are permits for 44 CAFOs, 228,000 hogs, 100,000 chickens and a dairy wanting to expand in Randolph County and at least three more hog CAFOs are pending. If this county is going to be suitable for anyone to live here, regulations must be made and enforced for the survival of the CAFOs and residents of the county. Families will not consider moving to this county when they are going to be next to a CAFO. What will happen to our schools, towns when we have more hogs than people?

Link.

As did Randolph County resident Rachel Carpenter:

I commend the Randolph County Commissioners for passing a moratorium on new CAFOs until community concerns can be addressed. I have heard many people who have initially been in favor of CAFO expansion say that they think we have enough for now. It’s time to wait and see how things go.

Maxwell Foods, the North Carolina company bringing 78,000 new pigs to Randolph County, has said over and over that they want to be good neighbors. Now they are suing the commissioners for expressing the concerns of the community. Is that being a good neighbor?

Link.

More CAFO action in Carroll County, Indiana:

Pasman’s Pleasant Dairy owned by Erik, 45, and Heidi, 47, Pasman, will join two operations in various stages of development - Optima Dairy near the Carroll-Cass County line in the northeast, and Boerman-Carroll Dairy near Cutler in the south.
Like the Boerman operation, Pasman’s owners come from Holland and chose Carroll County following several visits to the Midwest.

Link. (Herald Journal).

I loved the comments from the dairyman as to why he chose Indiana:

Pasman said Holland is such a small country - about a quarter the size of Indiana - that space is extremely limited. Space limits plus a government initiative to build tourism in Holland, were added incentives to relocate.

So, Holland wants to make itself attractive to tourist by keeping livestock operations in check (Pasman currently has 150 head of cattle in Holland): What does that say for Indiana? That we don’t care about our image, I guess. This dairy will be located on Pleasant Run creek which feeds into the “Mighty” Wabash, but with 2 pig farms already spreading manure in the neighborhood, maybe the cows will not be noticeable.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 2:55 pm and is filed under CAFO, CAFOs!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.