Making sausage is really disgusting. Regulating Wisconsin's livestock and dairy industry is markedly more disgusting.
A recent investigative report in the Wisconsin State Journal showed that state laws regulating factory farms are too soft, if they are even enforced at all. In some cases, the laws even side with factory farms, protecting their economic interests over state resources as well as air and water quality.
This leaves things up to the people who are affected most by the oversight: the citizens who live near factory farms. They are the ones smelling the manure on a daily basis because of factory farm recklessness, yet they are still almost powerless to change anything. State laws may be weak in terms of regulating factory farms, but the WSJ report showed they still prevent individual counties from doing little more than complaining. Counties must exhibit a certain vigilance to fight back, and the only way to do this is through the means of legislative bureaucracy.
We're also seeing science used as an objective tool in this case. Science is not objective, it is painted by the ideas of the person using it, especially when it is being used to inform environmental legislation. Science is often a compassionate discipline, and most of the time it errs toward the side of the environment, as it usually should.
The waste management practices we have been seeing from factory farms are compromising our quality of life in Wisconsin, and they are all rooted in the ignorance of simple science.
Material runoff is becoming a huge issue, particularly in Wisconsin. This is because our soil is not an infinite sink for waste and construction debris, though most people like to think of it that way. This is why regulating animal populations on factory farms is important. The factory farms need to have the space and procedures necessary to dispose of all the waste.
Again, the WSJ found the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has lacked the jurisprudence to do what is necessary in this case, accepting all permits for factory farms in the past few years. They have also allowed farms to operate above their capacity, some without a permit at all.
Some manure pits are growing beyond carrying capacity. Factory farms show a complete disregard for the communities they've invaded, even to the point of dumping manure on snow (the problem with that, like salt in Madison, is that snow melts and has a higher tendency to run off into neighboring land).
Practices like this have led to a certain level of protectiveness in counties throughout Wisconsin. Nobody wants to neighbor a factory farm mainly because they don't want to live near the mess. Most people know that once a factory farm moves in, it is almost impossible to levy any legislation against its practices.
But how far can it go? Will the state Legislature and the DNR continue to sell out the citizens in the name of industrial progress?
As former Talking Head David Byrne once said, ""As things fell apart, nobody paid much attention."" Our state Legislature can no longer sit back and allow factory farms to disregard their environmental responsibility. Profit can no longer be the bottom line. There is something to be said for quality of life and our resources. We need to protect them, and protecting them is becoming far too precarious.
