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Dairy Education Alliance
Big Dairy’s relentless push for ever-greater production and consolidation has become a public health, environmental, and social disaster. The formation of the Dairy Education Alliance (DEA) is an effort to bring together the many individuals and organizations that have been working diligently to protect and educate the public about the true impacts of these animal production facilities.
Big Dairy’s relentless push for ever-greater production and consolidation has become a public health, environmental, and social disaster. Industrial dairies– which can house many thousands of animals under one roof – are responsible for a litany of significant problems, including (but not limited to):
- Surface/ground water and air pollution;
- Excessive water usage, especially in arid areas;
- Inadequate-to-nonexistent waste management;
- Soil degradation;
- Antibiotic abuse and the spread of antibiotic resistance;
- Diminished food safety and increased difficulty identifying the true source of food contamination;
- Poor community and worker health;
- Unethical labor practices;
- Adverse economic and social impacts—vanishing family farms and farmland; increasing rural poverty rates; a rapid decline in local living conditions and general quality of life; and
- Inhumane treatment of animals.
The extent to which the Big Dairy Industry has been allowed to wreak such havoc is in no small part due to the silent consent of those in power-- in the form of lack of governmental oversight. In states where these Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) have established a strong presence, the existing regulatory environment is, in many cases, similar to that of third-world countries.
Individuals and organizations have been working diligently to protect and educate the public about the true impacts of these animal production facilities. Until now they have been largely unaware of each other and struggling. The formation of the Dairy Education Alliance (DEA) marks the end of those isolated fights: dozens of grassroots organizations, individual activists, and concerned environmental legal experts have joined forces in order to consolidate our individual efforts and compel change on a national scale.
The DEA is dedicated to putting a stop to the destructive force of Industrial Dairy. We have a presence in all Big Dairy states, and other states, including California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma and Nebraska.