FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Groups Join to Stop Industrial Dairy Pollution

Dairy Education Alliance Formed to Clean Up and Protect Communities

Contacts:     Alma Hasse, Idaho CARE 208-695-1556  
                      Lynn Henning, ECCSCM 517-605-7740
                      Charlie Tebbutt, Western Environmental Law                                   Center, 541-485-2471

Groups Join to Stop Industrial Dairy Pollution

Dairy Education Alliance Formed to Clean Up and Protect Communities

Community groups from more than a dozen big dairy states have joined forces in the Dairy Education Alliance to educate the public, elected officials, and government regulators about the serious environmental and economic damage being caused by industrial-sized dairies.

A typical 5,000 head, pen-confined industrial dairy operation produces up to 600,000 pounds of manure per day. This is as much waste as a city of 100,000 people produces, yet there are no sewage treatment plants for industrial dairies. These huge operations are taking over whole communities, particularly in the arid West where populations are sparse, the people are poor and the land is cheap.

“It’s time to take back our communities,” said Alma Hasse of Idaho CARE, co-chair of the Dairy Education Alliance. “We are literally sick, as well as tired, of having to deal with the massive pollution from these facilities and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

“These are factory dairies, not farms, pure and simple,” added Lynn Henning of Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan. “The stench from millions of pounds of manure, the clouds of flies and other pests that come with it, and the pollution of rivers and drinking water is astounding, yet little is being done to stop these problems. It’s destroying property values in neighboring communities and threatening the health of anyone living in the area.”

In recent years, industrial dairies have exploded in states with weak regulations and enforcement. The Dairy Education Alliance, whose goal is to ensure that these huge dairies operate in a socially responsible way, will be working in those and other large dairy states to educate area residents and hold the industry accountable.

“The ‘happy cows’ that the California dairy industry so fraudulently advertises are purely fictional. The cows at these industrial dairy operations never step foot on a live blade of grass,” said Charlie Tebbutt of the Western Environmental Law Center, co-chair of the DEA. “Our clients around the West, and people in the rest of the country, are being ignored by the agencies charged with protecting their health and natural resources.”

“I invite anybody to try spending even one day in these communities,” said ICARE’s Hasse. “It’s no one’s idea of the rural American Dream.”

In a related story, today the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced that the Minidoka National Monument in Idaho is one of the nation’s most threatened historic sites, in large part because of a 13,000+ head proposed dairy-related operation just over one mile upwind of the monument.

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