Kennedy’s Water Keeper Alliance bashes pork producers
The Water Keeper Alliance, a litigious environmental group headed by Robert
Kennedy Jr., has taken aim at Iowa pork producers in its campaign to eliminate
large hog farms.
In a series of speeches in the Midwest, Kennedy said that the Iowa Department
of Natural Resources does not enforce the state’s environmental laws, that
Iowa politics is dominated by the livestock industry, and that the pork industry
is a greater threat to the US than terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Water Keeper has filed suits seeking damages for alleged environmental damage
from large-scale hog farms in North Carolina, Missouri, Florida and Nebraska.
The suit in North Carolina was dismissed without a trial for lack of merit in
March 2001. After the dismissal, Kennedy told the Associated Press that Water
Keeper will eventually win because “We have lawyers with the deepest pockets
and they’ve agreed to fight the industry to the end. We’re going after
all of them.”
Industry giants such as Smithfield, Premium Standard, Bell Farms, Seaboard
Farms, Cargill, Land O’Lakes, and Hormel are the targets in these actions.
Anti-consumer giants Sierra Club, Animal Welfare Institute, and the National
Farmers Union join Water Keeper as plaintiffs. Kennedy said that any monetary
awards gained by the lawsuits would go either to the US Treasury or to mend
the alleged environmental damage.
Hog farmers are already subject to federal and state environmental laws that
govern disposal of waste, and lawmakers are dealing with complaints about odor
and pollution by passing new regulations. Pork producers are not cavalier about
the potential for problems; university agriculture departments are researching
new systems and refining old ones to keep up with changes in regulations and
community standards and to increase efficiency and reduce costs for farmers.
Iowa, the latest state to incur the wrath of Water Keeper, recently passed new
regulations governing the building of new hog confinement facilities.
Waste control systems include settling basins, constructed wetlands, vegetative
filter strips and soil infiltration areas, and injecting waste into the soil
as crop fertilizer. The Farm Bill passed by Congress includes subsidies for
manure management for qualified livestock producers.
According to the website Consumer Freedom.com, Water Keeper and its allies
file suits against large pork producers for the money. In a profile about Water
Keeper, Consumer Freedom asserts:
“The master plan? Make reckless claims that hog producers are polluting
our rivers – even though they’re already subject to some of the strictest
environmental regulations in the United States, and it’s typically large-scale
hog farms that receive environmental awards. Make vicious threats about dragging
the pork industry into court and shutting it down – forgetting all of the
American jobs at stake. And when the cameras are rolling, make absolutely sure
that Kennedy is front and center to generate sympathetic media coverage.”
Kennedy apparently agrees with that assessment. On February 18, 2001, he told
Weekend Edition, a news program of National Public Radio, “We have
attorneys now who have money and they know what they’re doing. They are
the best in the country and we are going to put an end to this industry.”
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