August 13, 2002
Excerpts from press release by Ken Midkiff.

Sierra Club releases Rap Sheet on CAFOs

The RapSheet is a project of the Sierra Club. We are quite unfortunate in that here in Missouri, we have 5 of the 10. Some are just bit players – Cargill, ConAgra – while others have major operations – Tysons and Smithfields (Murphy’s). There is one company that has almost all of its facilities in Missouri – Premium Standard/ContiGroup. But, these companies have caused major environmental damages in this and other states. (One company in the Report that tried to come into our state was sent packing – Seaboard which had its aims on setting up a packing plant in St. Joseph.)

View Rap sheets at:  www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/rapsheets
The reason that this was placed online was threefold:
1 – Sheer volume – the printed version is longer than War and Peace. Over 500 pages, with 630 operations in 44 states.
2 – This is intended to be a tool for communities that are targeted by one of the agribusiness corporations, so that it can quickly be determined what kind of record has been amassed in other places.
3. As such, this is a work-in-progress. As additional information comes in, it will be added to the online database.

This is the most comprehensive study ever conducted of the violations compiled by this country’s animal factories. But, it is not inclusive – these were simply the ones available to the volunteers and staffers who conducted the research.As such, this study, voluminous as it is, simply represents the tip of the iceberg. The rest is under the water, waiting to sink unwary ships – our nation’s rural communities.

There are 24 Missouri facilities profiled in the online database. An example rap sheet is a Missouri company – Ham Hill, which is operated by the Sandidges of Saline County, and which has a record of pollution dating back to the early 1970s.

Brent Sandidge, current operator of the hog facility, was appointed to the Governor’s Livestock Advisory Committee and is the current chairman of the Missouri Pork Association. As such, we would assert that Mr. Sandidge’s record speaks for itself, and thus makes him a perfect ambassador and spokesperson for an industry that is out of control.

We didn’t get to this point by accident – where massive corporate-owned or controlled livestock factories have fouled the air and water and run family farmers out of the hog and poultry businesses. Nope, the only actions taken by state and federal agencies have been to protect, defend and advocate for BigPig and BigChicken.

Even where we have protective laws or regulations, there is a failure to enforce. There are many, many Notices of Violation issued to animal factories each year…but to this point, the air still stinks and the waters are still fouled. Fines and penalties, even when issued, are so minimal that deterrence is not realized --- and indeed are just viewed as the cost of doing business.

While several counties in this and other states have passed restrictive health-based ordinances – or where state law allows have quite simply banned concentrated animal feeding operations, in our state large swaths of land have been essentially turned over to multi-national agribusiness corporations:

• In SW Missouri, a massive concentration of poultry and egg-laying production has resulted in every stream in MacDonald County being placed on the “Impaired Waterbody” list. The companies are Tysons, Simmons and MO-ARK, all of which own and operate production facilities and processing facilities in MacDonald County.
  
• In northern Missouri – over 2.5 million hogs are raised by PSF/ContiGroup, and in the process the company has wracked up over 150 “accidental releases” of hog wastes, fouled the air, and made life miserable for those that live around their operations.
  
• In western Missouri, about 50 miles south of Kansas City – Murphy Family Farms (now owned or controlled by some confusing agreement with Smithfields) is spewing pollution
  across Vernon and Barton counties. For some time, Murphys operated without any state permit.
  
• The state’s “Dairy Belt” – centered around Springfield – continues to expand with larger and larger industrial dairies.
  
• Many other remote pockets of the state contain large animal factory complexes such as Meek’s Poultry, Sharpe Land and Cattle Company, Cargill Pork, Johnson County Egg, and Lincoln County Egg.
  

How did we get to this sorry situation?