Four Really Bad Environmental-Health Regulatory Decisions; One Additional Major Reason to Farm Organically
July 20, 2007
by JOE MILLER
The environmental and health related decisions of our regulatory agencies just keep getting worse and worse. There is, however, one very positive and uplifting finding to report: organic farming combats global warming...big time!
Outbreaks of illness traced to tainted domestic and imported food have repeatedly occurred. Importers routinely skirt Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. Investigations have repeatedly documented that the FDA isn't doing its job. So what does the FDA do? It closes seven of its 13 laboratories (1)! Unbelievable!
In January of 2005, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exempted 2,600 confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), mostly hog CAFOs, from Clean Air Act regulations for 30 months in exchange for paying a minimal fine and agreeing to participate in an air quality data-collection research program. Environmental groups contended that the EPA's exemptions were improper, but a federal appeals court recently ruled 2-1 that the exemptions were valid (2). Twenty six hundred factory farms now have exemption from, and cannot be sued under, Clean Air Act regulations for 30 months! Data-collection at only 24 of the 2,600 CAFOs began this summer! Unbelievable!
In May of this year, the U.S. EPA announced that court mandated improvements in water quality standards at CAFOs, standards which currently fail to meet Clean Water Act regulations, will be delayed until a new presidential administration (3). This is the same EPA that is dismantling its libraries, and reducing access and service (4); reducing its laboratories and research programs (5); and increasingly outsourcing audits and reviews, and deemphasizing public health (6). All unbelievable!
- http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=856
- http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=851
- http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=861
- http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=867
Despite years of efforts to reduce toxics going into Lake Michigan, and in violation of both federal Clean Water Act and Indiana law, the Indiana Department of Environmental Regulation (IDEM) recently gave the BP oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana permission to discharge 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into the lake each day (7). Unbelievable! They did this so that BP could embark on a 3.8 billion dollar expansion to refine heavier Canadian crude oil, a process that will release even more global warming gases than current refining processes. Again unbelievable!
I'll close with one major positive, uplifting, and believable (!) finding -- land farmed organically with methods such as no till and winter cover crops sequesters 30 percent more carbon dioxide than conventionally farmed land (8). The following link (9) will take you to an informative nine minute video elaborating upon this finding, and a fact sheet (10) with further information and links.
- http://www.newfarm.org/depts/NFfield_trials/1003/carbonsequest.shtml
- http://www.quantumshift.tv/v/1181042956
- http://www.quantumshift.tv/specialreport/1/
Department of Psychology
51 Madeleva
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN