The Inside Dope: How is this right on any level?

January 3, 2006

How is this right on any level?

A letter to the editor in the QC Times reveals a very troubling attempt by the Iowa legislature to make it a crime to oppose factory farms.

Last year, the Iowa legislature introduced the Chronic Agriculture Complainer Bill - a blatant attempt to stifle the voices of rural Iowans. It would have silenced those who speak out against the environmental problems that factory farms create. It was an attempt to squash democracy and stomp on the rights of rural residents.

The Chronic Agriculture Complainer Bill will come up again during the next legislative session. It’s up to everyday people to stop it.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and other family farmers and rural residents will be at the capitol Jan. 10. We will work to win back our democracy, our health and our quality of life. I hope you join us in telling the legislature, Gov. Vilsack, DNR Director Vonk and others that we need family farms, clean air, clean water and local control.

It’s time lawmakers stop yielding to powerful industry lobbyists and start listening to the needs of their constituents. We must protect democracy. Please join us on Jan. 10. You’ll be surprised what we can accomplish together.

Tommie Stoner

Afton, Iowa

1 Comments:

At 1/04/2006 9:38 AM, Anonymous said...: Restricting the ability to speak out against any single industry is ridiculous and against the principle of free speech on which this nation was founded. This dispute proves what I've said before: factory farms are not run by farmers, they are run by corporations and should be treated like the manufacturing operations that they are. These facilities should require special zoning with all the public input that entails, and not automatically be allowed in any agricultural zone without review. For years, the powerful ag lobby fought any government oversight of farming operations - no zoning, no building permits, exemption from labor laws, etc. Now that lack of oversight has come back to bite the family farmer in the b**. Farmers can not have it both ways: either you live with the same laws the rest of us do, or you accept the consequences of exemption.