Dairy Violations Can Be Kept Secret.

In yet another case of governments blocking citizen rights in order to protect agribusiness, an Idaho House Committee has passed a measure to allow dairies to keep waste management records secret.

The Idaho Dairymen’s Association has been complaining that environmental groups are “harassing” them after details about dangerous waste discharges at local dairies became public.  The Association has successfully convinced the House Agricultural Committee to pass a measure that would make any records concerning waste management (or in most cases mismanagement) confidential and unavailable to the public.

Essentially this means that if a dairy is dumping toxic feces into the water supply, the government will work with the dairy to keep it a secret from the public. We wouldn’t want those pesky environmentalists harassing the little old dairy farmers.

Factory farm fecal discharge is a huge problem. In the US alone, farms produce 87,000 pounds of feces per second. And now in Idaho we may no longer have the right to know what happens to it all.