By Nina Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
When Nancy Utesch first moved to Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, a family in her community was poisoned after drinking water contaminated with E. coli, which has been tied to manure spread on nearby farms. The entire family went to the hospital, Utesch tells Sentient, and the eight-month old daughter spent time in intensive care.
"We were really stunned by the outpouring of support for the farmer and not the family," she says. "Upon arriving here, we began to learn the inner workings of this very dysfunctional dynamic that [concentrated animal feeding operations] bring to a community, which really pits neighbors against neighbors."
It was quite the first impression of her county, where she and her husband Lynn have now lived for the last 20 years. Utesch's advocacy group, Kewaunee CARES, is one of 13 groups who sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over their lack of enforcement of CAFOs under the Clean Water Act. On Oct. 2 the court denied the petition in full.
Fewer Than 30 Percent of CAFOs Have Clean Water Act Permits
Utesch estimates that there were approximately two concentrated feeding operations, or CAFOs, in Kewaunee County when she moved there. Now, according to new data compiled by Food & Water Watch, Kewaunee County has 36 factory farms which produced over 2 billion pounds of waste in 2022. The manure from CAFOs is often kept in open-air lagoons, where it is stored until it is sprayed to fertilize agricultural fields. Any excess manure not soaked up by crops or grasses ends up in aquifers and waterways, contaminating wells with nitrate and causing health issues ranging from acute poisoning to cancer. In some states, like Iowa, animals in CAFOs produce 25 times as much waste as its human population.
The 13 groups were represented by Food & Water Watch staff attorney Emily Miller, who in September argued in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. EPA itself has admitted that fewer than 30 percent of CAFOs have Clean Water Act permits. In the petition denial EPA sent Food & Water Watch six years after the initial petition was filed in 2017, they wrote, "EPA shares your concern that CAFOs can be a significant source of pollutants into waters of the United States. The Agency recognizes that there may be opportunities to do more to address these pollutants." EPA's solution was to form a committee to determine next steps - a decision which the petitioners felt was too little, too late.
"EPA needs to really step up in their actions so that they can actually protect people and not just be saying, 'Oh, we're going to have more stakeholder meetings,'" Utesch says. "During all these years, all that's happened is further expansion."
In their denial, the judges wrote that though the agency acknowledged "the serious problem of CAFO-based waste discharges into U.S. waterways," its promise to "further study" its own manure pollution guidelines and "commission a stakeholders' subcommittee" was not an unreasonable response.
"The EPA has never demonstrated an urgency to the outright widespread devastation and impoverishment CAFOs leave in their wake," Utesch wrote in a text. "The well of 'hope' people echo we must keep is contaminated, and will continue to grow in its contamination, as long as EPA is beholden to corporate interests above the people their agency was designed to protect."
The "Special Sector That Gets a Pass"
The Clean Water Act was officially born in 1972, or in an era when cattle and pig CAFOs were coming to be the norm. Within the Clean Water Act, CAFOs are classified as "point sources" of pollution, requiring them to have National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. But according to petitioners in Food & Water Watch et al. v. EPA, "Half a century later, the United States Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of CAFOs has become one of the Clean Water Act's greatest unmet promises."
Food & Water Watch first submitted a petition on behalf of 32 environmental organizations in 2017, "urging the agency to fix its failed factory farm program under the Clean Water Act," Miller tells Sentient.
The case outlines two main issues with the current EPA regulatory structure for CAFOs - one being that most factory farms discharge pollution but lack the required federal permits to control these discharges, and the second being that the permits themselves are insufficient to protect waterways and communities from pollution.
"The reason why these things are happening is because of agricultural exceptionalism," says Silvia Secchi, a professor of geographical and sustainability sciences at the University of Iowa. "EPA is treating agriculture as this kind of special sector that gets a pass, and then gets a second pass and a third pass."
The biggest "pass" in question in this lawsuit is the agricultural stormwater discharge exemption. Under the current EPA rule, Miller says, as long as factory farms are applying waste in accordance with a nutrient management plan, any discharges that are precipitation-related from its land application areas are exempt from regulation.
"What has happened is that this has essentially allowed thousands of operations to completely evade permitting requirements altogether for their nonexempt discharges, because it provides them an easy out to explain away any evidence of discharges coming from their facilities," she says. "It requires almost no oversight from EPA or any other state agency to confirm that the operation is actually meeting the exemption."
This limited oversight is causing destruction to communities who live closest to the polluters. There are downstream effects, too, as pollution from agricultural states is the largest contributor to the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
The issue of CAFO pollution is a problem of scale, Chris Jones, water quality expert and president of Driftless Water Defenders recently said at an event on animal agriculture held in Des Moines. The solution does not exist in technological fixes or manure-treatment initiatives.
Instead, Jones says, "We need laws. We need laws that are going to help us get our arms around this and give us the environmental condition in this state that we deserve as citizens."
Secchi agrees.
"We need to see litigation as the way civil society responds to a captured agency," she tells Sentient. "Ideally we would have a more responsive Congress that does things to address new challenges...But because Congress cannot tie their shoelaces, what we have are these laws that have some good bones."
Ninth Circuit Sides With EPA Despite Persistent Pollution
In 2023, the EPA acknowledged that there was a significant problem with CAFO permitting and that their current regulations are failing to address it. But instead of addressing it head-on, Miller says, they decided to study it further.
"EPA is on record in a 2022 report stating that not only have its regulations failed to address the problem, but they are actually impeding effective enforcement of the Clean Water Act," she says. "In other words, the problem is persisting, not just in spite of EPA regulations, but because of them. What else does the EPA need to know?"
In court in September, Judge Salvador Mendoza asked EPA counsel in the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, "Why isn't now the time?" He added, "You don't need additional studies to understand the fact that you need to enforce the permitting process."
On Oct. 2, 2024, the judges released their final decision: "Because we find that EPA did not act arbitrarily, capriciously, or contrary to law, we deny the petition."
The decision comes as CAFO waste reaches untenable levels nationwide. According to Food & Water Watch, approximately 1.7 billion animals live in confinement on factory farms, producing 941 billion pounds of manure each year. And when it comes to pollution, Des Moines Water Works, which has the world's largest nitrate removal facility, must run their sometimes $10,000 per-day facility to keep drinking water safe for its residents when nitrate levels are high.
"We need judges who understand the reality of current agricultural production systems, the immediacy of the problems we face and the extensive evidence we already have," Secchi wrote in a text upon hearing the decision. "This panel [of judges] gave EPA leeway to keep kicking the can down the road. That's not a tenable situation."
Upon hearing the decision, Miller wrote in an email to Sentient: "We are of course disappointed by the decision. It's shocking that the court gave such short shrift to a critical issue. We'll keep working to hold EPA accountable for its decades of failure."
For Utesch, the entire process of petitioning and suing the EPA has instilled in her a belief that the agency is not serious about enforcing CAFO pollution, especially as it relates to human health.
"The CAFO issue is directly tied to human rights: the right one has to protecting personal health, home, air and water quality and quality of life, all which are severely compromised by industrial agribusiness," Utesch wrote. "EPA must remember and fulfill its mission, which is to protect."
Nina Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.
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Experts agree climate-smart agriculture will be critical in the fight against climate change. But with a divided Congress and no update to the Farm Bill since 2018, those who support New Mexico farmers are worried.
Sayrah Namaste, program co-director for the American Friends Service Committee, regularly meets with farmers who provide food to local schools. She said many tell her their mitigation efforts are outpaced and unlike the old days, they cannot ask experienced farmers for advice about such things as the best date to plant crops or when to expect the first frost.
"It's accelerating so fast that it's hard to even keep up with what they need to do," Namaste pointed out. "You know, it used to be you had guideposts, you had dates and it's not anymore. The climate is so chaotic that it's very hard to know, and that's just not happened for generations of farmers."
Congress was scheduled to update the 2018 Farm Bill in 2023, but a failure to agree on what's included delayed it to 2024 and now, again until next September. In addition to crop insurance, farm subsidies and U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs, the enormous farm bill includes the federal food stamp program, animal health, disaster preparedness and more.
Namaste noted to cope with climate change, New Mexico farmers plant a diversity of crops and sequence them to make sure they have at least one successful crop if others fail. She added the American Friends Service Committee will encourage lawmakers to support small-scale sustainable farms to give those who grow food a fighting chance.
"Record-breaking heat for weeks, or the largest wildlife in New Mexico history, or a drought that's the biggest in a century," Namaste outlined. "Those are really hard odds for farmers to be up against."
In 2022, New Mexico experienced its largest and most destructive wildfire in the state's history. Climate scientists recently confirmed 2024 was the hottest year on record, with damages from U.S. weather disasters estimated at more than $1 billion.
Disclosure: The American Friends Service Committee Southwest contributes to our fund for reporting. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
The revolving door isn’t just something you get stuck in while attempting to enter a hotel. It’s also a political phenomenon that creates all sorts of conflicts of interest throughout the American government. While not illegal, the revolving door is certainly unsavory, and even has deep impacts on the food we eat.
“Revolving door” refers to a cycle in which individuals alternate between working in the private sector and serving in the government as regulators of that sector; in this context, “regulator” can mean an employee of a regulatory agency, a lawmaker or any public official who plays some role in regulatory policy.
“Whether you are moving from the public sector to industry, or vice versa, there are incentives to look after your future self,” Silvia Secchi, professor and researcher at the University of Iowa’s Public Policy Center, tells Sentient. “You could be more lenient on the private sector in the way you implement regulations, or the way you assess fines in your regulatory capacity, because you think that’s going to help you in the future.”
The revolving door is usually a bidirectional, ongoing process, but it can also simply be a one-time switch from one sector to another.
Why Is the Revolving Door a Problem?
The revolving door gives industries an outsized, and sometimes even dominant, role in shaping the laws and regulations to which they are subject. In the worst-case scenarios, it can lead to something called regulatory capture — when an industry succeeds in fully co-opting the agency that regulates it.
Somebody who worked as a regulator has detailed insider knowledge of how the regulatory process works, loopholes and all. This knowledge is very useful for businesses seeking to avoid regulation, which gives heavily regulated industries a strong incentive to hire former regulators.
Meanwhile, the revolving door incentivizes lawmakers and regulators to implement industry-friendly policies while in government, as this can lead to well-paid jobs in those same industries after leaving government. These same folks might also be hesitant to enact regulations that would significantly disturb those industries, lest they jeopardize their employment prospects after leaving government.
“Basically, you remain friendly to industry,” Secchi says of those who move through the revolving door. “Not necessarily to one specific entity in the industry, but to industry as a whole. Which means that you remain marketable once you leave the administration, or once you leave government writ large.”
Corruption From the Revolving Door Can Be Hard to Trace
In one sense, the revolving door process unfolds transparently; hirings are usually a matter of public record, and are often announced eagerly in press releases. Even when they’re not, it’s easy enough to look at an official’s LinkedIn page and trace their employment history.
In another sense, though, the process is extremely opaque. Hirings may be public record, but the conversations and decisionmaking that results from those hirings are not. They take place behind closed doors, and usually stay that way; regulators generally don’t come out and say, “I’ve implemented weaker chemical regulations than I otherwise would have, because I want to get hired by a chemicals company after I leave government.”
As a result, it can be difficult to trace a precise path of causation from a revolving door hire to a specific public policy. But there are plenty of revolving door situations that, if nothing else, look mighty suspicious.
Revolving Door Case Study #1: School Lunches
Every five years, the USDA and HHS jointly publish updates to the Dietary Guidelines For Americans (DGA), a lengthy document of nutritional recommendations that influences wide swaths of public food policy. One such policy is the national school lunches program; by law, menu offerings in school lunches must adhere to the DGA’s recommendations.
In 2015, when it was time for the DGA to be updated, the committee that drafts the document recommended that the next version take planetary health, as well as personal health, into consideration. This would have been a radical change, and because plant-based foods are almost uniformly better for the environment than animal-based ones, it would almost certainly have resulted in plants comprising a much larger portion of school lunches than they do now.
But before the next version of the DGA could be published, Congress passed an appropriations bill stating that the DGA’s recommendations must be “solely nutritional and dietary in nature.” This effectively forbade the USDA and HHS from taking environmental factors into concern when drafting the new DGA, and so they didn’t.
Why did Congress squash the environmentally focused DGA? It’s impossible to know for certain, but it’s also impossible to ignore who was passing through the revolving door as this whole episode was playing out.
In the beginning of 2015, Sen. Pat Roberts hired a load of new staffers to run the Senate Agriculture Committee, which he headed. This committee would go on to draft the appropriations bill that restrained the DGA — and Roberts stacked it with food industry lobbyists.
As chief of staff, Roberts hired Joel Leftwich, a senior lobbyist for PepsiCo who’s passed through the revolving door many, many times. The new head of livestock and food safety issues on the committee was Chelsie Keys, a lobbyist for the National Pork Producers Council. Other new committee staffers included Julian Baer, a longtime food industry lobbyist, and Matt Erickson, formerly a lawyer for the American Farm Bureau.
If the DGA had been updated to include environmental concerns, it would have hurt the bottom lines of both PepsiCo, which has been sued for pollution by multiple state and local governments, and the pork industry, which has a strong presence in school lunches.
We’ll probably never know for certain if the Senate staffers who used to work for Pepsi and Big Pork played a role in killing a policy that would have hurt Pepsi and Big Pork. But they were certainly in a position to do so, and had an incentive to as well. They had, as Sherlock Holmes might put it, both motive and opportunity.
Revolving Door Case Study #2: Tom Vilsack
A classic case of a “revolver,” as the nonprofit information site Open Secrets likes to refer to them, is outgoing USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Vilsack served two terms as Iowa governor, briefly worked as a lobbyist, and was then appointed by President Obama to head the USDA. After eight years as Secretary of Agriculture, Vilsack left government to work for the dairy industry, becoming vice president of Dairy Management, Inc (DMI) and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, one of DMI’s subsidiaries.
These are just two of many interrelated trade organizations that exist to bolster the U.S. dairy industry and promote the interests of American dairy farmers. In his dual positions as vice president and CEO, Vilsack earned a salary of nearly $1 million, according to public records — more than four times what he made as a public official.
In 2021, Vilsack returned to the public sector, serving as Secretary of Agriculture under President Biden.
What sorts of policies were impacted by Vilsack’s movement through the revolving door? Secchi tells Sentient that it’s not a matter of “a specific policy that will favor one specific industry,” but rather, the fact that Vilsack “has always been incredibly friendly to Big Ag, of which Big Dairy is a manifestation.”
But Secchi does point out that, when the time came for the USDA to distribute Inflation Reduction Act funds to “climate-smart” initiatives, Vilsack opted to send much of the money to powerful, well-established organizations in the agriculture sector.
“He gave money to Tyson, he gave money to the National Pork Board, he gave money to Land O’ Lakes,” Secchi says. “If you look at the beneficiaries of that money, they are largely conventional, large scale entities.”
So, after making millions working for Big Ag in the private sector, Vilsack returned to the federal government and gave millions to Big Ag. He did so under the auspices of the USDA’s climate-smart program; the fact that beef, pork and butter production are nowhere near “climate-smart” is the icing on the cake.
Revolving Door Case Study #3: Pesticide Regulation at the EPA
The EPA’s pesticide division offers another helpful, if discouraging, example of the revolving door at work.
Jim Jones (no relationship to the cult leader) is a former pesticide regulator. He worked at the EPA for 20 years in a number of capacities, including Director of the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) and Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP).
During his tenure, a chemical company called Vive Crop Protection requested EPA approval for an insecticide containing bifenthrin, a Class C carcinogen. Normally, such approval would require extensive inhalation testing; however, the OPP waived that requirement, according to a report in the Intercept, and approved the insecticide.
After leaving the EPA, Jones joined the board of directors at Vive Crop Protection. In 2017, he became executive vice president of the Household and Commercial Products Association; while there, he boasted of the organization’s “strong and mutually respectful relationship with the EPA [which] continues to give members direct access to officials at every pertinent level of the agency,” according to the Intercept.
In 2023, Jones returned to the public sector to serve as Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods at the FDA, where he remains to this day.
Jones is not an anomaly. Since 1974, the OPP has had nine directors; two went into retirement immediately after departing the EPA, but the other seven all went on to work for the pesticide industry after leaving their positions as regulators. Other EPA officials have gone on to work for Monsanto, Scotts Miracle-Gro and DuPont.
As of 2019, 72 pesticides that had been banned in the European Union were still legal in America.
The Revolving Door Leads to Consolidation and Deregulation
The revolving door does more than just influence individual policies here and there, Secchi says. It’s also created a culture in government in which regulators are encouraged not to crack down too hard on the industries they’re regulating.
“It’s not necessarily a direct, simple connection between one individual, one industry and one job,” Secchi tells Sentient. “It’s more like a whole culture of, you know, patting ourselves on the back, and not enacting policies that may question the primacy and the overall approach of conventional agriculture.”
The revolving door also intersects with a trend in the agriculture industry known as consolidation. This is when larger producers and conglomerates buy smaller companies or put them out of business en masse, resulting in less competition, fewer farms, and more power and money in the hands of the richest agricultural producers.
“In the 1950s, there was still a sizable population that was engaged in agriculture,” Secchi explains. “The number of farms was much larger, the number of farmers was much larger. But now there are very, very few farmers.”
Consolidation both reduces the total number of people working in agriculture and ensures that the largest agribusinesses increasingly dominate the sector. As a result, when people like Vilsack implement policies that benefit “the agriculture sector,” they’re really implementing policies that benefit a tiny minority of wealthy Americans.
“[Agriculture policy] has become more and more separated from the realities of the majority of American people, and the issues that are relevant to American people,” Secchi says. “And so I would say it’s become a much bigger problem, because the rent-seeking industry has become much more potent, and much less representative of social values and interests.”
The Bottom Line
There’s no clear solution to the revolving door problem. Sure, lawmakers could pass laws to crack down on it — but lawmakers are among those who benefit from revolving door politics, so why would they? It’s not a surprise that legislative efforts to close the revolving door have all gone absolutely nowhere.
“I think it’s a real problem for this country that there is this bipartisan support for an obviously rent-seeking minority, very wealthy and very well connected, and through things like the revolving door door process, very capable of influencing the public decision making process,” Secchi says. “Big Ag now represents the interests of a very, very, very small minority of people, and causes a lot of problems for the rest of us.”
Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.
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