Southern York County Life

Reference the Hopewell Township CAFO Ordinance and my previous comments concerning the EHT CAFO ordinance.

I want to point out something.

Peach Bottom CAFO trial balloon occurred during 2003. I read it in the newspaper.

Federal Register printed a notice (actually the new CAFO law) Feb. 13, 2003.

The New CAFO regulations took affect Apr 14, 2003. (The East Hopewell Township Ordinance is 1-2004, meaning it was the first ordinance for 2004.)

You know how I know this , I did a Google search for CAFO, also searched for NPDES.

I did this even though I’m not a qualified member of the bar, I don’t hang out a “shingle”.

1rover1, you calculating all theezse thinghs ?

I was informed today when I contacted Hopewell Township with a question regarding their CAFO ordinance that I posted to this forum, that the ordinance was considered a “proposed ordinance” because there were several amendments made. The amendments were made the night after East Hopewell Township’s supervisor meeting which is when Hopewell Township’s supervisor meeting occurred.  The amendments were introduced and voted upon the night after East Hopewell Township’s supervisor meeting. I had paid for and picked the “proposed ordinance” [not mentioned to me when I picked up the ordinance] up the afternoon of the September East Hopewell Township supervisor’s meeting.

I will be posting the revised ordinance which I received today sometime this evening. 

York Dispatch
September 08, 2004

Shrewsbury Protects Water Sources
Wellhead Ordinance Wins EPA Award

By BARB KREBS For The York Dispatch

The Environmental Protection Agency will recognize Shrewsbury Borough tonight for adopting an ordinance that protects wellheads.

An EPA representative will present the borough council with a Source Water Protection Award at the council’s 7:30 p.m. meeting.

The ordinance establishes a protective zone around all borough wells to keep out hazardous chemicals and other potential pollution, said public works director Brian Sweitzer.

Other safeguards taken include providing information on how local businesses handle hazardous chemicals that may be used in their operation, and educating citizens on how to protect drinking water, Sweitzer said.

The borough has identified about 30 private wells that need to be abandoned and capped to protect groundwater sources, and it also painted local storm drains to warn residents they should not use them to dispose of hazardous chemicals, Sweitzer said. 

“OFFICIAL”

HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP
ORDINANCE NO. 11 -2004

AN ORDINANCE OF HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP,
YORK COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA AMENDING THE
HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP ZONING ORDINANCE TO
DEFINE AND REGULATE CONCENTRATED ANIMAL
FEEDING OPERATIONS

WHEREAS, Hopewell Township (Township) is a political subdivision, being a second class township; and,

WHEREAS, the Township is governed in land use by the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, 53 P.S. §10101 et seq (MPC); and,

WHEREAS, pursuant to the MPC, the Township has adopted a Zoning Ordinance;

WHEREAS, the Township has determined that it is appropriate to add regulations for concentrated animal operations and concentrated animal feeding operations in the Ordinance:

NOW THEREFORE, be it ordained and enacted and it is hereby ORDAINED AND ENACTED as follows:

SECTION 1: Section 102.2 of the Zoning Ordinance is amended by adding after the definition of “ADULT THEATER” and before the definition of “AGRARIAN COMMODITIES” the following:

“AEU; ANIMAL EQUIVALENT UNIT – One thousand (1,000) pounds live weight of livestock or poultry animals, regardless of the actual number of individual animals comprising the unit, as calculated in the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act, 3 P.S. §1701 et seq, and the regulations promulgated thereunder, found at 25 PA Code Subchapter D, §83.201 et seq.”

SECTION 2: Section 102.2 of the Zoning Ordinance is amended by adding, after the definition of “AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY” and before the definition of “AGRICULTURAL REVIEW COMMITTEE” the following:

“AGRICULTURAL OPERATON” – Same as “Normal Agricultural Operation”. 

SECTION 3: Section 102.2 of the Zoning Ordinance is amended by adding thereto, after the definition of “COMPREHENSIVE PLAN” and before the definition of “CONVERSION, MULTI-FAMILY” the following definition: 

“CONCENTRATED ANIMAL FEEDING OPERATION; CAFO – An operation involving the keeping of livestock of the type listed in the table in Section 503.7.32.2 in excess of the numbers identified in that table confined within a building or other enclosure as set forth in Section 503.7.32.4 ii) of this Ordinance.”

SECTION 4: Section102.2 of the Zoning Ordinance is amended by adding after the definition of “NORMAL AGRICULTURAL OPERATION” and before the definition of “NUDITY OR STATE OF NUDITY” the following definition:

“NPDES PERMIT – National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit or equivalent document or requirements issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, or their designees, pursuant to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, as amended, 33 U.S.C. §1251 et seq, also known as the Clean Water Act, and/or The Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law, as amended, 35 P.S. §691.1 et seq”

SECTION 5: Section 203.3 a) is amended by adding a new subsection 9 as follows: 

“9. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) (See Section 503.7.32.2).”

SECTION 6: Section 503.7 of the Zoning Ordinance is amended by adding a new subsection 32, as follows:

“32. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)

“1. CAFOs are permitted in the A Zone by special exception, and are subject to the requirements of this Section, in addition to the general standards for special exceptions in Section 503.6.

“2. An operation shall be considered a CAFO and subject to the regulations of this subsection 32 if it involves the keeping of livestock of the type listed in the table below in excess of the numbers identified in that table, confined within a building or other enclosure as set forth in subsection.4 ii) of this subsection 32:

Threshold Table for
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation

Sector More than ___ in number

Cattle or cow/calf pairs - 300

Mature dairy cattle - 200

Veal calves - 300

Swine (weighing 55 pounds or over
when shipped off farm) - 750
]
Swine (weighing less than 55 pounds
when shipped off farm) - 3,000

Horses - 150

Sheep or lambs or goats - 3,000

Turkeys - 16,500

Laying hens or broilers (liquid manure
handling system) - 9,000

Chickens other than laying hens
(other than a liquid manure
handling system) - 37,500

Laying hens (other than a liquid
manure handling system) - 25,000

Ducks (other than a liquid manure
handling system) - 10,000

Ducks (liquid manure handling
system) - 1,500

“3. A CAFO shall be designed and operated to minimize the negative impacts on the natural environment, neighboring residents and uses, and on Township facilities, such as public streets.

“4. Notwithstanding the setback requirements in Section 203, the following setbacks shall apply to all CAFOs:

“i) All manure storage facilities, as defined in the Nutrient Management Act, shall be located at a minimum:

“1. One hundred (100) feet of a perennial stream, river, spring, lake, pond or reservoir. 

“2. One hundred (100) feet of a private water well, or open sinkhole.

“3. One hundred (100) feet of an active public drinking water well, unless other state or federal laws or regulations require a greater isolation distance.

“4. One hundred (100) feet of an active public drinking water source surface intake, unless other state or federal laws or regulations require a greater isolation distance. 

“5. Two hundred (200) feet from any property line, unless the landowners within that distance from the facility otherwise agree and execute a waiver in a form acceptable to the state or county regulating agencies.

“6. Two hundred (200) feet of a perennial stream, river, spring, lake, pond, reservoir or any water well where these facilities (except permanent stacking and composting facilities) are located on slopes exceed eight percent (8%) or have the capacity of 1.5 million gallons or greater.

“7. Three hundred (300) feet from any property lines where any of the facilities (except permanent stacking and compost facilities) are located on slopes exceeding eight percent (8%), where the slope is toward the property line, or have the capacity of 1.5 million gallons or greater, unless the landowners within that distance from the facility otherwise agree and execute a waiver in a form acceptable to the state or county regulating agencies.

“8. The strictest applicable setback requirement in this subsection 4 shall apply for manure storage facilities.

“ii) All buildings and open areas in which animals are kept (whether or not combined with a manure storage facility), including, but not limited to, animal confinement areas of poultry houses, horse stalls, free stall barns, or bedded pack animal housing systems or similar structures (all of which shall be collectively referred to in this section as Animal Housing Buildings), excluding manure storage facilities regulated by the Nutrient Management Act and subsection i), shall be located at a minimum:

“1. Two hundred (200) feet from any property line.

“2. Three hundred (300) feet from any property lines where any of the facilities are located on slopes exceeding eight percent (8%), where the slope is toward the property line, or have the capacity of 1.5 million gallons or greater.

“3. Three hundred (300) feet from any well, whether public or private, or water source surface intake used for human consumption in any manner.

“4. Five hundred (500) feet from any property line of land which is in the R, R-II, or C Zones, or from any dwelling or dwelling unit not on the property which is the subject of the application for a CAFO.

“5. Two hundred (200) feet from any public street line or right-of-way. 

“6. Three hundred (300) feet from a park, wildlife refuge, natural resource management area, or wild land area.

“7. All setbacks addressed in subsections 4 i) which are not specifically addressed in this subsection ii) shall also apply to this subsection. 

“iii) The most stringent applicable setback requirement in this subsection 4 shall apply.

“iv) If the CAFO equals or exceeds three (3) AEUs per acre on an annualized basis, then the setbacks required in subsection ii) shall be increased by one hundred (100) feet for the third AEU per acre, and an additional one hundred (100) feet for every AEU or portion thereof per acre above three (3).

“5. Design and Location of Facilities

“i) Animal Housing Buildings shall be designed and located in relationship to other uses on and off the property, prevailing winds and topography.

“ii) There shall be an adequate year-round supply of water, as calculated in this subsection ii). If connection to an existing public water supply system is proposed, the applicant must submit an agreement committing the public water supply system to provide such water as will be utilized by the proposed special exception use for such period of time and under such terms and conditions as the public water supply system provides water service elsewhere in its service area. If the water supply system proposed involves the utilization of water obtained from the tract proposed for the location of the special exception use or from a nearby tract, the applicant must: 

“1. Establish that the groundwater recharge on the tract where the water supply system is located, after development, computed during drought conditions (periods when the precipitation is forty (40) percent below normal) will exceed projected water usage, as certified by a hydrologist or hydrogeologist properly licensed as such by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; and

“2. Provide calculations showing the amount of water needed, and a determination of the sufficiency of the amount available at the site as certified by a hydrologist or hydrogeologist properly licensed as such by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Such determination shall include an on-site evaluation consisting of at least a determination of the flow and a draw-down test of the well which will serve the CAFO and monitoring of another well, either on or off the site, during such testing.

The Zoning Hearing Board may require as a condition of approval that the applicant execute an agreement with the Township committing the proposed special exception use not to utilize more groundwater on a daily basis than the groundwater recharge computed during drought conditions and to establish procedures pursuant to which usage can be verified.

“6. Access; Travel Routes: 

“i) Vehicular access from the public street shall be adequate to support the volume, weight, and type of vehicular traffic to the facility, and there shall be paved areas at or approximate to the Animal Housing Buildings adequate to park the types, weights, and sizes of vehicles necessary to transport the animals to and from the use. For purposes of this subsection, paving shall be adequate if it is stone of a base and size sufficient to meet the particular requirements of the use, and the weights, sizes, and types of vehicles necessary to carry on the use, including transporting the animals, as certified to by an engineer, licensed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and as approved by the Township engineer.

“ii) Additionally the applicant shall make such improvements to the public roads abutting the property as shall be necessary as determined by the Township Engineer to support the vehicular traffic anticipated for the use, including necessary turning radiuses into the property.

“iii) The applicant shall also set out as part of the application the route which shall be used by transport vehicles for feed and delivery and pickup of the animals. Such route shall, to extent possible, use state roads. The Zoning Hearing Board shall set a travel route as a condition of approval, consistent with the requirements of this subsection iii).

“7. Pollution Controls

“i) Proper manure management is required. This shall include facilities to remove, store, transport, treat and/or dispose of all animal or poultry wastes in a manner that will not be harmful to the natural environment and so as to control odor off of the property which is the subject of the application. Calculations of the amount of manure to be produced, the amount of land needed for its disposal and proof that the applicant owns or has guarantee of the use of land needed for disposal shall be submitted, verified and approved by the Township. Compliance with the Nutrient Management Act and the Regulations as evidenced by approval of the plan and issuance of a permit by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection or its designee shall constitute compliance with this subsection, provided that a copy of such plan and permit, and any subsequent amendments to the plan or permits, are filed with the Township.

“ii) Runoff, especially from open feed lots and manure storage areas, shall be controlled to prevent water pollution. An NPDES permit for a CAFO approved pursuant to Chapter 92 of Title 25 of the PA Code shall constitute compliance with this subsection, provided that a copy of such permit, and any subsequent amendments to the permit, are filed with the Township.

“iii) Adequate manure storage facilities are required so that the operator can store manure during the winter, rather than applying it to frozen ground, or, alternatively, dispose of manure in an otherwise acceptable manner, such as by a daily haul. Compliance with the Nutrient Management Act and the Regulations shall constitute compliance with this subsection, provided that a copy of such plan, and any subsequent amendments to the plan, are filed with the Township, and provided that the plan addresses manure storage during the winter, and prohibits application to frozen ground.

“iv) Where applicable, documentation that the location of facilities and manure storage facilities near floodplains complies with the Pennsylvania Floodplain Management Act and the Hopewell Township Zoning and Subdivision and Land Development Ordinances.

“v) The Applicant shall submit with his application for a special exception a fly control plan proposing the use of the best available practice or procedure for fly control both at the location of the operation and at the ultimate disposal site for the animal waste if within or adjacent to Hopewell Township. The Applicant shall also submit with the application for special exception a plan proposing the use of the best available practice and procedure for preventing or minimizing odors at the ultimate disposal site of the animal waste if within or adjacent to Hopewell Township.

“vi) The Applicant shall make provisions for the removal from the property or sanitary disposal of dead animals within twenty-four (24) hours of their death, consistent with the stricter of all state or federal regulations, and shall provide the Township with evidence of such compliance.

“vii) In all other respects, the Environmental Regulations of Section 350 shall apply, except that, between those and these regulations, the more stringent regulations shall apply. 

“8. Plans Required: Detailed plans and drawings of the Animal Housing Buildings and manure storage facilities prepared by a registered engineer or architect and operating procedures shall be submitted. Where calculations are required, the source of the information on which they are based shall be included. Such plans and drawings for consideration by the Zoning Hearing Board shall be in sufficient detail to provide the Zoning Hearing Board with sufficient information to act on the special exception application. Additionally, prior to obtaining any zoning permits pursuant to this Ordinance, or any other permits required by any other federal, state, county, or Township statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances, a land development plan in accordance with the requirements of the Hopewell Township Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance, and a stormwater management plan meeting the requirements of the Hopewell Township Stormwater Management Ordinance and any other applicable ordinances of the Township, must be submitted and approved by the Township Board of Supervisors.

“9. Review: The applicant shall be required to present written documentation that:

“i) The York County Agricultural Extension Service or appropriate Extension Specialists at the Pennsylvania State University, or other similar consulting agency, have reviewed and approved the design of facilities for housing the animals and the proposed management procedures.

“ii) The York County Conservation District or other designated agency has reviewed and approved the nutrient management plan, including the storage and disposal of manure and contaminated run-off.

“10. The applicant shall provide written evidence that:

i) The proposed operation meets all the requirements of the Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law and any other applicable State laws, and that any required permits have been obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, or its designee.

ii) An NPDES permit has been obtained from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or its designee, or that such a permit is not required for the operation; and that the requirements of any other applicable Federal and State laws and regulations have been met.”

SECTION 8: This Ordinance shall be effective five (5) days after its enactment as provided by law.

ORDAINED AND ENACTED this 2nd day of September, 2004.

HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP

ATTEST:  BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

______________________________________

By: ________________________________

Secretary William T. Streett, Chairman

By: ________________________________

David T. Wisnom, Supervisor

(SEAL) By: ________________________________

Peryl McDonald, Supervisor

antisocial:

I will sign a sworn statement and I will testify in court before a judge if I have to!

>Beth

From Protest to Rebellion: Lessons from Tom Paine
by Jeffrey Kaplan and Jeff Milchen

When Tom Paine published his pamphlet “Common Sense” in January of 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, he had a clear objective: to transform protest into rebellion. Though armed clashes began several months earlier in Massachusetts and the South, colonists generally viewed themselves as English subjects fighting a tyrannical king and government. For all of their anger, colonists were protesting the king and Parliament for disregarding rights, not challenging the government’s legitimacy.

Paine rejected not only King George III, but the entire British system as inherently oppressive and prodded his readers to establish their own nation. Rather than treating royalty with customary deference, he mocked it. Paine derided the founder of England ‘s feudal monarchy, William the Conqueror, as “a French bastard landing with an armed banditti and establishing himself King of England against the consent of the natives.”

“Common Sense” was wildly successful. By the spring of 1776 newspapers were reporting on “innumerable converts to independence,” including “tens of thousands of common farmers and tradesmen.” Though Paine called with burning urgency for the colonies to break away from Britain, he began by persuading readers that the source of the colonists’ problems went far beyond corrupt or abusive English government to the very structure of rule by hereditary kings and nobility.

Paine’s approach may inform our own strategy as we struggle to halt oppression at the hands of the dominant institution of our time—the corporation. Today’s corporations not only wield immense power over our law and government, they also control many physical conditions of our existence. Agribusiness dominates our food supply; the oil, energy and chemical industries determine what’s in the air we breathe; and, to a frightening extent, corporations influence whether we live in peace or in war.

Of course corporations are no more a part of the natural order than was the English monarchy. One hundred and fifty years ago, they didn’t exist in the form we know them today. U.S. citizens strictly controlled corporations via state legislatures, which resorted to incorporation largely to enable projects with public benefits such as building highways or canals. State legislatures explicitly defined them as entities subordinate to democracy, possessing limited privileges and no inherent rights.

Legislatures typically limited corporations’ lifespans, the amount of property they could own, acceptable business activities, and set a maximum profit allowed before the business would revert to public ownership. Many states forbade businesses from lobbying, influencing elections, or even attempting to sway public opinion! Corporations violating these limits risked dissolution – a corporate death penalty.

During the Industrial Revolution, wealthy businessmen, especially railroad executives, succeeded in winning dramatic expansions of corporate privilege. By 1890 most long-standing restrictions had been removed, and the U.S. Supreme Court had granted corporations the legal standing of natural persons, i.e. “corporate personhood.”

Soon the Court bestowed Bill of Rights protections upon them, but with virtually none of the responsibilities borne by human beings. The Supreme Court effectively had subordinated the rights of citizens to institutions with the power to undermine our personal liberties and democracy.

A powerful resistance movement arose with the Farmers’ Alliance in the 1880s, which built cooperatives to bypass the iron grip bankers and large merchants held over their land and livelihoods. But those impoverished farmers soon realized that dismantling the political power of corporations was vital to their cause. In 1892 they launched the last serious challenge to two-party domination—the Populist Party. The Populists aimed to replace existing banks with a democratically-controlled financial system and nationalize railroads and telegraph networks. They were not socialists—quite the contrary—but they realized that a free market was impossible when oligarchies controlled the arteries of commerce.

Diverting and Diluting Activism

The regulatory system installed during the early 1900s was initiated largely by corporate leaders seeking to redirect this insurrection against corporate power. Big business succeeded overwhelmingly in channeling Populist rebellion against the corporate power structure back into protest against separate “abuses.” The regulatory reforms placed the adjudication of these individual grievances in the hands of agencies dominated by the business entities they purported to control. The regulatory system remains today what a U.S. Attorney General reassured corporate leaders it would be at the turn of the century—“a barrier between corporations and the people.”

Perhaps we should tear down that barrier rather than repeatedly entangle ourselves within it. Pursuing bureaucratic remedies such as environmental impact reports and e-mailing regulatory officials who came straight from the industry may be necessary tactics, but they fail utterly as an ongoing strategy. We delude ourselves if we think that the new industrial aristocracy will be any more responsive to the people than the old feudal one, or that our votes will solve structural problems. So long as we permit wealth—both corporate and private—to dominate political life, “democracy” will be a platitude from the mouths of demagogues rather than a reality.

The extension of corporate “rights” has reached a level unthinkable a few decades ago. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Massachusetts law that barred corporations from spending company resources to influence ballot initiatives. The justices in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, deemed the law a violation of corporate “free speech” rights. As a result, corporations increasingly are attempting direct lawmaking, including blatant examples in Montana and California (summarized below) on the 2004 ballot.

Courts subsequently have ruled that municipalities attempting to control the placement of cell phone towers are violating corporate civil rights. Corporations selling computerized voting machines now claim the 4th Amendment prevents citizens from ensuring that proprietary software isn’t used to manipulate elections.

So what can we do if traditional means of protest won’t work? In simple terms, we need to build a political movement to reclaim democracy, starting where democracy begins—at the community level. Citizens can press local and state governments to pass laws challenging corporate personhood. Such ordinances and resolutions could be much like the ones more than 320 communities have passed in opposition to the “Patriot Act”—and for a similar reason: our rights as citizens are in grave danger.

Seeds of Change

A “progressive” undertaking? Not necessarily. Nebraska, South Dakota and several other largely conservative Midwestern states have passed laws forbidding corporate ownership of farms. At least 11 townships in rural Pennsylvania have done the same. True conservatives recognize that corporations were established strictly as business entities and should remain so.

Small business owners have helped lead successful efforts from Port Jefferson, New York to Solvang, California that subordinate presumed corporate “rights” by banning or capping the number of chain restaurants allowed to operate there. Many more communities are proactively excluding big box stores through size caps or limits on chains, rather than repeatedly fighting defensive battles. In addition to accomplishing worthy goals, these efforts provoke needed debate about rights of communities vs. those assumed by corporations.

Citizens can further such efforts by learning ways corporate legal privileges strip us of the power to stop corporations from doing harm in our communities. For example, if a company repeatedly breaks health, safety or environmental laws, thanks to corporate personhood, public officials may be blocked from making surprise inspections of corporate property. They first must obtain a warrant just as if it were personal property. Of course, this enables companies to conceal dangers and imperils public welfare.

Eventually, local officials may follow the lead of tiny Porter Township, Pennsylvania . When agribusiness giant Synagro complained that a law controlling use of toxic sludge as fertilizer violated its constitutional rights, the community passed the first U.S. ordinance to declare that corporations have no constitutional rights within local jurisdiction. Just months later, that 2002 ordinance was replicated in a neighboring community.

These efforts demonstrate that, with the right language and framing of issues, exposing the insolence of corporations can inspire radical, proactive challenges to the legitimacy of corporate privileges. If that defiance were to spread, corporate executives would face tough decisions on whether to concede significant privileges or risk confrontation on a scale not seen since the Boston Tea Party and the ransacking of East India Company property (then the world’s second largest corporation).

Of course it isn’t just Americans whose rights are threatened. Perhaps the most significant U.S. export isn’t grain or pharmaceuticals, but the legal and institutional structure of corporate control. U.S. authorities declared last July that Iraq must accept foreign investment and corporatization of its (previously national) oil industry before a permanent government takes charge. In other words, democracy is permissible only after the most important economic decisions for the future of Iraqis have been decided for them and transnational corporations control their economic lifeblood.

But instituting corporate rule typically is done without armies. Trade treaties such as NAFTA and GATT really are globalized versions of the “Interstate Commerce Clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which the Supreme Court often uses to invalidate state laws (laws banning corporations from importing and dumping hazardous waste from other states, for example).

Opportunities from Corporate Overreaching

Groups advocating for individual causes need not sacrifice their focus. But perhaps they could re-frame some issues within the context of corporate domination and introduce long-term structural solutions to their constituencies, even while doing imperative short-term work.

Immediate opportunities for such structural focus abound. For example, last year, Monsanto lawyers sued Oakhurst Dairy, a family-owned Maine business. Oakhurst’s offense? Using labels that stated, “Our farmers’ pledge: No artificial growth hormones.” Though nobody contested the label’s accuracy, Monsanto claimed such statements were an “unfair business practice” because they imply inferiority of products derived from cows fed artificial hormones. Not surprisingly, the transnational giant persuaded Oakhurst to back down and dilute the statement.

Monsanto executives clearly aim to establish corporate rights as superceding any right we have to know the origins of our food, and it won’t stop with Oakhurst. How will we respond?

Notably, meatpacking giants needed no legal action to prevent a small beef producer from ensuring its animals were free of mad cow disease, federal regulators did their dirtywork by forbidding the testing!

Corporations increasingly are exercising illegitimate political power over our own local governments as well. In California ‘s Contra Costa County, local officials enacted a size cap on new “supercenters.” Wal-Mart had no immediate plans to build in the area, but company officials didn’t like the precedent. Wal-Mart hired signature gatherers (paying them far more than most store employees) to put an initiative on the March ballot overriding the size cap, then waged a massive ad campaign that overwhelmed opponents and effectively bought its desired outcome.

The Contra Costa law admittedly was flawed, and Wal-Mart failed in its attempt to replicate that scenario in a Los Angeles suburb weeks later, but let’s focus on the root issue. Will citizens—the demos of democracy—or corporations control our communities?

Last year in California, Nike Inc. tried to convince California’s Supreme Court that the state’s Unfair Business Practices Act infringed upon Nike’s “right” to publish false or misleading communications. The court disagreed, and last June the U.S. Supreme Court declined to decide the Nike v. Kasky case. Rather than accept the decision and ensure its PR campaigns are reasonably accurate, Nike has joined with other corporate powers in an attempt to weaken the law and forbid lawsuits of the kind Nike faced—again via ballot initiative. Auto dealers have kicked in $4.6 million, and Microsoft, Edison, Bank of America, Nike and many more have written checks of five figures and up to fund the campaign.

Going to the Roots

Thanks to the 1978 Bellotti ruling, corporate spending to “express free speech” and wage campaigns to pass such initiatives has no limits. So how should we respond to Wal-Mart, Nike, et al, using their vast wealth to re-write laws? Do we simply vow to work harder and fundraise better next time, or will we instead work to build the Democracy Movement by rejecting the legitimacy of corporations engaging in law-making?

Properly framed, these situations are opportunities to enlist citizens of widely varying views to work for vital structural changes. If, that is, organizations working to transform paradigms can gain support from the foundations and organizations that tend to focus overwhelmingly on damage control efforts.

Such work could trigger major growth in awareness and engagement against corporate constitutional privileges much as Seattle did for opposing secondary structures of corporate rule like the WTO. Our success will depend on dismantling foundations of corporate power, such as corporate constitutional rights, not pleading to puppet regulatory agencies or replacing Republicans with Democrats

Let’s heed Tom Paine’s approach and transform our myriad single-issue protests into rebellion that tears down the inherently anti-democratic structures of corporate rule and builds genuine representative democracy. It’s no small task to change the rules, but sensible people don’t continue playing a rigged game. 

In U.S. First, Local Government Refuses to Recognize Corporate Claims to Civil Rights
PA Township Bans Corporate Involvement in Governing

News from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
December 13, 2002

The elected municipal officials of Porter Township, Clarion County - a municipality of 1,500 residents an hour north of Pittsburgh in Northwestern Pennsylvania - became the first local government in the United States to eliminate corporate claims to civil and constitutional privileges. The Township adopted a binding law declaring that corporations operating in the Township may not wield legal privileges - historically used by corporations to override democratic decisionmaking - to stop the Township from passing laws which protect residents from toxic sewage sludge.

The actions by Porter Township, taken December 9, 2002, repudiate the history of state and federal public officials restricting the rights of citizens while expanding the rights of corporations and their owners.

Background

Along with close to a dozen other municipal governments in Pennsylvania, Porter Township officials had previously adopted a local law governing the land application of sewage sludge in the Township. The adoption of that municipal law was an outgrowth of the work done by residents and municipal officials to stop sewage sludge corporations from dumping Pittsburgh-generated sludge in the Township. To that immediate end, the municipal government adopted a “tipping fee” law that requires corporate sludge haulers to pay a per ton fee to the Township to enable the municipality to verify the safety of each load of sludge applied to land.(see endnote)

Sludge corporations have responded both legislatively and judicially to the adoption of those laws by Pennsylvania municipalities - which prevent corporations from turning to state and federal officials to override local self-governance.

Judicial Response

In 2000, Synagro Corporation—one of the largest sludge hauling corporations in the United States—sued Township officials in Centre County, Pennsylvania in an attempt to overturn the “tipping fee” law adopted by that Township. In their Complaint, the Corporation alleged that the law violated a litany of civil and constitutional rights asserted by the corporation. A ruling by the federal court is expected by 2004.

Legislative Response

Legislatively, sludge corporations drafted and vigorously pushed bills that would strip Pennsylvania municipalities of their authority to make rules that would control the land application of sewage sludge and factory farms. A unique coalition of groups that included municipal governments, the Pennsylvania Farmers Union, the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, the Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, the United Mine Workers of America, Common Cause and others, defeated that legislation at the end of the 2002 legislative session.

In addition to the legislative and judicial responses to the assertion of local democracy by communities, sludge corporations have also instructed the state environmental regulatory agency and corporate farm lobbies to intervene with Clarion County Townships. In late 2002, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau met with Clarion County Townships to convince them to repeal their local laws. The four Clarion County Townships that have adopted the law refused. Instead, Porter Township forged ahead with adopting the most recent law, which eliminates corporate interference in the democratic processes of the Township.

Also in late 2002, the Alcosan Corporation, a sludge hauling corporation in Pennsylvania, threatened to use Pennsylvania courts to overturn the sludge law passed by the Township. Porter Township Supervisors, upon learning of the ability of corporations to direct the courts to vindicate corporate claims to civil and legal privileges to override local governments, decided to pass a law to eliminate corporate claims to those rights.

The actions of Porter Township—along with the actions of other municipal governments in Pennsylvania dealing with land applied sewage sludge and factory farms—evidence a shift of communities away from permitting corporate harms to asserting direct control over corporations.

The Sludge and Corporate Personhood Ordinances were developed by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in partnership with the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD) and communities across Pennsylvania impacted by land applied sewage sludge and corporate factory farms.

Notes

Currently, the state Department of Environmental Protection only requires sewage treatment plants to test their sludge quarterly for health and safety purposes, and over a dozen Township governments in three Pennsylvania Counties have decided that such testing is inadequate to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of Township residents. The “tipping fee,” charged to the sludge corporation, provides monies to the municipality for the hiring of a testing laboratory, and for sampling each load of sludge for testing purposes. Corporate haulers are prohibited from applying sludge before the test results are returned to the Township government.

This model ordinance was drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (http://www.CELDF.org) and passed into law in Porter Township, Pennsylvania.

AN ORDINANCE BY THE SECOND CLASS TOWNSHIP OF __________, _________ COUNTY,
PENNSYLVANIA, ELIMINATING LEGAL PRIVILEGES FROM CORPORATIONS DOING BUSINESS
WITHIN _______ TOWNSHIP

Section 1. Name. The name of this Ordinance shall be the “Corporate Personhood Elimination and Democracy Protection Ordinance.”

Section 2. Authority. This Ordinance is adopted and enacted pursuant to the authority granted to ___________ Township by all relevant state and federal laws, including, but not limited to, the following:

The general authority granted by the Constitution of Pennsylvania and the Second Class Township Code to make and adopt all such ordinances, bylaws, rules, and regulations as may be deemed expedient or necessary for the proper management, care, and control of _________ Township and its finances and the maintenance of the health, safety, peace, good government, and welfare of ________Township;

The Constitution of Pennsylvania, Art. 1, § 2, which provides that all power is inherent in the people, and that all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and

Pennsylvania Statutes, Tit. 53, Municipal and Quasi-Municipal Corporations, § 66506, which authorizes _____________ Township to enact ordinances necessary for the proper management, care, and control of the Township and its finances and the maintenance of peace, good government, health, and welfare of the Township and its citizens, trade, commerce, and manufacturers.

Section 3. Findings and General Purpose. The ________ Township Board of Supervisors recognizes that:

(1) A corporation is a legal fiction created by the express permission of the people of _________ Township as citizens of this State;

(2) Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution by Supreme Court justices to include corporations in the term “persons” has long wrought havoc with our democratic process by endowing corporations with constitutional privileges intended solely to protect the citizens of the United States or natural persons within its borders;

(3) This judicial bestowal of civil and political rights upon corporations interferes with the administration of laws within _________ Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights exercised by the people of ___________Township;

(4) The judicial designation of corporations as “persons” grants corporations the power to sue municipal governments for adopting laws that violate the purported constitutional rights of corporations. For example, in September 2000, Synagro Inc. filed a federal lawsuit against the Rush Township (Centre County) Supervisors, forcing the Township to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to defend its health-related sewage sludge testing ordinance against claims that the ordinance violated the corporation’s constitutional rights;

(5) The judicial designation of corporations as “persons” requires that municipal governments recognize corporations as legitimate participants in public hearings, zoning hearing board appeals, and other governmental matters before ___________ Township;

(6) The judicial designation of corporations as “persons” gives corporations First Amendment rights and unfettered access to elections. This enables corporations to control public debate and dictate public policy on important issues.

For example, in the 2002 federal Farm Bill, the agribusiness corporations that make large donations to political parties received federal support for industrialized agriculture to the detriment of family farmers, rural communities, and rural environments in Pennsylvania.

Another example is state Senate Bill 1413. If enacted in its current form, the bill will penalize Township governments that try to protect themselves from the health, safety, environmental, and economic harms posed by the industrialization of agriculture. The agribusiness corporations that make large donations to political parties pushed SB 1413 through the Pennsylvania Senate by an astonishing vote of 48-2 despite strong opposition by Pennsylvania citizens and Township governments.

(7) Buttressed by these constitutional rights, corporate wealth allows corporations to enjoy constitutional privileges to an extent beyond the reach of most citizens;

(8) Democracy means government by the people. Only citizens of _________ Township should be able to participate in the democratic process in _________ Township and enjoy a republican form of government therein;

(9) Interference by corporations in the democratic process usurps the rights of citizens to participate in the democratic process in __________ Township and to enjoy a republican form of government therein;

(10) The ability of citizens of _________ Township to establish laws to protect the health, safety, and welfare of township residents has been diminished by the exercise of constitutional privileges by corporations.

Section 4. Specific Purpose. The specific purpose of this Ordinance is to eliminate the purported constitutional rights of corporations in order to remedy the harms that corporations cause to the people of ____________ Township by exercise of such rights.

Section 5. Statement of Law. Corporations shall not be considered to be “persons” protected by the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania within the Second Class Township of _______, __________ County, Pennsylvania.

Section 6. Severability. The provisions of this Ordinance are severable. If any section, clause, sentence, part, or provision of the Ordinance shall be held illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional by any court of competent jurisdiction, such decision of the court shall not affect, impair, or invalidate any of the remaining sections, clauses, sentences, parts, or provisions of this Ordinance. It is hereby declared to be the intent of the Board of Supervisors of __________ Township that this Ordinance would have been adopted if such illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional section, clause, sentence, part, or provision had not been included herein.

Section 7. Effective Date. This Ordinance shall take effect five days after enactment by the Board of Supervisors of _________ Township.

Asserting Democratic Control
of Food and Agriculture
By Dave Henson
Published September 2002

The corporate media have been filled with opinions in recent months saying the same thing about the current famine in southern Africa: technology can save the day if those ill-informed opponents of progress would just get out of the way.

But despite intense promotion of industrial-scale and chemical-intensive agriculture by the U.S., the World Bank and large corporations, landlessness, poverty, and hunger all have increased worldwide over the past four decades. The “Green Revolution” has failed to deliver on the promise of increased yield and reduced hunger through industrialization. For example, between 1945 and 1993 pesticide use in the U.S. increased by 3,300% while crop loss due to pests increased by 20%.

Perhaps we should learn from African farmers rather than issuing condescending accusations of irrational technophobia. In Nigeria, many farmers use parasitic wasps rather than toxins to fight infestation by the Cassava Mealy bug, a persistent nemesis of crop farmers. Each dollar they’ve invested in wasps decreases crop losses by $178.

Industrial agriculture has separated people from the land, their food, and understanding of the natural systems on which our lives depend. Independent family farmers have been driven from their livelihoods, unable to compete with vertically-integrated agribusiness giants. Over the past century, the number of U.S. farmers as a percentage of the population has crashed from 40% in 1900 to 1% in 2000. Rural communities are collapsing in the wake, and with them often their seeds, biodiversity and culture.

Moving Beyond Damage Control

While the trends are bleak, a small but growing movement for truly sustainable agriculture is emerging. How can this movement use better strategies to overcome corporate control of the food system and regain food security.

The U.S. sustainable farming and environmental movements have long relied on regulatory laws to limit the environmental and human harms caused by industrial agriculture. Citizens’ organizations have focused on tactics such as getting relief for small farmers in the latest farm bill, limiting the levels of pesticides that can be put in our water tables and rivers and limiting corporate mergers to prevent outright monopolies.

These strategies for merely regulating corporate harms ultimately have failed to protect our health and quality of life. For example, since 1972, 56 pesticides have been banned or their use greatly restricted in the U.S. Can there be any doubt that we ingest many other dangerous toxins simply because their threat has not been proven conclusively? Meanwhile, we continue to permit U.S.-based chemical corporations to manufacture and export most of those pesticides banned domestically.

Instead of solving structural problems, our regulations have licensed an unsustainable level of ecological destruction and the ongoing elimination of family farmers while failing to protect rural communities and adequate guarantees for safe food. As activists resist corporate assaults against nature and communities one by one, corporations focus their attention on consolidating control over Congress and the agencies that supposedly control agriculture businesses. It is agribusiness that frames the arena of struggle and the terms of the debate, limiting us to incremental compromises.

Corporate vs. Democratic Decision-Making

Consider the national struggle around federal organic standards at the end of the 1990s. Congress appointed a blue ribbon panel of organic farmers, nutritionists, scientists, organic product manufacturers, and retailers to propose a new law. After several years of research and hearings, the panel presented comprehensive recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 1999, however, the USDA rejected these and substituted draft “organic standards” proposed by corporate agribusiness and the “life science” corporations. It proposed that the U.S. certify as “organic” products with genetically altered ingredients, food grown with toxic sewage sludge used as fertilizer, and irradiated products.

It took almost two years of mass mobilization and a record 275,000 letters to the USDA to expose this outrage and force the adoption of a meaningful definition for “organic."Did citizens “win?” What could have been done in two years with 275,000 people mobilized to eliminate carcinogenic pesticides or eliminate taxpayer subsidies to giant food corporations? What can we do to stop fighting these defensive battles where a victory means merely maintaining the status quo?

Challenging Corporate Control of Food and Agriculture

Industrial agriculture corporations control the food system through massive corporate subsidies and make the public pay (monetarily and otherwise) for the damages they inflict on the environment and our health through routine use of carcinogenic pesticides. They are enabled through the power of money in our political system and the revolving door between agribusiness corporations and the government agencies that design and enforce regulations.

To effectively challenge corporate agriculture’s control of the global food system, ownership of life, and influence on economic decision making, our movements must rapidly evolve new and more complex strategies. We need to act in three realms simultaneously:

Fight Fires: For the past 30 years our sustainable farming and environmental movements have focused on “fighting fires.” We have built thousands of local and national groups to challenge thousands of corporate assaults on nature and people. After a long campaign, we may stop a clearcut or dam, but the corporation will be back to retake the trees or river as soon as it can maneuver a change of judge or politician, or take advantage of a lull in our vigilance. We have to resist their harms forever; they have to win just once.

Of course we have to fight fires - people’s lives and critical ecosystems are at stake. However, since this form of struggle alone rarely addresses root causes of ongoing corporate destruction, we are likely just to chase the corporation to another community.

Create Alternatives: The ecological farming movement has grown steadily for the past 30 years. We now have many models that provide vision and practices reflecting the values of ecological, economic and cultural sustainability. But in building alternatives which model “how it can be,” we must remember that corporations can and will buy out, make illegal, marginalize or destroy people’s most successful efforts to get off the corporate treadmill.

Dismantle the Mechanisms of Corporate Rule: While we fight the fires forced upon us, let’s not confuse reaction to a problem with proactive strategy. And while we build sustainable alternatives, we will create space for sustainable practices to become the norm only if we dismantle the mechanisms of corporate rule.

To redefine who’s in charge and to claim our rightful sovereignty as citizens over corporations, we must choose appropriate arenas of struggle. Our most effective campaigns will be about what we put in our state constitutions, corporate codes and corporate charters and about the laws we pass at the state, county, city and town council levels to define and enforce limits to what corporations may do. In other words, we need to promote real democracy.

How can we succeed in these three realms?

Taking Local Action

To succeed in rolling back the corporatization of our food supply, we’ll need to build strategic alliances to address questions of scale, not just practices, i.e. how big or how integrated should we permit corporations to be?

Health advocates and environmentalists may disagree with small farmers on pesticide use or animal welfare practices, for example, but we can work together on those issues over time if we maintain a united stand against the greater common threat of democracy-destroying corporate control.

To build organizing capacity for long-term work, we must address issues important to local people. Here are examples of city, township or county resolutions and initiatives that assert local democracy:

* Keep your community free of plantings of genetically altered crops. While many cities - including Cleveland, Boston, San Francisco, Austin, and Minneapolis - have passed resolutions against GE crops, they are largely non-binding. Boulder, Colorado has a policy that bans GE crops from city-owned land.

* Pass a new or rewrite an existing “Right to Farm” ordinance, as many rural and semi-rural areas have done. It should define agriculture in sustainable terms,mandating that subsidies and tax credits only go to non-toxic agriculture and that agriculture that harms public commons should be discouraged through market disincentives or disallowed.

* Pass a local anti-corporate farm ordinance. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund has helped 10 townships in Pennsylvania pass these ordinances in recent years. They now are working on a statewide Family Farm Protection Act.

* Get elected to your local resource conservation district, water board, city council or school board. As one example of what can be accomplished through local political efforts, Sebastopol’s city council in Northern California banned all pesticide use on city-owned land.

* Organize local Food Policy Councils - forums for farmers and environmentalists to craft new policies that use local government resources to support sustainable agriculture. Pass directives at city councils and school boards to promote the purchase of safe, sustainable, locally-farmed or produced food in municipal institutions like schools, hospitals and jails. The Berkeley Food Policy Council has pioneered much of this work.

Ultimately, we need to take our campaigns to the state level, including changes to our state constitutions -the most defining statements a people can make. For starters, we can ban non-family owned corporations from owning farmland. It’s been done in Nebraska (Initiative 300 in 1982), South Dakota (Amendment E in 1998), and to varying degrees in seven other U.S. states (see newrules.org/agri/banning.html).

Other future state initiatives or legislation might include prohibiting patents on life forms; instituting the “polluter pays” principle (100% corporate liability for long-term costs of corporate harm) and the “precautionary principle” (no public release of new technology until it has been independently proven safe); and reviving defining language in corporate charters and corporation codes.

When challenging corporate rule on the local levels, we will face legal attacks and economic threats. Corporate attorneys will say our measures violate their corporate “free speech” and their “private property rights,” trying to associate genuine rights of real people with fictitious rights for something that merely is property. Corporations will take their case to the WTO, asserting that our new local laws are protectionist and barriers to trade They will say our local government is violating the U.S. Constitution’s “commerce clause” and Constitutional guarantees to equal protection and due process for all persons.

These corporate attacks can create a crisis of jurisdiction, pitting one level of government against another. This can be a deliberate strategy on our part if we rethink our notion of “victory.” If a federal court or WTO tribunal overrules our well-thought, democratically produced local ordinance, it gives us an opportunity to agitate, educate and mobilize disregarded citizens. At that point the essential question of our struggle is made clear to all: “Who is in charge of making the decisions in a democracy, and in whose interest? Is it transnational corporations and financial institutions or people and the common good?

Monsanto v. Oakhurst Dairy
Does Monsanto Corporation Have the Right to Keep You from Knowing the Contents of Your Food?
By Kristen Philipkoski
First published in Wired Magazine

Update--Dec. 24, 2003: Monsanto Inc. and Oakhurst Dairy settled Monsanto’s lawsuit out of court today. Under the agreement, Oakhurst will use labels that read, “Our Farmers´ Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormone Used.” Its previous label did not have the word “used.” But the labels also will note that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says there is no significant difference in milk from cows treated with growth hormones. In a prepared statement, the companies said the conditions and terms of their agreement are confidential. Company officials declined further comment. For those seeking more information on rGBH, ejnet.org has links to a wide array of information.

The calls from distressed dairy farmers come nearly every day, and John Bunting does what he can to help.

A mother of 14 tells Bunting that her husband feels like a failure because he can’t provide for his family on milk sales alone. Another farmer says he had to sell one of his cows to repair a broken tractor. They know Bunting, who talks to them on a cordless phone while milking his cows, will lend a commiserative ear. He might also write about them in Milkweed, the dairy publication to which he is a contributor.

By some accounts, the past 18 months have been the worst in history for the U.S. dairy farmer. Milk prices have not increased enough to adjust for inflation in the past decade, and many family dairies have shut down. Sick cows don’t get treatment because farmers can’t afford a vet, or, worse, the vet won’t come anymore because he didn’t get paid last time.

Many small farmers place much of the blame on agribusiness giant Monsanto and a bovine drug called Posilac the company sells to increase the amount of milk a cow can produce.

Some farmers say that Posilac, also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin, only adds to an already glutted milk supply, which drives down the price paid to farmers. But Monsanto says the drug can get farmers out of a slump by helping them produce more milk.

“Producing more milk efficiently allows dairy farmers to make more money,” said Jennifer Garrett, technical services director for Monsanto’s dairy business. “The farms with the highest-producing cows are those that are making the most money. Posilac is a product that allows them to do that.”

Many dairy farmers say, however, that not using the hormone is one way they can get a competitive edge. Some milk distributors pay a premium for milk from cows not treated with rBST. Plus, even though studies show rBST is safe for humans, increasing numbers of consumers are drawn to “all-natural” products.

Farmers who don’t use rBST want to advertise that fact on their product labels. But Monsanto officials say labels like “No rBSTv” or “rBST-free” are misleading, unfair and deceptive. The company has recently sued one dairy for its labels.

Oakhurst Dairy in Maine labels its milk: “Our farmer’s pledge: no artificial hormones.” Monsanto’s lawsuit says the label implies Oakhurst’s milk is somehow better than milk from cows treated with rBST, and that unfairly harms Monsanto’s business.

A federal judge in Boston has set a trial date for Jan. 5, 2004, but denied Monsanto’s request for a hearing to argue that Oakhurst should stop its labeling immediately, pending the trial’s outcome. Monsanto isn’t seeking monetary damages; its lawyers just want Oakhurst to remove the label. Oakhurst officials say they have no intention of doing so.

“We intend to defend our right to, through our labeling, let consumers know what is and what is not used in the production of the milk they drink,” said Oakhurst President Stanley Bennet.

Approximately 17 percent of U.S. dairy operations use rBST, or 32 percent of all cows, according to the USDA-- most of them large farms that house thousands of cows.

The drug is made of an isolated gene from the growth hormone that cows produce when they lactate. The gene is inserted into an E. coli bacteria to make it grow rapidly in vats. Injections of the product make the cows produce more milk each day and lactate longer. Farmers say the average increase in lactation time is about 30 days, but it can go much higher. One farmer milked a cow for 1,155 days straight. Most cows produce about 25 percent more milk than they would without injections.

Large dairy farmers like Don Bennink, owner of North Florida Holsteins in Bell, Florida, swear by rBST. He has about 3,700 cows.

“(Posilac) certainly requires a certain amount of management, but it’s been very beneficial to us,” he said, because even though the price of milk is low, he’s been able to sell more of it. “This has been a rough year for the dairy business, but on the whole I think we’re considered very successful.”

John Vrieze, who owns 2,600 cows at the Emerald and Baldwin dairies in Baldwin, Wisconsin, says rBST has even saved some cows’ lives, or at least extended them, because he can milk them longer before shipping them off to the slaughterhouse.

But many smaller farmers choose not to spend the time and $5.25 per injection to use Posilac, which must be administered every two weeks after a cow begins to lactate.

Besides the time and cost, they also forego rBST because they don’t like the side effects the hormone has on their cows. A 1999 Health Canada study found Posilac increased a cow’s risk of mastitis (udder infection) up to 25 percent, which leads to more somatic cells, or pus, in the milk.

The study also found the drug increased cow infertility by 18 percent, and lameness by up to 50 percent. Based on the data, Canadian officials did not to approve rBST.

For those same reasons, the hormone is not approved in the 15 European Union coun