Efforts to protect CAFOs, CFOs concerning

To the Editor:

For those of you who subscribe to your Indiana Senator or Representative newsletters, you noticed how they talk about jobs, educations, budgets, etc., of which are important, but what they are not telling you about is their efforts to protect those Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and CFOs (smaller versions of CAFOs).

They want to add an amendment to the state constitution to guarantee Hoosiers the right to hunt, fish and farm, which sounds good, except for the wording, which says that no law shall be passed to prevent anyone who wants to start a CAFO or CFO from doing so.

That takes control away from local communities and means if someone who owns property near your home wants to start a hog or chicken far, there will be nothing you can do about it.

Other bills will prevent any community from passing any ordinances to regulate existing CAFOs/CFOs, protect them from lawsuits, any liability should the meat, milk or eggs they donate to charities contain deadly bacteria and excuse them should any "particular matter" blow onto your property when they are spraying, spreading or trucking during "agricultural operations."

It seems our legislature is trying to protect the animal agriculture industry at the expense of us citizens by eliminating our property rights and the ability to protect our families from potential problems created by these farms.

I am very concerned about these matters.

The citizens of a county should be able to decide what they will or will not allow and the state should not be able to decide what regulations are best for each county. We should never give up that right to big animal agriculture operations.

For more detailed information and what we can do to stop this, please contact H4HAA@yahoo.com.

Thank you.

H.R. Wilson, Founder,

Hoosiers for Humane Animal Agriculture,

Lanesville, Ind.