Sonoma County’s largest ag operations bear little resemblance to industrial-sized feed lots and poultry farms elsewhere. But if Measure J passes, only local farms must downsize or close.
Measure J would prohibit dairy farms in Sonoma County like this one from having 700 or more cows. (Crissy Pascual / Petaluma Argus-Courier, file)
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
October 10, 2024, 2:00PM
Updated 16 minutes ago
Sonoma County, in the telling of Measure J’s sponsors, is a safe haven for “factory farms” that befoul streams, belch greenhouse gases and crush small competitors. For poultry and cattle, life on these farms is nasty, brutish and short.
But don’t be fooled by these dystopian portraits.
Sonoma County’s largest ag operations bear little resemblance to industrial-sized feed lots and poultry farms elsewhere.
But if Measure J passes, only local farms must downsize or close.
Whether they scale back or go out of business, thousands of animals will be sold or slaughtered. And hundreds of jobs are at risk.
Most of the farms targeted by Measure J produce organic milk and cage-free eggs.
They’re certified as humane operators, county climate plans count on them for carbon sequestration, and their byproducts include organic fertilizer used by growers of organic fruits and vegetables.
California already has strict animal welfare laws. Golden State voters have barred the sale of eggs from caged chickens and pork products from farms that squeeze breeding sows into tiny pens. These restrictions withstood legal challenges from true factory farms in the Midwest, which fought them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Measure J, in contrast, doesn’t raise the bar. Instead, it imposes an arbitrary cap on how many animals are allowed on a single farm, regardless of how much acreage is available, how many people care for the animals or anything else.
A dairy herd with 699 cows is hunky dory, but 700 constitutes an illegal factory farm. A farm can care for 81,999 egg-laying chickens, but not one more. Violators can be fined $10,000 a day.
These ceilings don’t come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture or even the Humane Society. Rather, they are drawn from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation intended to ensure that waste from concentrated animal feeding operations — that’s EPA bureaucratese for a farm — doesn’t pollute groundwater or nearby streams.
To be clear, the EPA doesn’t ban CAFOs, large or otherwise. Indeed, more than 250 dairy herds in California have more than 2,500 cows, according to the USDA, and one Oregon dairy farm is home to 60,000 cows. The largest dairy in Sonoma County has 1,500 cows.
Some egg farms keep well over a million birds; the largest Sonoma County flock targeted by Measure J is less than 700,000, and most have 100,000 to 250,000 hens.
They’re inspected regularly, and if they pollute, or abuse animals, they are subject to fines and even prosecution.
Measure J is backed by the Coalition to End Family Farming, which includes environmental and animal welfare organizations, including some that want to ban animal agriculture and believe people should eat a plant-based diet.
People might be healthier if they ate less meat, but individuals ought to be able to make that choice on their own.
Before voting on Measure J, voters should be aware that for a half-century Sonoma County has promoted agriculture in unincorporated areas as a check against sprawl development. Do we want to risk that?
Sonoma County has more than 3,000 farms, many of them third- and fourth-generation family farms, producing everything from wine grapes to heirloom vegetables and eggs to organic milk. These farms provide locally sourced food and facilitate a farm-to-table culture that’s celebrated around the world.
They support Sonoma County. Support them by voting no on Measure J.
You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.