How you can help

Good idea? Absolutely. Necessary? Probably so. Sufficient? Not really.

Most often, when citizens ask what they can do to curb pollution from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and promote

sustainable alternatives to industrial animal production, they are told to eat less but better quality meat and dairy from local farmers, and more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; to shop at Farmers’ Markets; or buy a share in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program or buying club.

While these are all activities and personal choices that I.C.A.R.E. supports (check out our sustainable foods map!), they have a very serious shortfall: eaters alone can’t transform the food system. The roots of our dysfunctional food system– the disappearance of diverse, sustainable farms and the cancer-like spread of animal factories– are misguided agricultural, immigration, and trade policies (Broadway and Stull, 2010). And so, in addition to modifying our individual buying habits, in order to achieve a truly just food system– one that is safe, affordable, accessible, humane and environmentally sound– we must push for full enforcement of existing laws, shut the revolving door between industry and regulatory agencies (USDA Inc.), work for policy reform and shifts in the purchasing patterns of institutions (like hospitals, schools, and prisons).

Here are some practical ways you can help do that:

Join our mailing list and Become an ICARE member. Shameless self-promotion? Sure. Though in all seriousness, by becoming a member and joining our email list, we’ll help you keep up-to-date with local and state CAFO news, and get you linked in with national goings-on by groups like Food & Water Watch, the Center for Food Safety, and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Plus, we need to hear from you: ICARE is a grassroots, member-driven organization– our priorities are set by our members. If we’re not serving the people on the ground, then we’re not doing our job.

Check the website frequently for new Action Alerts. Most of the time, these take you directly to petition sites with pre-formatted letters; it takes all of 30 seconds to fill in your information and click “submit”– a bit more if you choose to personalize your message. In other words, it’s something you can do while having your morning coffee, or in place of a Facebook procrasintation-break at work (heck, join us on Facebook to get your fix and stay informed!).

Talk to others about what’s going on– you’d be amazed at how many people are completely unaware that animal factories are a problem. Not just friends and family members, but candidates for political office t00.

Hold elected officials accountable for their votes on food & farm policy. (REGISTER TO VOTE!) Politicians may or may not personally care about environmental destruction, public health, climate change, and/or world hunger, but (like any American) they DO care about their jobs. Feel like voting is really just a choice between the lesser of two evils? Consider running for office yourself– even if you don’t win, your very presence will put a much-needed spotlight on food & farm policy.

Document. We need to be able to show, not just tell people about the difference between traditional family farms and animal factories. Talk to workers, take pictures and videos of a CAFO or sustainable farm near you. Contact us to learn how to upload your stories to our interactive maps, YouTube channel, or photo galleries (it’s easy!).

Support worker-initiated boycotts and strikes. This might sound kind of old-school, but there are few more powerful ways to change bad behavior than to hit the responsible parties where it hurts: their wallets. Better working conditions may not solve the entire factory farm problem, but they’ll do a lot towards helping out your fellow human beings, alleviating animal suffering, and cleaning up some of the environmental damage.

Lobby– up until K-street turned it into a four-letter word, citizen lobbying was a time-honored part of our democratic system. In our opinion, it’s high-time we took it back! Voice your concerns/opinion at hearings on proposed CAFO bills (this goes back to the job-security angle– apart from campaign cash, there’s little that speaks more clearly to a legislator than a packed hearing room), at Town Hall meetings and one-on-one sit-downs with your representative (or, more likely in the case of Congressmen and Senators, his/her Legislative Assistant).  Need some lobbying guidance?… Check out our lobby-day tips!

Tell the corporate entities that control the food system that they have a responsibility to provide their customers with ethically-produced meat and dairy. Start or join a letter-writing campaign and/or place a call to corporate headquarters. Publicize the good as well as the bad. Companies hate bad PR–it leaves investors with a bad taste in their mouths, and stock prices drop. Companies also love good PR– if they know that changing their behavior will score them enough “good-corporate-citizen” points, they’re likely to do it.  (Note to investors: check out the work the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility is doing, and consider joining them).

Consider where you live when deciding how best to use your time. Live near a CAFO? Start a water-monitoring program along a nearby canal or stream; start a local well-monitoring program in your neighborhood. Keep track of odor levels (this is a good short-hand for local air-quality) and call the Idaho State Department of Agriculture’s (ISDA’s) Odor Hotline (866) 435-0490 ((208) 332-8540 if no one answers the first line and you’d like to speak with a live person). Asking ISDA to do its jobs where CAFOs are involved might sound as useful as tilting at windmills, but if we get organized, calling every time nearby CAFOs become unreasonably awful-smelling, and refuse to relent until some real action is taken, we will succeed. Live in a CAFO-heavy county, but not near a CAFO? Volunteer as a CAFO-sentinel and keep an eye on county-level CAFO policy (ordinance revisions, siting and expansion applications, etc.). Don’t live near a CAFO or a CAFO-heavy county? Support farm-t0-cafeteria programs (farm-to-school, farm-to-hospital programs) near you. Ask your local hospital to sign on to Healthcare Without Harm’s Healthy Food Pledge.

Donate. So far we’ve listed the free and inexpensive ways to make a difference; yet real food system reform is going to take money as well as time. Designing good air and water quality monitoring programs, developing and maintaining effective agency-policing efforts– we’ll need donations to make these things happen. Whether you can give $20, $100, or $500– every bit helps!

Join the movements for economic and social justice– the largest obstacle by far to overcoming the “cheap food at all costs” mentality that gives us CAFOs is poverty. And, of course, to tackle poverty we must also deal with social oppression– racism, sexism, all of the “isms” we know so well. This does not mean we should let the complexity of the problem overwhelm us; on the contrary– to recognize how interconnected these problems are is also to realize that each of these movements is moving the other forward: that we have allies in unexpected places.