The Kansas governor, Kansas Department of Agriculture and elected officials in the City of Tonganoxie and County of Leavenworth have disregarded their constituent’s wishes to not live near animal factories, so it is important that citizens of Kansas see and address the much larger picture of what is going on here. People also need to be aware -- satellite "grow-out" houses (the CAFO's) will be scattered throughout northeastern Kansas to supply the Tonganoxie slaughter-processing plant, whether it is situated in Tonagnoxie, or in some other Kansas locale. If Tyson succeeds in getting their plant in -- ANYWHERE in Kansas -- we are all still at risk of having these other, "chicken factories" in our back yards which will have profound, long-lasting negative impacts on our water cleanliness and scarcity, air, soil and livability of much of our state -- and will even the harm our future economic opportunities. Look for example at what has happened to the American rice farmers as a result of Tyson (and other chicken producing companies) feeding arsenic-laced chicken feed to chickens for years. The arsenic passed into the chicken feces, got spread on farm fields, and now almost all domestically produced rice has such high levels of arsenic in it, that more educated American consumers are purchasing only rice grown outside the US. If our public officials TRULY want to support America's economic well-being, they need to embrace a broader lens -- rather than the one they allowed themselves to be exclusively exposed to all these months that they were in secret meetings with Tyson!
While nobody wants an animal factory in their back yard, it is critical that we band together and work to make sure that these things are “Not in ANYBODY’S Back yard. Also, there is a much bigger story to what is happening that I’d like to share with you.
While nobody wants an animal factory in their back yard, it is critical that we band together and work to make sure that these things are “Not in ANYBODY’S Back yard. Also, there is a much bigger story to what is happening that I’d like to share with you.
I feel a particular solidarity with our neighbors in Tonganoxie and Leavenworth County because a few years ago, my rural residential neighborhood, outside of Lawrence City limits to the northwest, fought a similar threat. A local developer petitioned the city of Lawrence to island annex a 160 acres that was outside of the zone of growth as outlined in Douglas County’s Horizon 2020 planning document, and to rezone it to heavy industrial. This parcel was surrounded on all sides by rural residentially zoned properties, where families like ours, had built their dream homes on small acreages.
Our community was unanimous in not wanting to live near industrially zoned property, even though no one would tell us what the actual use might be, but I was particularly concerned that an animal factory might be built on that land. For months we attended city, county and planning commission meetings – but found little support from officials, who had already decided that economic growth mattered more than the fact that we had all made huge investments, building much loved homes in an area the city had publicly identified as NOT being the direction it would grow.
The developer, and elected officials insisted the rezoning was not being done for a particular entity and wouldn’t divulge what the property would be used for. I now believe this was a calculated attempt to prevent us from garnering wider community support which would have been enormous if they had disclosed that a chicken plant was the planned use. (Just take a look at how quickly and effectively the larger community organized once it was disclosed that Tyson would be in Tonganoxie.) To make matters worse, citizens of Lawrence (who unlike us, actually had voting power over these officials) didn’t care about what was happening – not only did they not perceive this as impacting their neighborhood – but since an entity like Tyson had not been identified, they could not see the danger. We were left to fight this all by ourselves.
We eventually prevailed in court because the proposed use of the property had not been spelled out as required by law. So the annexation and rezoning were overturned, and our neighborhood was saved. I know what it was like to feel little support from the surrounding community -- that is why I first decided to support Tonganoxie. But I now have even more reasons.
Since my own neighborhood's battle, several more events have suggested to me that something insidious is happening, impacting a much larger area and that many recent events are connected: A new interchange was added to I-70, right near Tonganoxie which just preceded the now revealed secret negotiations between city and county officials and Tyson. That interchange is critical to Tyson’s plans. Now think about this -- after we reversed the island annexation and rezoning of the land by us, KDOT publicly disclosed new plans to move the Lecompton I-70 interchange (which was right by this land) a few miles west (and taxpayers would have a big bill!) Although my engaged and vigilant neighbors objected to and probably derailed these plans, this suggests to me that someone wants that interchange for their plans and had the highway interchange been moved, neighbors to our west would find themselves fighting rezoning of their rural neighborhood to heavy industrial.
Could Tyson Foods have something to do with all of these things? Here is why I think they might. Demand for processed chicken has been increasing in Kansas, and we have an abundance of feed crops here, that would provide economic incentives for more poultry plants to locate in Kansas. But unlike western Kansas, eastern Kansas, has more water and a larger population including unskilled workers desperate for jobs. But Tyson also has a problem – chickens can’t take the heat of being transported in summer more than an hour from where they are grown to where they are slaughtered, or they die before they get there and can’t be used for human food. So Tyson must set up their slaughtering facility within a fifty mile radius of the many CAFO’s that will grow the chickens they kill. They also need ready access to highways, and probably also want to be fairly close to the new transportation hub in Gardner, Kansas for transportation to distant markets too. When you consider all these factors together – you realize the assault eastern Kansas is now vulnerable to. I believe that if we would not want to live near an animal factory, we have a moral obligation to support other citizens in not having to live by them either. We will all be most successful if we work together.
We must address the most imminent threat Tyson presents by working to keep local governments from rezoning the land to industrial and preventing any tax or bond incentives that Tyson is asking for, and if necessary using the courts to make sure that Tyson does not build in Tonganoxie. But we must also address the longer/larger threat that Tyson and other agribusiness giants present to Kansans. It does concern me, that too much of the opposition to Tyson is just about their history and reputation. We need to be careful -- although Tyson is probably one of the most terrible business entities in the US, the negative impacts to our community would still be unacceptably terrible if we were dealing with Perdue, Koch Foods, or another of these monsters.
Did you know that many laws have been passed in recent years that unjustly favor large corporate interests over the well-being and quality of life in communities? Is that the kind of community you'd like to live in? If not, here is what we must also do going forward:
1) Carefully scrutinize political candidates -- who are they likely to have allegiance to -- citizens or special interests that have donated to their campaigns? If the mention of jobs or economic growth is their top concern or they are too cozy with the local Chamber of Commerce...THROW THEM OUT!
2) Educate yourself on the myriad laws that give special protections or privileges to certain entities, while undermining our democracy -- for example the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Law can turn a simple breaking and entering charge (like if an activist sneaks into a CAFO to take pictures to document the terrible conditions there) into a felony terrorism conviction. (Read THIS BOOK to learn more.) Remember when Oprah Winfrey was sued for 20 million dollars just for saying that she would no longer eat hamburgers -- many states have laws that enable similarly unjust lawsuits, which have had a chilling effect on the press. Pressure elected officials to rescind these laws!
3) Finally we must also take personal responsibility by changing what we eat and buy. Animal Factories are the inevitable result of people eating meat, dairy and eggs. We have a growing population of people trying to feed itself on a finite land mass. In Douglas County -- we have seen the destruction of trees to provide more space for cattle grazing, and this is happening worldwide too. I know that many of the people fighting hardest to prevent Tyson from expanding in Kansas are huge proponents of small local farms, and back yard chicken farming. While 100 years ago this was where most American's meat, dairy and eggs came from, there is a reason that system was mostly replaced by confined animal feeding operations (CAFO's like Tyson.) They enable far more animals to be raised in a much smaller space and for less money. Below is a chart showing how per capita consumption of chicken has skyrocketed. This is what is enabling Tyson to ruin the air, water and soil of so many communities while exploiting the most vulnerable among us -- workers without many options and subjecting billions of animals to hell on earth. When I share this information with others, a common response I get is, "But I don't buy Tyson -- I raise my own chickens." But rarely, do people telling me this abstain from eating out at restaurants, church socials and community potlucks....so they are still enabling Tyson and other bad apples.
Keep in mind -- when looking at this table -- The population of the US has more than doubled since 1909, and this chart is showing average consumption per person -- so the ACTUAL numbers of cows, pigs, and chickens being raised for food in this country has actually gone up far more than what you'd think from this graph. On top of that, we have an export market of meat from these animals too -- also not accounted for here. In other words, the environmental impact, and the number of people having to live with horrific animal factories close by, is far far greater, compared to 1909, than you would ever guess just from this data here.
Be sure to look at my page with 150 articles explaining the harms associated with Tyson Click HERE.
