I’m surrounded by dairy farms.
Not only am I downwind from a sizable operation,
but I also live right next door to a few hundred head of cattle.
Being immersed in their fragrance doesn’t bother me
at all and, quite frankly, it smells like home to me. It’s an integral part of
country living and the smell of slurries and feedlots means that my friends and
neighbors are doing well in their quest to put food and beverages on kitchen
tables across America.
Some folks aren’t so understanding of that.
Every once in a while city folk move into dairy
country -- something becoming more common locally as Amherst creeps into
Niagara County via residential sprawl in Pendleton and south Lockport -- and
are taken aback by the smells. They weren’t raised in the country and were
likely expecting to smell flowers, not animals and their waste, when they
staked their claim.
I guarantee a good many of them have complained to
their town officials or have waved a cursing fist at expanding barns.
Those complaints for the most part have had no
teeth.
Our local farmers have been properly protected by
Right-to-Farm (RTF) laws. The New York State constitution directs the state
legislature to provide for the protection of agricultural lands, something that
is manifested in sections 300 and 305 and 308 of New York Agricultural and
Markets Law. Those standards allow for the formation of agricultural districts
in which the operations of farms are protected from nuisance lawsuits (such as,
smell is ruining the quality of life) as long as the state’s Agricultural
Commissioner issues an opinion that a particular farming practice is sound.
Such protections have kept New York’s farms
vibrant, active, and free of lawsuits that could hinder their growth if not
outright destroy their businesses.
That might no longer be the case if what’s
happening in North Carolina makes its way north.
Based on the outcomes of an initial trial in 2017
that found that a hog farm was liable for nuisance damages despite North
Carolina’s extremely strong RTF laws, lawsuits have been filed a-plenty in the
Tar Heel State against hog farming operations.
The trial lawyers have marketed their efforts
specifically at Murphy-Brown, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods (you go after
the deep pockets first and for best results). There are 23 trials scheduled by more
than 500 homeowners against Murphy-Brown, and 3 are already in the books that
saw jury verdicts of $50 million, $25 million, and $473.5 million. Luckily for
the farming operations, in those cases punitive damages were limited to “only” $3.25
million, $5 million and $94 million – significant sums nonetheless -- based on
a payout cap made state law in 1995.
How are the plaintiffs wining, despite RTF? It was
ruled in the first trial that there was a change in conditions – the specific
pig farms weren’t in operation before some of the neighboring long-term
residents had moved in, so the farms created an nuisance that was not pre-existing.
What does this mean for other states? More
specifically, what does it mean for New York’s farmers and ranchers?
The Empire State’s defense of farmers are
especially strong thanks to the creation of ag districts, the realm in which
RTF exists, but if a small mom-and-pop farm doesn’t fall into the criteria (a
district must be comprised of 500 acres by an owner or group of owners) it can
be forced to close or alter operations due to perceived nuisances. In an era
when a lot of people in my generation and those younger are starting up small
farms to capitalize on the locavore movement, they are right in the sights of
lawsuits.
More so, I would be concerned that some of the law
firms that had success in North Carolina could see big victories in New York
(where we don’t have a cap) based on the fact that New York trials in 1993 and
1997 ruled that manure is a pollutant. Those cases focused on animal feces that
made it into waterways. But, one of those slick southern lawyers could bring a
suit that jumps on that and says that if manure is a water pollutant then, by
God, it must be polluting the air, too, creating a public health nuisance.
So, don’t be surprised if lawsuits against farming
operations large and small become more common everywhere across this country
after the successes that homeowners have had in North Carolina, regardless of
the Right to Farm.
It’s a scary thought.
I don’t know about you, but I like food. As a
matter of fact, I need it. Thankfully, there are hardworking farmers out there
who make that nourishment accessible, affordable, and healthy. Hurt them, and
you hurt every one of us.
From the 22
October 2018 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News
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