Eye-opening account by Carolyn Lochhead in the San Francisco Chronicle of some of the collateral damage in the farm-safety panic. For fear of bacterial contamination, farmers are now increasingly obliged to act rigorously against any sign of wildlife, whether frogs, squirrels, birds or mice:
…ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors.
Even organic techniques of surrounding crops with hedges of pest-resistant vegetation are being foiled by buyers’ demands that an entirely sterile ring be installed instead.
Auditors have told [farmer Ken] Kimes that no children younger than 5 can be allowed on his farm for fear of diapers. He has been asked to issue identification badges to all visitors.
Full article here.
6 Comments
Reading the linked article, this reminds me of the CPSIA mess: a problem is caused by the large-scale, industrial producers of some product; the problem is suspected to be a consequence of those industrial-scale methods; and government and industry respond by adopting rules and regulations that force everyone to switch to using those same types of industrial-scale methods and that only the large-scale producers can afford to comply with.
In my opinion, this is insane.
Another thing that comes out of this story is the way that as government regulates more and more details of more and more areas of life, it always ends up working at cross-purposes to itself. I’m sure that many of these new farming methods conflict with environmental goals that federal and state governments are trying to achieve, like the preservation of wetlands and protection of wildlife. Big government like this isn’t just intrusive and meddlesome, it also inevitably ends up being capricious and whimsical (in the literal sense of the word – acting on random whims of the moment). Something to keep in mind next time one is tempted to demand the government solve some problem.
This is a problem that shall solve itself. After a sufficiently long period time of destroying the safety and productivity of the food and land in the name of increasing it, the food and land shall no longer be able to support the life that destroys it, and the land shall in time recover while those hubris filled folks who thought they could make nature into a sterile laboratory are reduced to a historical footnote at the most.
[…] Overlawyered: Tearing up the Farms, in Safety’s Name […]
GregS: “a problem is caused by the large-scale, industrial producers of some product;”
There was no such problem. There was the case of a child swallowing a lead tainted trinket that pulled in Senator Amy Klobuchar. That case is dubious to say the least. We must remember the years of uproar caused by a lady claiming joint pains from her breast implants.
The problem with the Minnesota case is that it was the only one. There were perhaps millions of children exposed to the trinkets. If they were that toxic, we should have seen more incidents. The CDC was able to desern toxic shock syndrome.
Other than that GregS’ comments are dead on right.
What is going to happen when the EPA goes after those farmers who filled in their mud puddles wet lands?
Not quite related but a friend of mine owns some lakefront property and the county says their grass is too close to the lake, so they had to spend thousands back-hoeing the yard so the grass is 20 feet off the lake or something. Someone came out to measure, and determined that the dirt needed to be an additional foot back (according to the friend, the lake water levels were down!) , so they’re suing the city. Pretty much they just have a weedy, torn-up lawn that they can’t grow anything on next to a beautiful lake and everyone else’s lawns are “grandfathered in”…I believe it has to do with fear that peoples’ lawn or plant fertilizer will contaminate the lake.