Farmageddon - California Girls

8/13/2019 Farmageddon - California Girls

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California Girls

Careful what you wish for

California, USA: according to the Beach Boys, home to the cutest girls

in the world. I was there to get a sense of what our planet will look like

if California-style farming becomes the norm around the world. Since

the legendary Sixties hit, the population of females in the Golden

State has soared, but the new arrivals share none of the glowing good

health and athletic physiques of the sun-kissed babes in the song. Tey

are milk cows and their purpose in life is to churn out supernatural

quantities of milk before being turned into hamburgers.

Hollywood has dipped California in gold, drawing millions of visitors

to the sun-soaked beaches, twinkling city lights and luscious Napa Valley

vineyards. Few tourists ever see the real powerhouse: Central Valley, the

fruit bowl of America, and home to perhaps the biggest concentration ofmega-dairies in the world. One and three-quarter million dairy cows are

reared in California,1crammed into barren pens on tiny patches of land

that make a mockery of the vast potential space in this part of America.

Tey pump out nearly 6 billion dollars worth of milk every year,2and as

much waste in the form of dung and urine as 90 million people.3Trough

a combination of selective breeding, concentrated diets and growth

hormones designed to maximise milk production, they are pushed so

grotesquely beyond their natural limits that they survive for just two orthree years of milking before being sent to slaughter.

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Te US-style mega-dairy, often twenty to a hundred times the size

of the average British dairy, is on the brink of migrating to the UK andother parts of the world. For this reason, and because it has embraced

intensive farming with an enthusiasm and rigour unmatched anywhere

in the world, Central Valley is a vision of how the countryside else-

where could soon look. I wanted to see it.

It would not be my rst trip to an American mega-dairy. During the

successful battle to block plans for the UKs rst mega-dairy, an 8,000-

cow facility in Lincolnshire, England, I went out to Wisconsin to lookat the farm on which that proposal was modelled. It was a ying visit,

the result of a pledge I made on national radio at the height of the

campaign. What I found was a soulless and highly tuned milk-

production operation in which the cows might as well have been

Kitchen Aid machines, designed to swallow up ingredients and spew

them out in another form, keeping the process going twenty-four hours

a day until they ran out of steam. What I found then was depressing and

gave me some idea of what to expect in California, but nothing prepared

me for the sheer scale of what I was to encounter this time.

Accompanied by a small team including Isabel Oakeshott and a

camera crew, I ew to California in November, hoping to see as much

of Central Valley as possible in just under a week. In the event, I nearly

didnt make it thanks to a chicken sandwich that my colleague had

bought from a branch of Pret a Manger at Heathrow in case the food

on the plane wasnt up to scratch. She didnt eat it there, but kept it incase there was nothing to offer in the motel at the other end.

We were at baggage reclaim at San Francisco airport, waiting to

pick up our cases, when an eager sniffer dog bounded over. Hed

smelled the sandwich in her hand luggage. Within seconds the dog

handler was on the scene and we were the focus of a full-scale security

alert, the sandwich inspected like an unexploded bomb, all my

colleagues bags examined and X-rayed.

Te sandwich was subjected to further forensic examination beforebeing carted off to be destroyed. At last we were sent on our way but



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not before getting a long lecture about mad cow disease. It was a sharp

reminder that while the UK has very deliberately relegated BSE to anembarrassing chapter in history, America has neither forgiven nor

forgotten. Te incident would seem even stranger later, when we

witnessed the seemingly casual disregard for public health that goes

hand in hand with mega-dairy farming in California.

We didnt hang around in San Francisco, but hit the road to Central

Valley. It was a ve-hour drive south through drab agricultural land.

Approaching the valley, we noticed a curious yellowish-grey smog on

the horizon. It looked like the sort of pollution that hangs over bigcities, but there were none, only the dairies, which emit so much bad

stuff that the surrounding air quality can be worse than Los Angeles

on a smoggy day.4

As well as supporting an army of cows, Central Valley coughs up an

incredible annual harvest of fruit, nuts and vegetables, despite having

so little rainfall it is technically classied as semi-desert. Tere are

elds of pomegranates, pistachio orchards, grape vines and apricot

trees. Tere are tomatoes and asparagus, and acres of red, pink and

yellow rose bushes. Tere are miles of orange and lemon groves. Tere

are also enough almond trees to provide four out of every ve almonds

consumed in the world. It sounds like the Garden of Eden. It isnt. It

turned out to be a deeply disturbing place where not a blade of grass,

no tree or hedgerow grows, except in private gardens and the ruth-

lessly delineated elds.

Te phenomenal output of fruit and veg is possible only thanks toa cocktail of chemicals and the plundering of the crystal-clear rivers

that run down from the Sierra Nevada mountains. By remorselessly

dousing the parched soil with fertilisers, insecticides, herbicides and

fumigants, as well as diverting natural waterways, farmers have been

able to pull off a multi-billion-dollar conjuring trick, extracting

harvests from soil that is so depleted of natural matter it might as well

be brown polystyrene.

All these chemicals make the air smell very strange. It caught in mythroat and felt like it was creeping down into my lungs. In



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this breezeless bowl between the mountains and the coast, weed- and

pest-killers from industrial sprayers can struggle to settle on crops,leaving a ne mist of toxins to hang in the air. Some days, when the

temperature and air pressure combine in a certain way, clouds of

chemicals can be seen hovering above the crops. All that fruit should

be an irresistible draw for birds, bees, butteries and other insects. We

saw virtually none.

On this featureless chemical wasteland lie the mega-dairies: milk

factories where animals are just machines that rapidly break down and

are replaced. Te dairies arrived in Central Valley in the 1990s, afterbeing pushed out of the Los Angeles suburbs. Land on the city

outskirts was becoming ever more valuable, and as the population

expanded, farmers were nding it cost more and more to dispose of

waste. Encouraged by realtors, many sold up and moved to the sticks,

where they quickly discovered there was not much to stop them doing

as they pleased.

At the time, agriculture was exempt from Californias Clean Air Act.

It was not until the late 1990s, when the cousins George and James

Borba applied to build two 14,000-cow operations on adjacent property

in Kern County, in effect creating a 28,000 dairy, that serious attention

began to be paid to the potential environmental and health impacts.

Te Borbas plans were nodded through at rst, but the sheer scale of

the proposal galvanised people who were already worried by what they

were observing in Central Valley. After a protracted legal battle,

campaigners forced the authorities to undertake a full environmentalimpact assessment, the results of which were so alarming they changed

the game for ever. Such assessments became standard procedure for

subsequent planning applications, and Californias exemption of

agriculture from the Clean Air Act came increasingly under question.

Te policy was nally changed in 2003, when a new system of

permits was introduced. In theory, farmers now have to comply with

tough air- and water-pollution regulations a burden they bitterlydeplore. In practice we heard and saw worrying evidence that



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many routinely out the law while overstretched authorities turn a

blind eye.We spent several days driving around Fresno, ulare and Kern, the

three counties that generate the most agricultural produce in the

whole of America. It was not long before we found our rst mega-

dairy, a series of towering corrugated-iron shelters set in mud pens. It

was autumn 2011; the sun shone against a clear blue sky and the

temperature was pleasant. Some cows jostled for space in the shade

under the open-sided sheds. Others stood in the sun looking bored.

Tere was no grass, just a deep pile carpet of earth and manure. Froma distance it was hard to tell the difference between the cows and the

stacks of rubber tyres in the yard.

We pulled up for a closer look. A large black beetle scuttled across

the road, virtually the only non-ying insect we encountered in ve

days though there were always plenty of black ies. Tey arrived, we

were told, at the same time as the mega-dairies and are now a scourge,

invading homes, schools and offi ces, forcing residents to install screens

over windows and seals around doors.

Out of the car, we took in the scene. Te stench of manure was over-

whelming not the faintly sweet, earthy smell of cowpat familiar in

the English countryside, but a nauseous reek bearing no relation to

digested grass. Te cows moved very little, too engorged with milk.

When they did walk, it was with a rocking gait, their legs splayed wide

around their pink and grey beachball udders. We saw these farmsevery mile or so, all with several thousand cows surrounded by mud,

corrugated iron and concrete. Most of the shelters were rigged up with

rusty fans, a pathetic defence against the searing summer sun. Between

feed times and milking, there was little for the animals to do but wait

for food, for milking, perhaps for medication.

Near the town of urlock we saw several mega-dairies next door to

power stations, a grotesque inversion of the traditional concept of a

farm. Tere was nothing rural about these locations: they were hugeindustrial estates, characterised by supersized animal feed and



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milk-processing plants belching out fumes. Alongside were railway

tracks bearing freight cars half a kilometre long.We had tried in vain to make an appointment for an offi cial tour of

a farm. It turned out to be unnecessary: most mega-dairies were

located right by public roads. Te only facilities we could not see were

the milking parlours, often giant rotating carousels. Cows queue up,

step onto the wheel, and are hooked to milking machines. When their

udders are pumped dry they step off the merry-go-round to make way

for the next animal, and return to their barren pen.

Te landscape was so at it was diffi cult to get a sense of scale, so wechartered a plane, a tiny four-seater Cessna, to look at the dairies from

the air. It cost less than dinner for two at a London restaurant. At

reception, the pilots wife reassured us her husband had been ying for

fty years without incident. He was fond of his grandchildren, she

said, and wouldnt take any risks. We showed our passports, paid up,

and strolled out onto the runway with our aviation headsets. It was all

strangely informal, pleasantly so. We might as well have been hopping

on a city bus.

In the back of the aircraft there was barely room for two. I wedged

myself behind the pilots seat, put my earphones on and prepared for

take-off. Tere were some cursory radio exchanges, the pilot revved

the engines, and then we zoomed along the runway and were airborne.

We levelled at around 2,000 feet. Squeezed into the front passenger

seat with all his gear, our cameraman opened the window to take some

aerial shots, letting in such a powerful blast of air that my colleaguescontact lenses almost blew out.

When I peered out of the window it looked as if a vast steamroller

had pummelled its way across the country, attening every knoll and

hillock and pulverising every plant and creature in its wake. All that

remained was a vast empty canvas, carved into neat sections. Into

these sanitised boxes were inserted crops, the oranges and almonds

that make their way to kitchen tables all over the world. From the air,

the dairies just looked like vast elds of lth peppered with black andwhite specks and the odd corrugated iron roof. I could see the tops of



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silage mountains, their taut white plastic coats shimmering in the

afternoon sun. By every dairy was a stinking pool of yellowish-brownslurry. Even up there, I could pick up the smell. What self-respecting

bovine would want to be a California girl?

Back on the runway again, I stepped out feeling strangely elated

the ight had been fun. But that afternoon brought more depressing

sights, including the worst mega-dairy of the lot. It was on an indus-

trial estate, squeezed between a giant feed factory and an electrical

substation. It looked run-down, the fences rusty and dilapidated, the

corrugated-iron shelters unusually low, perhaps an effort to cut costs.Down the road was a huge battery chicken factory, and the acrid smell

of bird droppings mixed with cow manure hung in the air.

Next door to the farm were a couple of run-down bungalows on a

patch of scrubby wasteland. Piles of rusting scrap metal, old tyres and

discarded plastic toys littered the yard. Just visible from the road were

rows of suspicious-looking wooden crates. I went to investigate, and

found that they contained around 200 cockerels. Te Mexican owner

spoke little English, but it was clear they were for cock ghting, an ille-

gal but popular pastime among poor communities in these parts. I saw

this neighbourhood at dusk, against a backdrop of darkening cumulus

clouds. An exhausted cow stooped atop of a mound of manure, silhou-

etted against the night sky. It was like a scene from Armageddon.

Of course thats not how the industry sees it. Te California Milk

Advisory Board (CMAB) claims that 443,000 full-time jobs in Cali-

fornia are linked to the dairy industry and that it generates as much asUS$63 billion in economic activity a year. Apparently, a typical cow

contributes US$34,000. Te organisations website is a slick piece of

PR, a collage of images of contented cows on green elds, wholesome-

looking food, and all-American-looking farming families, their arms

round each other as they pose for the camera, as if to say that being in

this business makes for a happy, fullling life, which perhaps it does

for some.

Since 1969 the CMAB has run an annual Dairy Princess competi-tion, a beauty pageant for young women from dairy families. Te



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Its hardly surprising given the amount of muck being produced. One

animal generates as much waste as fty humans, meaning that a singlemega-dairy of around 10,000 cows creates as much waste as a fair-

sized UK city such as Bristol. According to the CMAB, as of November

2011 there were 1,620 dairy farms in California, housing a total of

1.75 million cows. ogether they generate more excrement than the

entire human population of the UK.

Finding somewhere to put all those cowpats is a huge headache.

Most is channelled into vast lagoons attached to the farms. Tey let off

noxious gases and leach into the ground. Even with clay liners, thelagoons are porous. Te US authorities seem to accept that signicant

seepage is inevitable. I wanted to hear from people living near the

farms about the pollution and health problems. We met om Frantz,

a retired maths teacher who has lived in Kern County all his life. He

lives in a cosy clapboard house among the almond orchards, with two

energetic dogs and some noisy geese. Amid the sanitised acres of

commercially produced trees his garden is a tiny oasis, a riot of brightly

coloured owers and verdant shrubs beneath towering palms.

He says that Kern County is where he will die perhaps a decade

before his time, if a recent scientic study into pollution in Central

Valley is to be believed. I know Ill probably live ten, even fteen years

less than I would if I moved, but this is where I come from. Im not

going anywhere, he told us matter-of-factly.

Lately Frantz has noticed hes developed a strange post-nasal drip.

He is in no doubt about the cause. Living near mega-dairies is danger-ous. We are looking at a potential health disaster. I can see a new strain

of E. coli, some kind of plague, breaking out in Central Valley. Tat is

the worst-case scenario. It sounds remote, but my worry is that its just

around the corner. Nobody will care, until it is too late.

With his unkempt wiry hair and taste for reggae music, Frantz

looked like an ageing hippy, but on the subject of mega-dairies and the

environment he was extremely switched on, rattling off complex facts

and gures about volatile organic compounds and nitrogen organiccompounds with the authority of one who has spent years poring over



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the evidence. Over the past decade, he has become a thorn in the side

of Kern Countys dairy farmers, keeping their behaviour under relent-less surveillance and calling them to account when he detects evidence

that they are outing environmental regulations. Where government

agencies are too busy or lackadaisical to act, he starts to le offi cial

complaints, taking cases all the way to court if need be. It did not take

him long to gure out that unless lawyers are involved people dont

listen. Tis being America, you have to sue.

Tere are now ten dairies within eight miles of Frantzs home. Te

rst arrived in 1994, the rest since 2002. Offi cially, they house a totalof 70,000 cows. However, the real total is likely to be far higher: dair-

ies are only required to submit the number of cows being milked at

any one time, meaning they do not have to count animals that are

being rested during their dry (non-lactating) period. According to

Frantz, what folk rst noticed when the mega-dairies arrived was an

inux of ies. Hardest-hit was a school just a mile from the rst mega-

dairy that opened. eachers used to keep the doors and windows open

in summer because the place had no air conditioning. Tese days thats

out of the question. Tere were swarms of black ies in the class-

rooms. It was diffi cult for the kids to work with them buzzing around.

Tat rst year, they used rolls of sticky tape to catch them. Later, they

installed screens on all the windows and sealed the doors.

What bothers Frantz most though is air pollution. For much of the

year, the smog is so thick and heavy that the Sierra Nevada mountains,

10,000 feet high, are invisible from the valley oor. Hardly anyonelives here, but air quality-wise, it might as well be Beijing. Of course

there are many factors involved, from the exhaust fumes that pour

from trucks carrying agricultural and other produce up and down the

highway, to emissions from the industrial animal feed processing

plants. Tey are a blatant source of pollution. Te impact of mega-

dairies is less visible but just as insidious, because of noxious gases

from manure and silage.

Frantz and other concerned locals hold monthly meetings to discusswhat to do. Tey work with sympathetic lawyers who take cases pro



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bono. Victory can mean multi-million-dollar nes for companies

found responsible for environmental breaches. Teres no money in itfor the campaigners: the payouts are given to environmental groups.

For many small communities in Central Valley it is not air quality

but water quality that is the most pressing issue. Studies have also

shown a direct correlation between intensive dairy farming and

contamination of water wells, especially with E. coli bacteria and

nitrates.5During our trip, we spotted a well located within a few feet

of the perimeter of a mega-dairy. It supplied local communities with

their domestic water. Little wonder that so-called boil notices lettersfrom local authorities ordering residents not to drink water out of

their taps unless they have boiled it are a way of life here.

Maria Herrera, a mother of four, runs the Community Water

Center in the city of Visalia in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. Te

organisation campaigns for universal access to safe drinking water. In

a nation as rich as America, youd have thought that people could take

it for granted. Yet in parts of Central Valley it has become a luxury. In

the small Hispanic communities that have sprung up to provide farm

labour, it seems few dare to drink from the tap. Herrera told us:

Ground water here is heavily polluted, mainly with nitrates, though

there are also concerns about arsenic, which is linked to some ferti-

lisers and is sometimes used as an additive in cattle feed,. Te

meetings we hold with residents are always packed. Te dairy farm-

ers and their lobbyists come along and deny it has anything to dowith them, but the evidence proves otherwise.

A permit system for farmers is supposed to keep water pollution within

safe limits. In practice, it has proven impossible to prevent seepage

from the Olympic swimming pool-sized lagoons of slurry attached to

mega-farms. Te lagoons arent properly lined, and so the effl uent

leaks, Herrera told us. Its crazy we treat human waste so that it

doesnt pollute water supplies; yet effl uent from cows is allowed to getinto the system. It makes no sense. When nitrate levels in the water



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supply get too high, letters arrive from water companies advising folk

not to drink from the tap. Herrera took us to meet some of the fami-lies affected who lived in a small trailer park surrounded by elds of

citrus trees, a few miles outside Visalia. We stood amid the simple

wooden bungalows, some so basic that the toilets were outside. Despite

the obvious poverty, it was a welcoming place. Te trailers and car

ports were painted in pretty pastels; children and kittens scampered

about; everyone knew everyone.

I was introduced to Luis Medellin, a handsome 25-year-old who

works at a mega-dairy but hates what the farms are doing to hiscommunitys water supply: o tell you the truth, our water here

doesnt smell good. It looks cloudy and smells of chlorine. You cant

trust it. From time to time, I do drink it right out of the tap, know-

ing it is contaminated, but mostly we buy bottled. I think there are

Tird World countries with safer water than we have here. Every

week, Medellin sets off with two giant plastic bottles the family

keeps in the kitchen to replenish them with ltered water. It costs

about US$4 dollars a go, not a trivial sum for a family whose living

conditions an overcrowded trailer with little ventilation, lit by a

few bare bulbs hanging from bare wires would shock most well-

heeled Americans.

According to the Community Water Center, there are at least six

settlements within a few miles of Medellins home where water quality

is a serious issue. He has been campaigning for clean water since he

was at high school. Te irony that he earns his living from the verybusiness that is responsible for polluting the supply does not escape

him: I am not happy that I have to work there. Te dairy has two

huge lagoons full of crap theres no other way to put it and I am

always thinking about what its doing to the water. He sticks it out

because he is lucky enough to have a good boss, who looks after his

workers and seems to care for the cows. His father has been working

at the same dairy for fourteen years. It is the way of life here, but that

doesnt mean people do not aspire to better or care about the damagethe business is doing.



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We were told about a growing body of scientic evidence about the

health risks associated with living near mega-dairies. A recent studyfound that people living near factory farms have their life expectancy

shortened by as much as a decade. We interviewed Kevin Hamilton, a

blunt-talking registered respiratory therapist, at the Clinica Sierra

Vista, in Fresno. His experience on the medical front line prompted

him to become a committed activist against mega-dairies:

Were talking about heart disease, birth defects, and stunted lung

development among children who spent a lot of time outsideplaying sport. Were talking about high blood pressure and

increased risk of stroke. We have the second-highest level of child-

hood asthma in the whole of the US. Fifteen years ago, I couldnt

have said any of that with condence. Now the evidence is over-

whelming. Its terrifying.

Te most vulnerable groups are children and pregnant women who

can suffer long-term medical consequences as a result of even short

exposures to dairy-related pollution. People over the age of sixty-ve

are also disproportionately affected. Tese high-risk groups make up a

high percentage of Central Valleys population. Other groups heavily

affected are the farm labourers who are exposed to noxious gases daily.

Tey literally never escape the assault, Hamilton said. Tey live in

sub-standard houses, where the doors and windows are not sealed, and

on the farms they are working very hard. Te harder they breathe, themore stuff they take in. Tese workers are poor and disempowered. A

lot of them are here illegally. Word gets round that if they make a fuss,

they will be deported. It happens.

Hamilton told us that one of his doctor colleagues recently moved

away from the area because her son had developed bad asthma. She

went to live in Colorado. I had a postcard from her six months ago,

saying that since leaving this place, her son hadnt needed any medica-

tion. Hamilton believes mega-dairies are a repellent symbol of agrotesquely unnatural agricultural food production system.



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You have to use a phenomenal amount of chemicals to push multi-

ple crops out of the soil we have here. If you look at the offi cial dataon the amount of pesticides applied per square mile, the gures

would stun you. I dont think people have any idea. Tese pesticides

are capable of penetrating the human body to genome level mean-

ing they can affect the very building blocks of the body.

My family is from Kansas, and we had one crop a year, and were

really grateful for that. Some people would argue that CAFO

[Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations] systems feed the world.

I would argue that the world was feeding itself pretty well before wedid all this. Weve taken agriculture out of elds where it should be,

into places where we have to farm against nature. If we have to have

mega-dairies at all, why have them in a place like Central Valley, an

airless bowl? We have loaded them in at a totally unsustainable rate.

Its got way out of hand.

I left Hamiltons offi ces feeling drained and wondering who wins from

this system. It would be easy to blame the farmers, but its not as if

they are all making fortunes. Most seem to feel under siege by envi-

ronmental activists and regulation on a scale they never anticipated

nor signed up for when they abandoned their small farms on the

outskirts of LA.

Mega-dairy farming is a high-risk business exposed to global price

hikes and price volatility. Evidence suggests they cannot weather reces-

sion as well as smaller pasture-based systems. Between 2011 and 2012,feed prices almost doubled, driving some dairies to the brink of nan-

cial collapse. According to one report, produced by the farming

industry itself in the UK, mega-dairies only become more competitive

in a hypothetical situation in which the price of milk is xed for ten

years. As this is impossible, the report states that pasture-based farms

are more likely to turn a prot. It seems the system is not working

brilliantly for anyone.

It was not until the last day of our trip that I fully appreciated whatan unhappy business mega-dairying can be. We were in urlock,



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Stanislaus County, visiting a livestock market. I wanted to see what cows

from mega-dairies look like at the end of their lives. I had a pretty goodidea what to expect: sad black and white bags of bones with saggy, dried-

up udders and the exhausted demeanour of animals ve times their age.

Known as the Heart of the Valley, urlock was a depressing place,

just a sprawl of dilapidated houses and stores interspersed by gas

stations, downmarket food joints and the odd tattoo parlour and

palm-reading salon. Te surrounding area was scarred by the towering

concrete and steel apparatus of intensive agricultural production.

Locating the market was a step too far for our satnav GPS, and I wastwice forced to stop and ask for directions. Tere were few friendly

faces and folk struggled to understand my accent. I wondered whether

we would witness blatant cruelty and how the locals would react when

we pitched up. Experience taught me they were likely to be suspicious.

Te Humane Society of the United States, Americas biggest and most

effective animal protection charity, has a high prole among those in

the livestock industry, most of whom are primed for unwelcome visits.

In the event it was okay. Tough the owner Chuck Cozzi was wary, he

was suffi ciently intrigued by his unexpected English visitors to usher

us in. Not only did he agree to show us round, he also allowed us to

lm, a highly unusual concession in this type of facility.

Te auction house had the feel of a small-town football club, with

a dog-eared offi ce and a greasy spoon caf selling a daily breakfast

special of two eggs any style, two bacon strips, two sausages and two

pancakes, all for $3.99. Te salesroom was like a little theatre, withrough wooden benches for customers, a small ring for the animals,

and a raised kiosk at the back, where the auctioneer sat.

I sat down, feeling painfully out of place among the weather-

beaten men in Stetsons. Te sale began, and I listened in amazement.

It was not the sight of the animals that was remarkable but the

auctioneers breathless sales patter which, to the untrained ear, was

curiously captivating, like someone singing the popular country

song Cotton-Eyed Joe. It turned out he had just qualied for theworld livestock auctioneer championships.



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I hung around until Id seen a few depleted-looking dairy cows stag-

ger into the ring. A pair of workers armed with plastic paddles swattedthem out as the auctioneer sold them off for cheap meat to the slaugh-

terhouse. Outside, a cowgirl on a paint horse cantered up and down

corrals, herding animals towards the ring, her long blonde hair stream-

ing out behind her. A prominent wooden sign in the lorry park warned

farmers not to show up with animals too sick to walk. o my relief,

there was no obvious sign of cruelty.

My lm crew interviewed Cozzi, anticipating familiar complaints

about low milk prices and the rocketing cost of animal feed. So itwas completely unexpected when Cozzi, a 6ft 4in all-American

guy, suddenly broke down in tears. He spoke of a close friend who

owned a large dairy, but could not cope with the nancial pres-

sures. You know, he had enough. I think he shot himself, you

know, leaving families behind. You know, kids. Its so sad. He

welled up and turned away from the crew, embarrassed. Compos-

ing himself, he said: You know I think maybe that guy was just so

far in debt, he just gave up you know. Just got no more drive. I

dont think anything could be that bad that somebody would want

to do that, but it must have been for him. It was a poignant

moment. My crew and I felt hugely sympathetic to his account and

thanked him for his honesty.

It is a reminder that its not just Californias milk cows who are

suffering from this bizarre perversion of farming. Yes, the dairy cattle

are dying young, but so all too often are the people who live and workwith them. Everyone is struggling to survive even the farmers who

should be raking in their share from Californias billions of dollars of

milk a year.

In the complex mesh of economic pressures and corporate interests

that have given birth to factory farms, nothing is black and white.

One thing does seem clear. In the land of the mega-dairy a land that

is inching perilously close to home humans, cattle and the environ-

ment are dancing to a grim tune of extraction and depletion. Each isjust an asset to be milked dry.

Documents

Farmageddon - California Girls