How can a region's well-being suffer from ILOs?
A region suffers when ILOs buy up the farm lands and displace
normal farming practices because:-
- property tax base reduced as family farmers leave and their
farm houses are demolished.
- surrounding areas are less desirable for rural residential
development.
- municipal evaluations of neighbouring residences are often
reduced.
- roads suffer from heavy trucks - feed in, manure and produce
out.
- community functions and community spirit diminishs.
- tourism suffers from reduced area diversity and stink from
large scale manure spreads (far greater in scale than normal
farming practices).
- beaches are often closed when bacteria or toxic levels rise
from spills or runoff.
- most related business transactions are conducted outside
of the region, such as feed contracts, produce contracts, etc.
Most ILOs are directly associated with, or contracted to, large
multinational agricorporations.
- wild habitat is lost as forest areas are cleared to create
needed acreage quotas for manure spreading.
- historically, data from other countries and other parts of
Canada show that spillages, leakages, flooding, etc., do occur
causing environmental damage far greater in scale than might be
expected in normal farming operations.
- Provincial governments have not responded to ILOs with regulatory
legislation which recognises the significant change in scale of
effluent throughput.
- Provincial governments have not responded to the grave threat
of loss of effective antibiotics due to routine use of antibiotics
in many ILOs.
- higher levels of governments appear to priories "Gross National
Product" (GNP) ahead of individual, community, and environmental
well-being. (see
http://www.simpol.org/ )
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