Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To the Editor:

Very soon the Northampton Board of Commissioners will be given the opportunity to help people in the community or continue to enslave them.

The Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) that have been allowed to come into this community, by a previous Northampton County Board of Commissioners, has denied us equal protection. How many CAFOs are in rich, non-minority neighborhoods?

We have no protection from contaminated air, contaminated water, diseases coming from this contamination, decreased property values, inability to sell our homes at a fair price, and family farms having difficulty competing with the taxpayer supported big business of CAFOs. Yes, we are footing the bill to have our rights taken away!

Discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people based on ethnicity, age, sex, income or disability. It is obvious discrimination is alive and well in Northampton County.

Greed, the intense and selfish desire for something such as wealth and power runs the CAFO industry and all those who support it. Selling out to big business at the expense of your community, neighbors, friends, and family equals allowing greed to overtake your principles.

The cruelty involved in operating a CAFO is 10 times worse than a “puppy mill.” People running puppy mills are often arrested and jailed. In a CAFO, the females are kept in cages so small they can’t even move. They must feed their young through bars in the cage. They never feel the sunshine, never touch grass, never have any freedom. Their babies are taken away at just two weeks old. They are then artificially inseminated, and the cruel process starts all over again. They just breed until they die and then they are left to rot.

This is so sad. Studies have shown a pig is as intelligent as a 3-year- old child. A pig is smarter than a dog or cat. Would you treat your child, dog or cat this way?

My husband and I moved here to enjoy fresh air, clean water and sunshine. Instead, we are living a nightmare. We have had to face up close the inhumanity of man, the disregard of human rights and civil rights, polluted water and contaminated air beyond comprehension. Cruelty of animals that makes anyone with normal thinking sick. We and our neighbors are all being cheated, due to the greed of politics and big business.

The people in this community have been victims of all of the above for years and years. Sometime in the near future this Northampton Board of Commissioners will have the chance to change this. Money does not take precedent over the welfare of the citizenry.

Please contact your commissioners and tell them you want the permits for CAFOs not to be renewed.

Janet Nichols

Jackson