After recent fraud allegations, a lawsuit filed by Tyson and Easterday Ranches declaring bankruptcy, the Easterdays have shown Oregonians that they are incapable of operating a mega-dairy on the former site of Lost Valley Farm in Morrow County.

Lost Valley Farm was shut down in 2019, after committing more than 200 environmental violations. The Oregon Department of Agriculture and the dairy lobby painted Lost Valley’s “mismanagement” as a bad outlier among industrial farming operations. However, the current scandal surrounding the Easterday family, which has proposed a new mega-dairy on the site of the former Lost Valley Farm, shows that the Lost Valley disaster was not just the result of a lone bad actor.

These issues are inherent to the industry. The Oregon Department of Agriculture is aware of the lawsuit, but continues to review draft permits for the proposed mega-dairy. This is unacceptable.

Mega-dairies, regardless of compliance, are inherently dangerous. They contribute to extensive air pollution and water contamination that harm Oregon’s rural communities. The whole mega-dairy system is foul.

Livestock production is the leading source of methane in the U.S., and emissions continue to increase: from 1990 to 2017, U.S. methane emissions from dairy cattle manure rose 134%. Apart from methane, cow manure also emits ammonia, nitrous oxide and hydrogen sulfide. These gases have been linked to hazy air pollution in the Columbia River Gorge and negatively affect the communities near these mega-dairies.

Manure not only contributes to air pollution, it also impacts waterways. In 2018, Oregon mega-dairies produced 5 billion pounds of manure; that’s 42 times the waste produced by the entire population of Portland. In the right quantities, manure is a beneficial fertilizer. But mega-dairies produce enormous amounts of manure, and the manure’s nitrates, antibiotics and other chemicals leach into groundwater and become runoff that flows into streams and rivers. This runoff eventually reaches the Columbia River and threatens water quality and the ecosystem.

Mega-dairies produce air emissions and waste on par with our nation’s largest cities, yet they portray themselves to the public as harmless family farms. We are not fooled. Oregon cannot become the next hotbed of mega-dairy production. We must stop the spread of these industrial operations by supporting Senate Bill 583 and House Bill 2924 that call for a moratorium on industrial dairy farms.

The Lost Valley and now Easterday scandals point to more than just two bad actors. The pattern is clear, these actions are standard within the toxic mega-dairy industry. We must protect our fellow Oregonians and places of natural beauty by stopping the construction of new mega-dairies.

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