Thanks to YOUR action, the Oregon Department of Agriculture formally revoked the permit for the Lost Valley mega-dairy in Eastern Oregon in late June, effectively shutting down this public health and environmental disaster.
This is huge a win for family farmers, the environment, and public health!
Friends of Family Farmers and a diverse coalition led the fight to stop Lost Valley – we helped generate thousands of public comments against the facility, testified at public hearings, used Oregon’s Public Records Act to expose severe violations, and uncovered shocking photos of cows standing in deep manure.
Lost Valley was initially granted a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) permit in early 2017 for up to 30,000 cows, making it one of the nation’s largest dairy CAFOs. But Lost Valley’s permit violations and manure spills began almost immediately. Threats to drinking water and manure mismanagement led the Oregon Department of Agriculture to sue Lost Valley in early 2018. But the violations continued. In late June, the agency finally took action to shut the facility down by revoking it’s permit to operate. You can read more about the permit revocation here.
Please make a donation today to support our work. With your help, we will continue to monitor and take action on behalf of family farmers and ranchers!
There is a better way
There is an alternative to industrial-scale CAFOs like Lost Valley: family-scale producers raising animals on pasture. We strongly support producers who are doing it right and our Oregon Pasture Network is a program to support and promote producers who raise their animals on pasture. We believe that sustainable, humane, pasture-raised production is the best way to raise animal products.
In response to the Lost Valley permit revocation, Friends of Family Farmers along with Food & Water Watch, Oregon Rural Action, Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Columbia Riverkeeper, Center for Food Safety, Center for Biological Diversity, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Humane Society of the United States commented:
Lost Valley Farm has been a mess since the day it opened its doors. State inspections have documented cows standing ankle-deep in a slurry of their own waste, overflowing manure lagoons and ‘mortality’ boxes. Its violations have put drinking water for local families at risk. The state’s action today follows a renewed call from numerous organizations which sent a letter to Governor Brown last month asking that her administration shut down Lost Valley, along with emails from nearly 3,000 concerned citizens. We applaud the permit revocation as an important victory for animal welfare and against mega-dairy water and air pollution, which pose massive environmental and public health risks in Oregon and across the country.