Jefferson County Farmers and Neighbors, Inc.

As many of you know the community has had growing concerns about the proliferation of HOG FACTORY FARMS (CAFO’s) in our area. We have now learned that several CAFO’s may be built within one mile of the city limits of Fairfield and one person alone is planning on building 20 in the future.

We must take action as a community. Please read the announcement below for more info and attend the community wide meeting on WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 21ST at the BEST WESTERN starting at 7:30 PM.

A plan has been created by national experts consulting with JFAN that has helped save other communities facing this same threat. The key to our success is that we must act together and we must act now while there is still time. I would not write to you in this manner if this was not a very serious situation.

Please send this announcement to your friends and plan to attend.

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Jefferson County Community Alert

Important Countywide Meeting September 21st at 7:30PM at the Fairfield Best Western·

Would you stop me if I were to intrude, uninvited, in your home?

What if you could not go outside; or would not WANT to go outside to enjoy an afternoon in your yard?

How about if I just caused your property values to decrease?

What if my business threatened your health?

Would you stand for it?

There are businessmen that are willing to do these things to all of us who call Jefferson County, Iowa our home. They are creating this threat by building Large Scale Swine CAFOs, or Confined Animal Feeding Operations. We prefer to call them Factories, because that is what they really are. They are NOT farms. To add insult to injury, the owners of the hogs and the owners of the facilities almost never live near the site and as a result it is our opinion that the developers reap the profits while the local neighbors subsidize the operation with their misery.

A CAFO Factory is a building that can contain from 1,000 to over 5,000 hogs or sows, each held in small pens. The animals remain in this building their entire lives, while excreting through metal grates in the floor. Their raw sewage is stored immediately below the pigs in a concrete waste pit. These untreated sewage pits can hold 500,000 to 1,000,000 gallons of noxious, disease bearing waste for months before being spread on surrounding fields.

Research studies by the Centers of Disease Control, renowned universities such asthe University of Iowa, and the opinion of experts show that when CAFOs come into a community:

As these problems increase, we can expect our property values to decrease and our friends and neighbors to begin moving out. Ask the folks in Davis County to our southwest or Washington County to our north. They will give you an earful.

And here is the really bad news: Jefferson County is NEXT – unless we do something right now.