Environmental Justice for All

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

According to Fleischli, who also is an attorney, Kennedy is a successful lawyer because “he has the legal acumen to make a good argument and the passion to follow through and be persistent. He also can take an argument that might be dry and make it real, because he has a connection to the issues, to his clients and to the community. And not all judges are machines — they can read the law but they need context as well.”

One of Kennedy’s primary concerns is the struggle of traditional farmers against the rising tide of large-scale agribusiness. Kennedy dismisses the conventional wisdom that traditional farmers are disappearing because of economies of scale and the inevitable forces of globalization. “I believe if small farmers could compete head-to-head with industrial farming, the traditional farmers would come out on top,” he says. “But the game is fixed — it’s fixed by the federal government and the USDA, which have implemented policies and huge subsidies that benefit the top multinational factory farms and help them dominate the markets.”

According to Kennedy, the federal Clean Water Act requires industrial meat factories, as it requires cities, to treat sewage before discharging it into waterways or onto the land, but the law is not always enforced. These massive pork, poultry and cattle operations confine large numbers of animals in cramped, unnatural conditions, producing huge amounts of manure: For example, one hog produces 10 times more fecal waste than one person, so a hog factory with 100,000 animals produces waste equal to a city of a million people. The largest confinement livestock companies often beat the system by locating their facilities in poor, rural states where they can easily dominate the political landscape.

“Again, these industrial facilities could not compete against traditional family farmers if they had to actually treat their waste,” he says, adding that some progress is being made. He cites his current court battle against a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest hog-raising company, on the grounds that it’s violating the Clean Water Act and federal solid waste law. Also, he cites another of his cases, on behalf of North Carolina fishermen who suffer from exposure to Pfiesteria piscicida, a hog-factory-connected microbe. The microbe kills fish and causes lesions, severe respiratory illness and brain damage in humans who handle contaminated fish or swim in contaminated waters.

Family and Faith

When he’s not on the lecture circuit, or in the courtroom or classroom, Kennedy is usually at home with his family. He and his wife, Mary, live with their six children on the shores of a 30-acre lake in Mount Kisco, N.Y. Four pet peacocks wander the woods surrounding the house. And a barn in the back yard houses two Harris’ hawks that nest in the rafters, and chickens in a coop.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print