Farm Bill CouldnHide Farm Locations From Public
WASHINGTON November 7, 2013 (AP)
By MARY CLARE JALONICK AssociatednPress
Parts of the nation’sn$500 billion farm bill that Congress is considering would prohibit thengovernment from disclosing some information about farmers or their employees,npossibly preventing people from learning about nearby agricultural andnlarge-scale livestock operations blamed for polluting water or soil.
The secrecy effortnarose after the Environmental Protection Agency said it had mistakenly releasednnames, email addresses, phone numbers and other personal information about somenfarmers and employees twice this year under the Freedom of Information Act. ThenEPA later determined it should not have released the information; in at leastnone case, an environmental group that received the data agreed to return it.
The provisions in thenfarm bill were intended to protect farmers who fear they would be targeted bynanimal advocacy groups.
The House version, nownpart of negotiations with the Senate, would prevent the EPA from disclosing thenaddresses, among other identifying information, of an owner, operator ornemployee of an agricultural operation. Other federal agencies could not releasensuch information.
Democratic Sen.nPatrick Leahy of Vermont, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, blocked anSenate amendment similar to the House proposal.
“We must takencare not to draw a veil of secrecy around important information about threatsnto the public’s health and safety or government accountability,” Leahynsaid.
Journalists and openngovernment groups that want Congress to remove the proposals say federal lawnalready bars the release of most personal information and the provisions arentoo broad.
“Members of thenpublic have a right to know about agricultural and livestock operations thatnaffect them, including where such operations are located,” a coalition ofn43 groups, including Society for Professional Journalists, Sunlight Foundationnand Openthegovernment.org said in a letter Wednesday to House and Senate farmnbill negotiators. “This information is especially critical for people whonlive near or share waterways with concentrated animal feeding operations.”
Rep. Rick Crawford,nR-Ark., who wrote one of the proposals, said many farmers and ranchers live onntheir farms, so releasing corporate addresses of their companies is the same asnreleasing their home addresses. Crawford said farmers and ranchers should benable to provide personal information securely to the Agriculture Department,nbut they believe that environmental activist groups could obtain the materialnif it were shared with the EPA.
“Activist groupsnshould not be able to leverage their relationship with the EPA to get thisninformation that could pose a threat,” Crawford said.
Colin Woodall of thenNational Cattlemen’s Beef Association cited cases of people trashing farmers’nproperty.
“There are morenand more folks on the activist side that don’t like what we do, and we want tonprotect our members,” Woodall said.
An attorney for thenNatural Resources Defense Council, Jon Devine, one of the groups that receivednthe personal information about some farmers, said his group wasn’t interestednin such details and returned the information when the EPA asked for it. He saidnthe farm bill would go well beyond limiting such personal information and couldnjeopardize groups from getting facts they say they need, including thenlocations of farms. Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group said henworried that the provisions could interfere with his group’s ability to compileninformation about farm subsidies distributed every year, which the farmnindustry complains about. It’s unclear whether the House language could beninterpreted to restrict information about subsidies, he said.