Bion Responds To Opposition Group’s Comments

by Contributor | August 18, 2010 7:06 am

Provided by Bion

Citizens for Family Farms (CFF) is conducting an aggressive campaign to generate opposition to Bion’s proposed environmentally sustainable livestock/renewable energy project.

Their activities have included publishing in regional news outlets as well as direct contact with Oswego County elected officials at all levels of government.

Their declared mission is to “educate” citizens.

However, they continue to grossly misrepresent Bion’s project to all who will listen, while ignoring the actual facts.

Their arguments are disingenuous at best and serve to seriously mislead the Oswego community.

In their letter to the Schroeppel Town Board, CFF stated “we are writing to provide you with names of individuals you can speak with about the negative impacts of the Bion Project.”

The letter goes on to say: “These individuals have all had extensive experience dealing with similar operations and the incredibly devastating impacts they have on communities.”

Their statement is carefully crafted using the word “similar” in linking Bion to the environmental challenges of existing large scale livestock operations.

However, in making their claims, they have intentionally ignored the vast differences between the proposed Bion project and those of existing Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

“Similar” to the Citizens for Family Farms is a distinction without a difference, as they proceed to paint Bion’s project as “identical” and not “similar.”

Let us be perfectly clear: Bion understands that all livestock production results in nutrient loading to both air and water, and therefore large scale livestock facilities should be required to obtain permits to ensure that the facility uses proper waste treatment and other technologies to meet the same standards applied to any other large industrial activity.

The purported “experts” for the CFF are individuals who have a history in opposition to CAFOs and can speak with passion and authority about the environmental impacts of these facilities on local communities. Indeed, their concern for adverse impacts based from these traditional operations has support in experience.

But it is necessary to note that they have simply not had ANY experience (let alone extensive familiarity) with facilities utilizing technology similar to that proposed by Bion!

It is the perpetuation of this myth that is most destructive to real dialogue and any honest effort to inform the Oswego community!

To believe their claims about Bion would require accepting the myth that the CAFOs these people are familiar with fairly represent the Bion project.

They do not!

For starters, one must understand that their collective experience with large scale livestock operations is based on facilities with no regulated livestock waste treatment technology.

A single beef cow produces the waste equivalent of about 10 humans.

Bion has proposed individual livestock facilities with a minimum of 14,400 beef cattle per individual location or the waste equivalent of 144,000 humans.

One need only imagine the impacts on a community from a housing development for 144,000 humans with no effective sewer and waste treatment!

But these are the impacts that CFFs purported experts insist on warning us against!

Source URL: https://oswegocountytoday.com/news/oswego/bion-responds-to-opposition-group%e2%80%99s-comments/

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