Karen Hudson

In 2001, Elmwood, Ill. faced the largest animal waste spill in state history.

After years of mismanagement, a locally-owned concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) unintentionally overflowed its waste lagoon, flooding the area with over two million gallons of cow feces.

Karen Hudson, an Elmwood resident, has been protesting CAFOs for 15 years.

In 1996, Hudson founded Families Against Rural Messes (FARM) in order to fight the construction of Elmwood’s ill-fated dairy plant.

“Now we’re a state-wide coalition of 20 or so counties,” Hudson says. “We’re trying to oppose confinement operations opening in Illinois.”

Through public appeals, Hudson hopes to slow the spread of CAFOs in order to prevent disasters like Elmwood’s.

“We use the media,” she says. “We do press conferences, we do news stories, and we write a lot of letters to the editor.”

Aside from the risk of spillage, Hudson says, CAFOs pose a risk to public health and economic stability.

“When large-scale factory farms move in, it’s been shown that there’s less money spent locally,” she says. “Aside from the danger of waste spillage, there’s always the risk of contamination and anti-biotic resistance, too.”

Hudson also works as a consultant for the GRACE Factory Farm Project.

“With that project,” Hudson says, “We’re trying to inform the public about socially responsible farming.”

The Project is run by Food and Water Watch, an activist organization whose stated goal is “to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced.”

With the GRACE Project, Food and Water Watch aims to educate the public on the dangers of pesticides, animal waste, runoff, and mass confinement, while promoting small-scale, sustainable agriculture.