In August I wrote about the Alt family who own the Eight is Enough poultry farm located in the Eastern Panhandle in Hardy County. In November of 2011 the EPA issued an Administrative Compliance Order charging them with violations of the Clean Water Act. It demanded that they apply for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit or face fines of up to $37,500 per day. Rather than blindly follow orders, Lois Alt researched the law and with the support of the Farm Bureau took the EPA to court.

Faced with a legal challenge to their ACO, the EPA blinked. They rescinded it and petitioned the court to dismiss the case. In other words, they said, “oops, never mind”. Believing that the law was on their side, the Alts and the Farm bureau asked the court to proceed with the case. Judge John Preston Bailey agreed. Last month the court rendered its decision and it confirms why the EPA tried to wriggle out of the case. The court sided with the Alts; the EPA had overstepped its authority.

According to West Virginia MetroNews, Lois Alt said that during the initial inspection in 2011, the EPA inspector was complimentary. Said Alt, “she said, ‘Well, I’ll have to say, this is one of the best managed and maintained farms, one of the cleanest, I’ve been on”. According to the West Virginia Farm Bureau, the Alts had won an award for environmental stewardship.

The Eight is Enough poultry farm is so named because the Alts made a conscious decision to remain small. They stopped at eight poultry houses and their operation remains a small family business. Further, Lois Alt argued from the onset that the EPA did not require the big factory farms to get an NPDES permit, so then why did they try to force her to apply for one? Sounds like a double standard to me.

The EPA isn’t the only regulatory agency making life difficult for the small family farmer. The Food and Drug Administration also presents problems. Back in August, the Alliance for Natural Health posted a couple of articles on their website asking “What Does the Government Have Against Small Farmers?” and “Is the FDA Trying to Destroy the Pastured Egg Industry?” According to ANH, new proposed FDA guidelines would “place an impossible burden on farmers who raise true free-range chickens”, especially small farmers. According to a University of Wisconsin study, most pasteurized egg farms are small family businesses that consist of 4,000 to 50,000 hens. To put that into perspective, the Eight is Enough farm, a small family operation, raises 125,000 chickens annually.

The proposed FDA guidelines are in response to a recall in 2010 of over a half billion eggs feared to be tainted with salmonella. The problem, however, is that they would force small producers to adopt the same processes employed by the big factory farms. Does anyone still think we have free markets?

As the ANH article points out, tests show that true free range eggs are better for you. Therefore, the FDA regulations would deprive the small farmers of a competitive advantage and deprive consumers of better alternatives in the marketplace. But here’s the kicker, according to an article cited by the ANH, not one tainted egg came from a small producer; they all came from the big factory farms. Does this make sense?

Frustration with regulators has begun to cross the ideological divide. In an essay that appeared in the Blue Ridge Press in 2011 Senior Editor Glenn Scherer writes: “Despite my staunch environmentalism, I’m now willing to consider ridding us not only of the EPA, but also the NRC, and every federal regulatory agency irrevocably corrupted by big corporate influence. This is my thinking: We might actually be safer if we eliminated all regulatory agencies and the false sense of security they provide”.

Strong stuff, but I can understand Mr. Scherer’s frustration. If you think about it, regulators actually have a perverse incentive to be incompetent. If a business is incompetent, they will lose customers and will eventually go out of business. If a regulator is incompetent, they are awarded additional funds to “fix the problem”. Have you ever heard of a regulator being abolished for incompetence?

On the other hand, the Alts can’t afford to be incompetent. They must compete with corporate giants, do battle with regulators that try to bully them and most importantly, they must satisfy their customers in order to survive. According to MetroNews, they take pride in what they do. To quote Lois, “we hope to leave it better than we find it”. Her husband Tony adds, “for our grandkids and their kids after”.