JFAN Booklets, Newsletters, Grant Applications, and More

Learn How to Educate and Protect your Family from CAFOs on Both the Grassroots and Legal Fronts

How to Protect Your Family and Home from Factory Farms is a highly informative booklet providing practical action steps on how to prevent CAFOs from coming into your community. You'll learn more about the CAFO problem, how to organize your community, and many strategies for resisting CAFO development. Several approaches are suggested to address the factory farm problem on the state level.

When preventive measures fail, How to Protect Your Family and Home from Factory Farms offers legal remedies written by lawyers to help you fight confinements. You'll learn about your legal rights, how to determine legal responsibility, and how to work with lawyers to defend your property and health. The legal section was researched and written by the Brick Gentry Law Firm of Des Moines through a grant from JFAN.

The booklet also includes a CAFO Action Checklist, JFAN's Good Neighbor Guidelines, and many links to the numerous studies undertaken that illustrate the negative impact of CAFOs.

A downloadable PDF of this booklet is available here.

Printed copies are also available for $1 each to cover shipping and handling. To order, please click here to email your request, call 641-209-6600, or write to us at JFAN, P.O. Box 811, Fairfield, IA 52556. Checks should be made payable to Jefferson County Farmers and Neighbors.

CAFO Workers: Learn About Your Legal Risks

CAFO owners and operators are not the only ones subject to costly and time-consuming lawsuits when factory farms harm neighbors. Those who work with CAFOs in a secondary role could also be sued.

JFAN's new booklet, Secondary Liability: Could You Be Implicated in a CAFO Lawsuit? is written in conjunction with noted legal authorities. It outlines the legal responsibilities and risks facing:

• Truck drivers who transport CAFO manure
• Landowners and operators who allow the manure to be spread on their land
• Applicators of CAFO manure.

This 16 page booklet provides detailed information on their potential legal responsibility and offers guidelines to help avoid legal repercussion. It is illustrated with examples of legal precedents in Iowa where homeowners and businesses successfully won lawsuits.

The booklet includes the most recent version of the DNR's Separation Distances for Land Application of Manure as well as JFAN's Good Neighbor Guidelines.

This important reference for those subject to secondary liability is available for $1 each to cover handling and shipping.

To order Secondary Liability: Could You Be Implicated in a CAFO Lawsuit?, click here to email your request, call 641-209-6600, or write to JFAN, P.O. Box 811, Fairfield, IA 52556.

A downloadable PDF of Secondary Liability: Could You Be Implicated in a CAFO Lawsuit? is available here.

In 2006, local livestock farmers approached JFAN and requested guidelines for building acceptable livestock confinements within the County. Although JFAN is a strong supporter of sustainable livestock farming methods and encourages all future livestock operations to embrace these methods, these Good Neighbor Guidelines were developed in response.

It is JFAN's desire that the Good Neighbor Guidelines be adopted by anyone building new confined livestock operations within the County, whether such confinements are classified as SAFOs (small animal feeding operation) or CAFOs (confined animal feeding operation).

Click here to read or download the PDF document.

Twice a year, JFAN publishes newsletters with information on its activities, regional and national news relating to factory farm issues, and guest columns. Newsletters are distributed throughout Jefferson County at all of these sites and can also be downloaded here.

Winter 2009 Newsletter
Spring 2009 Newsletter
Spring 2008 Newsletter
Summer 2007 Newsletter
Winter 2007 Newsletter

JFAN provides two types of financial assistance grants:

1. Legal support for individuals or groups who are fighting a CAFO in their community. These grants serve a two-fold purpose. They deal with the immediate CAFO problem, and they also protect neighbors, and ultimately the entire community, by sending a strong message about the importance of meeting all state regulations and being a good, considerate neighbor.

2. JFAN supports sustainable hog farming. We will provide financial assistance of up to $1000 for hog producers who want to move toward alternative and sustainable animal production systems.

All applications will be considered. Download an application form here.

CAFO Protection Request Individual Application
CAFO Protection Request Group Application
Educational or Alternative Farming Request

Since 2007, JFAN has published a periodic column in the Fairfield Weekly Reader on a variety of CAFO-related topics. Below is an archive of past columns:

"New Publication/Simmons Family Lawsuit/Odor Bill" - December 6, 2007
"Do We Really Need an Odor Control Study?" - January 24, 2008
"Hogtied at the State House" - March 27, 2008
"Open Manure Piles Could Threaten Iowa" - April 24, 2008
"Livestock Industry Needs Sweeping Changes Says Two Reports" - May 29, 2008
"Scent of Change" - May 19, 2009
"CAFOs Breed More than Hogs" - July, 2009

Do you have a CAFO going up or expanding in your neighborhood? One of the ways you can take action is to get signatures from all affected neighbors on a petition to present to the CAFO operator and the Jefferson County Board of Supervisors.

JFAN has created a petition you can download and copy here.LINK