Abstract
When intensive livestock operations or other large-scale industrial facilities pose a threat to public health, elected officials have a responsibility to ensure that the public's health is protected. Local policymakers need to guarantee that the process offers ample opportunity for balanced community input, and that the policy base is sound and well reasoned. Government officials need to manage the process so that balanced perspectives are presented and respectfully heard. A model approach, similar to the one described here, will assist local officials in crafting reasonable health rules that protect the public health and that diverse stakeholders can accept.
I'm surrounded by 21 hog houses. [horizontal ellipsis] I'm completely surrounded by either spray fields or hog houses. [horizontal ellipsis] What gets me is that if my county health department comes to my house and sees my lid off my septic tanks-Bud, ain't I in trouble? Number two, if they see one of my lines leaking-Bud, ain't I in trouble? But yet, 75 feet from where I have to lay my head at night, you can run a gun that'll shoot a 60-foot stream of hog waste out there by my house. Now you tell me-who has and hasn't got their priorities straight? - -Joe Johnson, rural resident of North Carolina 1 (http://www.hogwatch.org/resourcecenter/stories.html)