Animal Factories

Center for Food Safety, alongside Oregon farmers, river advocates, and community groups, successfully challenged J-S Ranch, a proposed mega-chicken factory farm in Linn County, Oregon. The proposed facility would have housed approximately 3.5 million broiler chickens annually near the North Santiam River and generated thousands of tons of manure and ammonia-laden waste each year.

In a major legal victory, an Oregon circuit court ruled that the permit issued to J-S Ranch was unlawful and revoked the approval for the proposed facility. The ruling halted development of the proposed mega-chicken operation and affirmed stronger protections for Oregon communities, clean water, and family farms.

Center for Food Safety successfully challenged the Trump administration’s withdrawal of animal welfare protections under the organic standard, helping restore rules that improve the treatment of animals raised under the USDA Organic label. The final rule strengthens protections for millions of organically raised animals and represents a major victory for organic integrity, farmers, consumers, and animal welfare advocates.

Center for Food Safety and community groups successfully used federal hazardous waste law to challenge mega-dairy pollution in the Yakima Valley, where mismanaged manure contaminated drinking water and threatened public health. Our landmark victory required major operational changes at several dairies, including safer manure lagoon practices, limits on manure application, groundwater monitoring, and clean drinking water for impacted residents.

Center for Food Safety successfully challenged unconstitutional ag-gag laws that restrict undercover investigations, whistleblowing, and public transparency about factory farming, food safety, worker rights, and environmental violations. We've struck down ag-gag laws in Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Utah, and North Carolina. We've also helped defeat proposed legislation in 20 states. These victories protected free speech, investigative journalism, whistleblower activities, and the public's ability to uncover food safety, environmental, labor, and animal welfare violations.

Center for Food Safety successfully challenged Nationwide Permit 56, a federal permit that would have authorized industrial offshore fish farming in U.S. ocean waters without adequate environmental review or protections for marine ecosystems. The decisions prevented the nationwide expansion of industrial offshore fish farming through NWP 56 and reaffirmed that federal agencies must comply with environmental laws before authorizing new industries in public waters.

CFS successfully challenged the government's attempt to authorize industrial fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico, securing landmark court victories that prevented the creation of a new aquaculture industry in U.S. federal waters for the first time. This work established a landmark legal victory protecting our oceans and fishing communities.

Center for Food Safety challenges industrial shellfish aquaculture operations that threaten water quality, sensitive coastal habitat, endangered species, and public access to clean shorelines. Our work has secured multiple landmark victories protecting Washington's sensitive shorelines and wildlife habitat from this expanding industry.

This litigation supports CFS’s broader campaign to ensure industrial aquaculture expansion does not come at the cost of ecological integrity, Tribal sovereignty, public shorelines, or clean water.