EPA released Personal Info of Livestock and Poultry Producers to Extremist Environmental Groups (Video)

The information which included personal information like phone numbers, addresses and even geographic coordinates was given to the environmentalists through a FOIA request. How is that possible? A government agency can give out personal information on Americans to any yahoo who requests it?

Via Gateway Pundit:

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Pork Producers are furious after the Obama Environmental Protection Agency illegally gave information on livestock farmers to extremist animal rights groups.
Farm Futures reported:

NCBA and the National Pork Producers Council are both furious with EPA for handing extremist groups illegally gathered data on farmers who operate confined animal feeding operations.

NCBA said early this week it was notified by the EPA that the agency had been collecting information from states on CAFOs. The information was requested by extremist groups, including Earth Justice, the Pew Charitable Trust and the Natural Resources Defense Council through a Freedom of Information Act request and was given to them.

The information released by EPA covers livestock operations in more than 30 states, including many family farmers who feed less than 1,000 head and are not subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act.

“When we reviewed the information submitted by the states and released by EPA, we were alarmed at the detail of the information provided on hard working family farmers and ranchers, family operations including my own,” said NCBA past president J.D. Alexander, a cattle feeder from Pilger, Nebraska.

“It is beyond comprehension to me that with threats to my family from harassment atop bio-security concerns, that EPA would gather this information only to release it to these groups. This information details my family’s home address and geographic coordinates. The only thing it doesn’t do is chauffeur these extremists to my house. For some operations, even telephone numbers and deceased relatives are listed.”

Personal information about the farmers were released to these extremist groups:

Earth Justice:

Environmental litigating organization

Seeks to place severe restrictions on how public land may be used

Earthjustice describes itself as a nonprofit “law firm for the environment” that works through the courts to “safeguard public lands, national forests, parks, and wilderness areas; to reduce air and water pollution; to prevent toxic contamination; and to preserve endangered species and wildlife habitat.” The organization’s professed raison d’etre is: “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.”

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Earthjustice seeks to place severe restrictions on how U.S. land and waterways may be used. It also opposes most mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing businesses, and both the practical and recreational use of motorized vehicles in undeveloped areas. The organization brings lawsuits against U.S. government agencies and corporations it believes are breaking or attempting to roll back federal and state environmental laws. “Environmental litigation,” says Earthjustice, “has been key to preserving threatened natural resources and protecting people’s environmental rights.” Claiming that its lawsuits have protected “millions of acres of wilderness,” Earthjustice has provided free legal representation to more than 600 client organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee; Defenders of Wildlife; Earth Island Institute; Environmental Defense Fund; the Natural Resources Defense Council; Friends of the Earth; Greenpeace; the National Wildlife Federation; Public Citizen; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the U.S. Public Interest Research Group; Waterkeeper Alliance; the Wilderness Society; and the Sierra Club.

Pew Charitable Trust:

Assets: $350,837,431 (2009)

Grants Received: $316,692,307 (2009)

Grants Awarded: $106,223,642 (2009)

The Pew Charitable Trusts (PCT) are comprised of seven individual funds established between 1948 and 1979 by the four children of Joseph N. Pew, founder of the Sun Oil Company, and his wife Mary A. Pew.

Mr. Pew and his immediate heirs were politically conservative, as were most of the causes that PCT supported in its early years. In recent decades, however, leftwing staffers have taken control of the organization, radically transforming its ideology and funding philosophy. Particularly responsible for this change was the late neurosurgeon Thomas W. Langfitt, who served as PCT’s President and Chief Executive Officer from 1987 through 1994.

Rebecca Rimel, who joined the Trusts in 1983 as Health Program Manager, ascended to the positions of President and CEO in 1994 when Langfitt, her mentor, retired. She became the Executive Director in 1998.

In the early 1990s, Sean Treglia, a former program officer with Pew, conceived a strategy whereby a few major leftist foundations would bankroll front groups and so-called “experts” whose aim was to persuade Congress to swallow the fiction that millions of Americans were clamoring for “campaign-finance reform.” Consequently, between 1994 and 2004, some $140 million of foundation cash was used to promote such reform. Nearly 90 percent of this amount derived from just eight foundations: the Pew Charitable Trusts (which contributed $40.1 million to the cause); the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy ($17.6 million); the Carnegie Corporation of New York ($14.1 million); the Joyce Foundation ($13.5 million); the Open Society Institute ($12.6 million); the Jerome Kohlberg Trust ($11.3 million); the Ford Foundation ($8.8 million); and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($5.2 million).

Among the major recipients of these funds were such pro-reform organizations as the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, Democracy 21, and Public Citizen.

To view a list of additional noteworthy grantees of the Pew Charitable Trusts, click here.

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PCT supports a host of organizations that are passionately anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, while it simultaneously holds many millions of dollars worth of investments in major corporations. For instance, while PCT invests in Exxon-Mobil, it grants money to the EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange, Greenpeace, the Izaak Walton League of America, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy, Public Citizen, the Rainforest Action Network, the Rainforest Alliance, the Ruckus Society, the Sierra Club, Trust for Public Land, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the Wilderness Society, the World Resources Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, and a host of other environmentalist groups that view Exxon-Mobifl as an ecological menace.

To view a list of additional noteworthy grantees of the Pew Charitable Trusts, click here.

PCT is the largest funding source for the Tides Center, having given the latter nearly $109 million between 1990 and 2002. Other PCT grantees include: the Brennan Center for Justice; the Brookings Institution; the Council on Foundations; Environmental Media Services; the Institute for Policy Studies; National Public Radio; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Planned Parenthood; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the Urban Institute; and Zero Population Growth.

Natural Resources Defense Council:

One of America’s most influential environmentalist groups

Responsible for the 1989 Alar hoax

Founded in 1970 on a $400,000 seed grant from the Ford Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is today one of the most influential environmentalist lobbying groups in the United States. It claims a membership of one million people, including some 400,000 Internet activists. The organization’s President is Frances Beinecke, a co-founder of the New York League of Conservation Voters, a Board member of the World Resources Institute, and a former Board Chair of the Wilderness Society.

Rep Rick Crawford (R-AR) released the following video in response to this shocking news:

Recently, I was informed the Environmental Protection Agency had released the personal information of livestock and poultry producers to extremist environmental groups. The information was released after the groups filed a request through the Freedom of Information Act. The EPA turned over personal information like phone numbers, addresses and even geographic coordinates to environmentalists. An overwhelming majority of the information released appears to be from farms owned by families who may now face threats to their homes and businesses. I have serious concerns over the EPA’s release of this information, particularly regarding individual privacy rights and possible bio-security threats to the nation’s food supply. Releasing this type of information makes producers potential targets of harassment, or even bio-terrorism.

Unfortunately, this release of information is yet another example of the EPA’s overreach into the lives of hardworking individuals in rural America. As Chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Rural Development, and Credit, I am leading a group of 40 House members in writing a letter to the acting director of the EPA expressing our concerns and asking the acting director to ensure the released information is not improperly used. In the letter, we demand answers on why the EPA obtained producers’ private information and, most important, what steps the agency will take to protect the affected producers while ensuring these actions will never happen again.

It is unacceptable for the EPA to do anything that could jeopardize our nation’s food security or threaten American farm operations. The EPA must be held accountable for their actions and bureaucrats in Washington must consider the livelihoods of farm families and our nation’s food-security before they cower to extreme environmental groups.