WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Food & Water Watch filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service Agency under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for failing to proactively post documents in an online reading room after rural community and advocacy groups have filed repeated requests for the documents, many of which are still outstanding. In particular, groups are seeking to compel access to environmental review records required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as part of the USDA’s provision of loans and loan guarantees for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), also known as factory farms.  

Nonprofit groups, advocacy organizations, reporters, and members of the public rely on these records to receive information about federally funded CAFOs intruding into their communities and to participate in the NEPA process to advocate for a safer environment. By failing to affirmatively create an online reading room for these records, USDA is violating FOIA disclosure requirements, which mandate that frequently requested records be made available for public inspection in an electronic format.  

Food & Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen said:

“It’s no secret that USDA funnels billions of taxpayer dollars toward factory farms. The big secret is how they make those decisions despite these facilities’ well-known environmental harms. USDA’s decision to dole out high-dollar agency loans and guarantees to factory farms and shield the process from public scrutiny is illegal. We seek to compel USDA to provide timely public access to NEPA documentation for factory farm financing, as required by law.” 

A recent Food & Water Watch FOIA request found that from 2008-2021, USDA disbursed over $3.2 billion in financial assistance for factory farms in just five states: Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota and Oregon. The environmental reviews required for those loans were not made easily accessible online, limiting transparency into how the agency makes funding decisions, and limiting public participation in the NEPA process. 

“The USDA’s unwillingness to make publicly available its agency environmental review documents related to its subsidies to factory farms continues to exclude people most affected from learning about, let alone participating in, decisions to build and expand animal factories in their communities,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund Managing Attorney Daniel Waltz. “The Animal Legal Defense Fund seeks to bring the USDA’s secretive practices to light.”  

Without real-time public access to factory farm NEPA records, the public must repeatedly submit FOIA requests for the records. But making these requests is resource intensive, and putting the burden on citizens to make FOIA requests is impractical and unjust. In addition, because USDA routinely fails to respond to FOIA requests in a timely manner, by the time the plaintiffs receive NEPA records associated with a specific subsidy to a factory farm, the time period to review and comment on a draft NEPA document — for example, a draft Environmental Impact Statement or Environmental Assessment — will typically have long passed. The lapse of time makes the information less valuable to the organizations’ advocacy efforts and obstructs public participation. 

The USDA requires NEPA review for loan financing for the construction or major expansion of large-sized CAFOs. Although the agency promulgated a rule categorically exempting Farm Service Agency loans to medium-sized CAFOs from NEPA review, a federal district court vacated the CAFO provisions of the rule, and agency loans and guarantees to medium-sized CAFOs are now also subject to NEPA review. 

The plaintiffs are represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and in-house attorneys for the organizations bringing the lawsuit.