Keeping Your Identity Safe

Keeping Your Identity Safe. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to publicly release personal information about thousands of farmers and ranchers was recently stalled, thanks to a lawsuit filed by the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Pork Producers Council.

STEEN: We filed a lawsuit in the federal district court in Minnesota to stop EPA from releasing reams of information that is in its possession that deals with livestock and poultry operators across the country.

EPA has received numerous Freedom of Information Act requests for records on livestock and poultry farms and earlier this year improperly released personal information about farmers and ranchers in 29 states. Farm Bureau general counsel Ellen Steen says farm groups took action after learning EPA planned to do so again.

STEEN: We learned about a week ago that EPA had received yet more requests from other parties seeking the same type of information and it was about to release all the information that had previously been released and it’s also going to include information from six additional states that includes personal information about farmers whose information is not yet out there. So we decided enough is enough. We’ve got to stop this. EPA isn’t honoring its obligation to protect the personal information of farmers and ranchers. We need to force the agency to do that.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.