The recent decision of the Environmental Court regarding WhistlePig (AddisonIndependent,Dec. 3) is very troubling. Reportedly the decision is based on a requirement that to be considered an agricultural product the end product must consist of ingredients more than 50 percent of which by weight or volume are grown or produced on the farm.
If this this decision is applied uniformly then it removes from the sphere of agriculture virtually all poultry farms, whether egg or meat; all feedlots; all veal farms; many hog farms; some dairy farms, greenhouse or nursery operations that buy and resell started plants; and even apiaries — those bees go everywhere.
Now we just need to wait for some industrious bureaucrat to conclude that purchased energy must be included in this computation for things to really get interesting — though determining the weight or volume of electricity will be a challenge.
Dwight Menard
Shoreham