Filed under: Business columns | Tags: Agri-Mark, Cabot, Cabot Creamery, community relations, dairy waste, Jim Pratt, land-application, public relations, Seven Days, Vermont cheese, Vermont dairy
One of the problems companies, government entities and non-profits alike must face is that even with facts on your side, you can have your image tarnished by a small minority of people armed with little more than negative opinions. This is what appears to be portrayed in a Seven Days story about Cabot Creamery’s effort to secure state permission to increase the amount of dairy waste it spreads on hay fields.
In a nutshell, the land-application process involves spraying a mixture of water, whey, and relatively benign cleaning compounds that fertilize fields, which are then hayed and fed to the cattle that provide Cabot’s milk. There is state oversight of the program to make sure that what’s being sprayed doesn’t contain toxins. However, some folks are opposing the expansion of the program, and question the environmental safety of it as it currently exists.
The problem – based on what the story reveals, at least – is that there are no facts to back up Cabot’s critics. One lady who has opposed the spraying since the ’80s says that the spray smells horrible, but can’t point to anything else specific. Nonetheless, the story is cleverly worded to make it seem like she has the goods on Cabot. Check out this paragraph:
As Miller began investigating the process, she discovered that land-applied “whey” from industrial cheese making can also contain antibiotics and hormones that are given to dairy cows and chemical detergents and surfactants that are used to clean the creamery’s equipment. Miller points out that certified-organic farms aren’t allowed to accept Agri-Mark’s dairy waste due to those chemicals. Some farmers also report that their animals won’t eat hay that’s been grown on land-applied fields.
It’s important to note that the passage regarding antibiotics and hormones that “can” be in land-applied whey is not about Cabot’s land-applications, but about that type of material in general. Similarly, the farmers who say their animals won’t eat land-applied hay aren’t necessarily from around here… or are they? Anyone reading closely would assume the reference is to local farmers, but if that were the case, wouldn’t the story be stronger if it were specified as such? Of course… which leads me to believe it’s anecdotal and from elsewhere.
Then there’s the information from a physical chemist who’s an expert in sewage treatment and industrial waste management. His most damning testimony on this issue is that he’s found degradation products of benzene compounds from waterways near Cabot, and that they’re “mildly toxic.”
On the other hand, let’s look at Cabot’s side of the story. In the Seven Days article as a whole, Cabot is on the defensive, presumed guilty by the way the article is written. But even the articles obvious point of view isn’t able to obscure that Cabot has facts on its side, while its detractors are armed with nothing more than speculation and an aversion to bad smells.
Agri-Mark, the owner of Cabot, was represented in the story by Jim Pratt, its Sr. VP of Operations. He says that the land-application material is harmless to the environment and tested by a third-party company that reports results to the state. The story points out that Agri-Mark itself hires the third-party company, implying (by my reading) that there is some kind of cozy arrangement there. Taking it a step further, the reporter noted that the founder of the third-party company is the father of the chairman of the District 5 Commission, the body that is considering Cabot’s application to increase the land-application amounts. That body also includes folks with past connections to Cabot. I’m not clear on whether that’s supposed to indicate some kind of incestuous group of collaborators, but the final quote in the story clearly indicates that I should be suspicious of the arrangement:
In Miller’s view, the permit hearings are “something out of a banana republic.”
But the fact is that the community of people in Vermont who are experts on these matters isn’t so huge that there won’t be connections. And in any case, should those who judge the impact of dairy waste on hay fields be folks who have never hayed a field or milked a cow? I’d be more nervous if there were NO dairy folks on the commission.
In the end, the facts will speak for themselves and the environmental commission will make its decision based on those facts. But that doesn’t mean that Cabot won’t take a reputational beating in the process. Folks who have nothing but speculation can’t necessarily succeed in getting a fact-based permit denied, but they certainly can make it difficult – and more expensive – for Cabot to get the permit. They can also sow ill-will in the Cabot community, something that a successful company must avoid.
I hate to be cynical – it’s not good for a PR person to do so – but the lesson here is that sometimes, you can’t avoid making enemies. In such cases, stick to the facts and keep talking to the people who will listen. Cabot is a savvy company and certainly will do so. (Disclosure: I have no relationship with Cabot whatsoever!)
