To many in Fresno, Kettleman City marks a stopping point on the way to Southern California. Less well-known is its decades-long history of fighting for environmental justice. At the intersection of eco-justice, animal rights and community advocacy, two nonprofits recently collaborated to hold a town hall about a factory farm expansion about six miles from the town center.
Located along a busy highway, surrounded by industrial agriculture and neighboring a hazardous waste landfill, Kettleman City has long struggled with pollution. In 1993, El Pueblo Para el Aire y Agua Limpia joined with others in the community to successfully block Chemical Waste Management Inc. from building a toxic incinerator, a victory widely considered a milestone in the early environmental justice movement.
Since then, despite a wealth of environmental nonprofits based in the small town and a track record of settlements, blocked permits, complaints and community activation, Kettleman City continues to face contamination.
In 2010, dangerous levels of harmful chemicals were found in the water supply. It was only after locals filed a Title VI complaint six years later that a new water source was secured.
The town hall, co-hosted by Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and the Kettleman-based nonprofit Unidos Network, focused heavily on the pollution the expansion would bring. Factory farm investigators from DxE explained that nitrate pollution in the water is heavily linked to dairy farming and that the waste and movement of thousands of additional cows would result in ammonia and particulate matter in the air.
“I’m concerned for the health of Kettleman City residents who already bear the burden of so many different types of cumulative impacts from multiple pollution sources,” says Miguel Alatorre, a founding member of Unidos Network.
The expansion itself will be at Grimmius Cattle Co.’s West Ranch facility about six miles from the center of the town. It promises an increase of nearly 10,000 animals as well as a transition to larger, more resource-intensive cows.
Grimmius is a massive calf-raising operation with three locations in the Central Valley responsible for confining more than 200,000 animals. Estimates suggest the facility will generate nearly 700,000 pounds of manure every day, representing a significant source of nitrate pollution in an area where water is already unsafe.
The expansion was approved in 2024 as part of Kings County’s Dairy Element, a plan from 2002 to bulk-approve new dairies with little environmental oversight and no notification to nearby residents.
In 2025, the Dairy Element was put on hold after California’s Attorney General found the process was in violation of California environmental law.
Despite the illegal manner in which it was approved, the West Ranch expansion was not paused. Unsurprisingly, most of the dozens of gathered residents knew nothing about the impending expansion before the town hall.
Once informed, locals were quick to raise several concerns. They criticized the lack of transparency and worried about the pollution, smell and dust. Most prominently, they brainstormed what impact they might have, drawing parallels with previous settlements and difficulties with the city council.
DxE organizers emphasized that the decision to fight the expansion was the local residents’ to make, but noted that the lack of environmental review and transparency provided a path forward and that organizing against the expansion now could put them in a better position to contest future expansions.
The expansion comes amid a wider effort by DxE to expose the extent of factory farming. This year, DxE launched FactoryFarmWatch.org. The site is an interactive map of large-scale animal operations in California based on public data and DxE investigations. It uncovers details such as the number of animals, emissions, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) violations and avian flu bailouts at these facilities.
The release of the website spurred protests and outreach across California, including a vigil and surveillance event at Grimmius’s Strathmore and Hanford locations.
Grimmius has been plagued by concerning conditions for both workers and animals. In 2006, 35-year-old worker Juan Cisneros was killed in a tractor accident on site. Since then, amid several OSHA citations, workers have filed a lawsuit centering on reimbursement, safety and breaks and alleging violations of California’s Labor Code.
Meanwhile, DxE drone footage has uncovered abusive handling, sick calves being executed via gunshot and massive dead piles of unexpectedly deceased animals. Those calves who survive at Grimmius spend two months confined in restrictive, solitary hutches before moving to sparse pens. Afterward, most are trucked to the barren feedlots of other concentrated animal feeding operations to prepare for slaughter.
It was the cruelty to animals that drove activists across the state to gather for the vigil and surveillance event in February. While activists lined the country roads with banners demanding the end of factory farming, a drone broadcast live footage of the rows of tiny crates to bring attention to the hundreds of thousands of calves confined at Grimmius. Halfway through the vigil, everybody fell silent as a performer sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Somewhere (There’s a Place For Us)” to express the comfort they wished for the listening animals.
Grimmius’s opaque effort to expand a factory farm near Kettleman City comes at the expense of both the animals they confine and the locals who will deal with the pollution. The town hall marked the intersection of Kettleman City’s long history of environmental and community advocacy with DxE’s effort to end animal exploitation.
In an inspiring example of civic engagement, a few dozen residents seriously began considering fighting a multimillion dollar corporation yet again.
