The Citizens Advisory Committee (Steering Committee) met over 30 times - monthly from July 1998 through November 2001, usually for two days at a time. Each meeting was conducted by a trained and neutral facilitator from the Management Analysis Division of the Minnesota Department of Administration. In August and September of 2001 the Environmental Quality Board (EQB) conducted eight public meetings around the state to obtain citizen input on the public review draft. More than 300 people gave oral testimony and about 150 written comments were received. A dozen technical work papers were produced. The resulting document, the proposed final GEIS, was presented to the EQB on December 10, 2001. It is also posted on the EQB Web site.
The following two paragraphs are from the executive summary for the 2002 final report linked to below:
"The Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Animal Agriculture consists of the Final GEIS Summary Document, a Literature Research Summary, and a number of Technical Work Papers. The GEIS is a statewide study funded by the 1998 Minnesota Legislature. The Environmental Quality Board was directed to '...examine the long-term effects of the livestock industry as it exists and as it is changing on the economy, environment, and way of life of Minnesota and its citizens.' The GEIS process provided a full public examination of the critical environmental, economic and social factors of animal agriculture through an open stakeholder-guided process. It also resulted in policy recommendations and a wealth of objective information for decision-makers.
The need for this study grew out of the controversy surrounding feedlots in Minnesota in the 1990s. As the number of new and expanding large-scale confinement animal production facilities increased, the same issues were raised repeatedly. Concerns were expressed about potential contamination of the air, and surface and ground water, and the economic and social impacts." (p. 5)