Factory Hog Farms Coming to Kentucky
What do you think of when you hear the phrase Òhog farmÓ? Perhaps you visualize an
Iowa barnyard, with a cornfield, a few chickens, and ten to twenty hogs laying in the sun.
In fact, this bucolic scene is quickly disappearing from our rural landscape. Between 1977 and 1997, the number of traditional American hog farms dropped from 660,000 to around 209,000 - a 60 percent decline in just twenty years.
Family-run hog farms have been replaced by Òfactory farmsÓ: huge, automated operations that can house 15,000 hogs or more in metal, warehouse-like buildings. Inside, breeding sows are confined in metal cages so narrow that they cannot even turn around. The hogs are fed and watered by automated machinery designed to maximize growth and meat production.
On a factory farm, piglets are removed from their mothers a few days after birth, and raised in cramped indoor pens where they will never see the sun shine. After six months, they are slaughtered. The breeding sowsÕ misery, however, is prolonged for years, and she is kept in a constant state of distress by her cramped quarters and unnatural environment.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of hog farming has been treatment of the hog manure. Since a hog produces anywhere from two to five times as much waste as a human, the manure from 15,000 hogs can be equivalent to the sewage load from a city the size of Owensboro, Ky.
Yet hog waste does not have to be treated in a municipal sewage treatment plant like OwensboroÕs. Because hog waste technically falls under the classification of Òagricultural operationsÓ, factory hog farms are governed by the same rules that apply to Farmer Brown and his ten pigs. Inside the factory farm, hog waste is pressed through the perforated floor by the hogs themselves into a collection pit . The manure is then liquefied and pumped into a huge open cesspool.
These open cesspools can leak and contaminate the groundwater used by many rural communities as a source of drinking water. Because they are not enclosed, the cesspools also release noxious odors and toxic gases like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, which return to the Earth in rainfall, causing nutrient enrichment and algae blooms in nearby rivers and streams, which chokes out aquatic life.
According to US News and World Report (Jan 22, 1996) a 1995 study in North Carolina found 122 farmers Òdeliberately and illegally dumping thousands of gallons of raw waste into state watersÓ.
In North Carolina, home to 16 million hogs, the controversy over hog waste reached its peak in the wake of a massive spill of hog waste on June 21, 1995. After three inches of rain fell on Richland, NC, the earthen berm of an 8-acre lagoon containing the waste of 10,000 hogs burst, sending a tidal wave of hog feces and urine into the New River, causing massive fish kills and closing thousands of acres of commercial shellfishing grounds. The 25 million gallon spill, roughly twice the size of the Exxon Valdez spill, was only one of the spills in 1995 that totaled over 35 million gallons. Other effects of hog waste on the environment are beginning to be felt. In November, 1995, officials blamed hog waste for the contamination of drinking wells in Robeson County, NC, which cause methemoglobinema, or Òblue baby syndromeÓ, which can be fatal in infants.
Even more alarming, scientists have implicated hog waste runoff in outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscida, an algae nicknamed the Òcell from HellÓ, which has caused enormous fish kills in North CarolinaÕs Pamlico Sound, Chesapeake Bay, and the Gulf Coast of Florida. Pfiesteria appears to thrive and grow wildly in waters rich in the phosphorus and nitrogen nutrients found in hog farm runoff. The algae, which causes dime-sized rotting tumors in fish, has created symptoms similar to AIDS in its 100 human victims, which include divers, fishermen, and marine construction workers.
PfiesteriaÕs toxin, 1000 times as deadly as cyanide, is so dangerous that fishermen merely splashed with ocean spray have suffered oozing sores that donÕt heal or respond to antibiotics. Scientists accidentally exposed to the algae have suffered profound neurological symptoms. In response, North Carolina officials have quarantined parts of the nutrient-impacted Neuse River, and continue to closely monitor the situation.
Neighbors of the factory hog farms suffer the most. Odors have a profound effect on human mood, and few things smell as badly as hog manure. Jeff and Julie Jansen, of Olivia, Minnesota, live about a mile away from two large hog farms, and claim that hog odor and gases are responsible for a variety of family health problems, from dizziness and fatigue to sore throats and headaches. Hog odor seeps into their hair, clothing and furniture. ÒWeÕd like to sell the house and move, but who would buy it?Ó, they complained in the US News and World Report article.
To those familiar with KentuckyÕs lax environmental standards, it will probably come as no surprise that factory hog farms, with all their attendant problems, are on their way to our Commonwealth. Kenneth Buckman, in association with number two pork producer Carroll Foods, wants to build factory hog farm operations in Hickman, Fulton, Graves, Carlisle, and Ballard Counties in far western Kentucky that will raise 500,000 hogs. The Vall Corp., a Spanish Company with a US base in Texhoma, Oklahoma, wants to raise an additional 500,000 hogs in Hopkins County.
Governor Patton has recently issued a 90-day moratorium on the issuance of any new permits for hog farm construction, but three permits for new construction have already been issued, and bulldozing to clear the site has begun. It seems that KentuckyÕs fate is to forever be the recipient of undesirable, dirty, low-wage industry cast out of other states. Will we ever learn?
(Dave Cooper is Conservation Chair of the Cumberland Chapter of the Sierra Club). Participate in "Buy Nothing" Day
The day after Thanksgiving, as everyone knows, is traditionally The Biggest
Shopping Day of the Year! After gorging ourselves on Thursday, we pile
into the minivan, curse the traffic, and squeeze into the shopping malls,
shuffling along like zombies to the strains of “Silent Night” to begin the
month-long orgy of spending that leads to the Granddaddy of all consumer
climaxes known as "Christmas".
Is anyone else out there getting a little tired of it all?
This year, why not give yourself a break?
Friday, November 28, is International Buy Nothing Day. A day to spend with
your family. A day of relaxation and enjoyment. A day to rediscover that
the best things in life don’t come from Wal-Mart.
Buy Nothing Day, a brainchild of the Vancouver-based Media Foundation
(publisher of Adbusters Magazine) is a global campaign designed to help
harried, stressed-out people find quality time to spend with their friends
and loved ones. Buy Nothing Day isn’t about guilt, or deprivation, or
becoming a monk. It’s about re-examining how we spend our lives in pursuit
of consumer goods that advertising keeps telling us we must have.
For example, how many people do you know who have bought Sport Utility
Vehicles that have never taken them camping? Why do we buy them?
Advertising creates extremely powerful images. In this month’s Outside
magazine, you will be sure to find an idyllic picture of a couple camped by
a mountain stream, with their Jeep Cherokee gleaming by the light of the
campfire. The only problem is, we’re really too busy working (to pay for
the Jeep) to have any time to go camping!
The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertising messages each
day. Take a look around you right now. How many advertisements can you
see? How many brand names? Perhaps you are even wearing an advertisement
for Nike, or Calvin Klein. We think we are able to resist advertising
messages, yet how many people can claim that they don’t know who Mr.
Whipple is, or that choosy mothers choose JIF? Advertising and marketing
firms are staffed with the very brightest graduates from the best colleges,
and they are experts at influencing and increasing your buying. In fact,
the “shop ‘til you drop” mentality has become such a integral part of our
culture that there are now more shopping malls in America than high
schools.
Unfortunately, our North American consumer culture is rapidly consuming the
planet's resources. America, with 5 percent of the world’s population,
consumes 25% of the world’s resources. A typical American consumes five
times more than a Mexican, ten times more than a Chinese person, and
thirty times more than a person in India. The Earth simply cannot sustain
these levels of consumption, particularly as the Third World gears up to
achieve the spending and consumption levels of the Western world they
idolize.
Since it would be grossly hypocritical for America to tell everyone else
not to consume resources the way we do, we must lower our consumption in
North America if the planet is to survive. It’s up to us to change the
course of the global economy, for the path we’re leading the rest of the
world down ends in utter destruction.
So quit letting General Motors, Nike, and McDonald’s push your buttons.
Break free of the consumer culture. Have fun on Buy Nothing Day!
Some ideas on how to "spend" Buy Nothing Day:
For more information, contact Adbusters at (604) 736-9401, fax (604)
737-6021. To subscribe, call (800) 663-1243. Rally Against the Ohio River Pipeline at Noon Dec. 5,1998
Environmentalists, preservation and social justice groups will rally on
Saturday, December 5 at 12:00 noon at Kentucky-American Water Company
headquarters, 2300 Richmond Rd. in Lexington, to voice their opposition to
that company’s controversial $48 million proposal to build a 52-mile long
pipeline to the Louisville Water Works, which gets water from the polluted
Ohio River.
Environmentalists cite published reports which have labeled the Ohio River
as the third most polluted body of water in the USA in terms of total
pounds of toxics released into the water. (Number one is the Mississippi
River, number two is the Pacific Ocean). They point to EPA Toxic Release
Inventory data which identifies over 3.5 million pounds of chemicals dumped
by industry into the river every year, and Coast Guard data which lists
over 100 accidental or intentional chemical spills reported every year on
the Ohio.
Social justice groups are outraged by Kentucky-American’s attempt to
finance an expansion of their service area into adjoining counties using
ratepayer dollars and a 20-30 percent rate increase. Kentucky-American, a
division of the New Jersey-based American Water Works Corporation (a
publicly-owned corporation with operations in 20 states) admits that it
will attempt to sell Ohio River water to communities along the route of the
pipeline. This follows American Water Works Company’s pattern of
aggressive expansion in other communities – it bought out operations in 15
communities in 1998 alone. Social justice groups point to the Ohio River
pipeline proposal as another example of "corporate welfare " and the public
financing of private, for-profit corporations.
Historic preservationists also oppose the pipeline’s proposed route through
historic Bluegrass horse farms and along scenic Old Frankfort Pike, fearing
disruption of groundwater supplies from blasting and digging, degradation
of the Bluegrass Scenic Byway, as well as opposing further growth and
development along the pipeline.
The Kentucky Office of Attorney General also opposes the pipeline. They
support instead the option offered by the Kentucky River Authority to
improve locks and dams along the Kentucky River, which would achieve the
same reliability of water supply during a drought, at one-fourth the cost.
The OAG also points out that cost of the water supplied by the Ohio River
pipeline would be over six times greater than water from the Kentucky
River.
Others fear that construction of the pipeline could also lead to the
abandonment of Kentucky-American owned Jacobson Park, which is rapidly
losing volume as a storage reservoir due to siltation. If the reservoir is
abandoned, the property would become extremely valuable as prime real
estate for a subdivision development.
Citizens Against the Ohio River Pipeline
Contact: David Cooper (606)234-5671 ext 1415 days, (606)275-1610 eves.
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