Big Hog: Part Two

The gently rolling hills, the forests and woodlands hugging the creeks that stitch together the landscape, the verdant green pastures- all sounds and looks rather bucolic doesn't it?  Look closer and what do you see?  At least six hog factories just in the one little slice of country in the picture frame.  Thanks to the amazing ecoaviator photojournalist extraordinaire Rick Dove, hundreds of pictures of the North Carolina hog factories are available for the public to witness the exploitation of this hidden chunk of North America where land was cheap and residents not powerful enough to prevent the complete upheaval of their communities.

This is what the inside of one of these hog factories might look like.  Some producers allow the pigs to walk around within the building while others cage each individual animal, such as these sows in gestational crates (they say this is to prevent the pigs from biting at each other, which any animal would do if they felt cramped, neglected, and bored).  I'm sure most of you are already grossed out by the way the pigs are treated in these hog warehouses.  This post is supposed to be about the human health problems with these huge hog factories.  But if a hog farmer (or vertically-integrated pork corporation) will treat animals with complete disregard, how do you think they treat their human workers and neighbors?

A multi-author scientific review in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives called "Community Health & Socioeconomic Issues Surrounding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations" listed some of the following dire realities of CAFOs, especially pig factories, on human communities:

• Economic concentration of livestock farms removes a lot of money from rural areas.  Lots of small, independent farms keeps more money circulating in the region.
• At least 25% of CAFO workers have respiratory diseases
• Surrounding neighbors of CAFOs have similar levels of respiratory ailments as the CAFO workers themselves
• Neighbors also exhibit higher levels of anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders
• Higher asthma rates in children that live near CAFOs
• Toxic levels of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia found in the communities near CAFOs
• CAFOs are disproportionately located in low-income and non-white areas
• Property values decrease and low-income areas become lower-income as they loose any and all equity in their homes

For some reason that defies logic, pig factories nearly all get located near wetlands, waterways, and flood-prone areas.  Maybe it is because they use so much water to wash down all the feces-covered concrete or to mix with the pig manure in order to spray it on the fields.  Yes, that's right.  This pink, Pepto-Bismo colored crap gets sprayed onto thousands of acres of crops, some of it destined for human consumption.  Now this isn't just regular crap- it is full of antibiotics, growth hormones, heavy metals,  and pathogenic bacteria (much of which is resistant to antibiotics).  So every time these regions flood (which in Iowa and North Carolina it seems to be every other year), the pig manure ponds get full of rainwater, overtop, and spill out their contents into the surrounding forests, waterways, and drinking water wells.  After the last big hurricane in North Carolina, their governor promised to buy up and close down all of the pig factories that sustained 50% or more damage since they were too flood-prone.  Not a single pig factory was shut down since none of them claimed the 50% or higher damage (that way they could stay in business!).  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that over 60% of CAFOs in this country are not regulated by the EPA.  Why is it that the little 5 acre vegetable farmer next door to me is regulated by the Clean Water Act (for his potential non-point source pollution coming off his irrigated acreage) but hundreds of animal factories around the country with thousands of livestock confined into buildings and feedlots are only asked to voluntarily comply with Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act regulations?  It turns out it is not the pigs that smell, rather it is the politicians and judges who turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the devastated communities, destroyed ecosystems, and unclean 'food' that these factory farms are churning out.

Aerial photos courtesy of Rick Dove, www.neuseriver.com (all rights reserved).

Comments

[Heather]

Your blog's great.

From Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book Crimes Against Nature:
A pig produces ten times the fecal waste of a human being, and a facility with 50,000 hogs produces more waste than a city of a half million people. Circle 4, a Smithfield facility licensed in Utah for 850,000 animals, can produce more waste every day than all the human beings in New York City combined! Where does it all go?
Waste from industrial pork factories contains a witch's brew of nearly 400 toxic poisons. They foster outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida which kills millions of fish and causes pustulating lesions that won't heal. Fishermen from North Carolina are covered with open sores and some can no longer manage their lives because of brain damage caused by Pfiesteria.
These companies are not held to the Clean Water Act because they contract out so they own everything, but the contractor owns the land is left to clean it up.

[Dr. Biggles]

I like the part where all the hard work you and your compatriots are doing, is working.

I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area now for nearly 44 years and slowly, but surely, Honest Food is taking more than a stronghold. I'm not talking about that FDA "organic" feel good crap, I'm talking about real ranchers & farmers getting their licks in. No longer do I have to make treks in to the Napa Valley for the best chickens ever, or to Marin Country for some of the best pork & beef in the country. I can simply visit local farmer's markets & grocery stores. And guess what? It's selling very, very well.

I was at my local mega mart buying ear twigs and the woman in front of me wanted to know where my reusable grocery bags were. As I stated, and the truth is, I'd forgotten them at home. But I've actually got them !!!

Keep it up, I got yer back.

xo, Biggles

ps - I do render my own lard, but am lazy and exceptionally busy (raising an 8 & 13 year pair of boys). Finding Honest Pork Belly around here is pretty darned easy.

ppss ss pp - I noticed your archives, welcome to a great circle of friends!

[Ann Marie]

I am so happy to find your blog. It's FANTASTIC! This is the kind of thing I wish I could do but frankly I don't know enough about it.

I hope you will keep writing. It's so important to educate people about this.

I'm adding you to my blog roll.

Thank you!

[Nathan]

Fantastic reporting! Thanks for the infodownload- it's almost too much to take in sometimes.

[Natalie]

Where is the heart? Where is the shame? This is very sad.