V. GENERAL DEMOGRAPHIC ASPECTS

The expansion of hog production and processing in recent decades has been associated with changes in the ownership and scale of operation of meat production in North America and overseas. Associated with this have been significant changes in the demographics of the communities in which such operations are situated.

Hog Production

Until about 20 years ago, most hogs were raised on family farms with little outside labour. The change to large scale, corporate, often vertically-integrated operations, usually with units in several locations, has forced farm families out of hog production and even out of farming. The new operations are usually controlled by non-resident management, and run by hired barn workers, often with high turnover rates. In addition, these companies tend to buy feeds and other supplies in bulk, either through an affiliated company or from the cheapest supplier in a large area. This decreases local purchases, and may lead to the closing of businesses and loss of families. The net effect in rural areas is a decrease in the number of stable family units and an increase in single, mobile workers.

Processing Plants

Many jobs in meat-processing plants are rather dirty, difficult, and relatively low-paid. The workers tend to be unskilled, mobile, and young. The rate of turnover is high, and as the local work force is depleted, it is replaced by a flow of immigrants from economically-depressed areas, nationally and internationally (Transcript. Dye). These workers, added to the existing community, will change its age-composition, family structure, and ethnic composition. The smaller the community, the greater the impact.

VI. SOCIAL ASPECTS

The social issues surrounding large-scale pork production and processing are wide-ranging and important. Often, local communities and their citizens cannot control the business practices of meat-packing companies, yet they must deal with the social consequences of the industry’s presence. In short, the agri-industrial meat production system that has developed in North America has been described as threatening the long-term sustainability of rural and small town communities. Although some of these effects occur in both large-scale production and processing, we will examine them separately.

Large-scale Hog Production

Traditional hog farms, which are owner-operated and involve little hired help, are quite different from the large-scale operations. These are usually corporate- owned, operated by a manager with hired help, and are often part of an integrated meat production and processing organization. The numbers of independent hog farmers displaced could be greater than the number of jobs created in new large-scale hog operations. This radical change in food production techniques has had drastic effects on rural communities in many parts of North America. These effects were described as including:

Replacement of Family Farms: In Missouri, Iowa, and other parts of North America, the appearance of corporate hog farms has tended to eliminate family farm operations. These cannot compete with a vertically-integrated industry that artificially depresses hog prices (Transcript. Dye).

Loss of Independent Markets for Hogs: Large-scale processing plants tend to promote contract suppliers rather than an independent market. Family farmers are placed in a precarious position, contracts tend to give low returns, but there is no competitive market (Transcript. Braun).

Loss of Local Control over Decisions Affecting the Community: Most rural communities cannot compete with powerful multinational corporations. The municipalities lack technical expertise and economic resources to defend their interests against the “carrot” of jobs and the “stick” of the plant’s threat to go elsewhere. Corporate-owned factories have no loyalty to a community (Transcript. Ikerd).

Hog prices have decreased as profits are moved closer to the retail end of the business (Transcript. Tait) and large hog barns purchase their supplies in bulk from non-local suppliers, thus decreasing local income.

Local strife occurs among residents as they divide into pro- and anti- large-scale hog operations factions (Transcript. Ikerd).

Confinement of pregnant sows to gestation crates, and the treatment of animals as if they were factory machines is offensive to some people. Most of the pigs are housed inside barns in pens with concrete or slatted floors, without bedding or straw. Sows are confined to individual stalls so narrow that they cannot turn around. The sows spend their lives in an area so small that they have to eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate all in the same spot. This is what is frequently called factory farming (Transcript. Burns).

There is a decline of public confidence in, and support for agriculture, caused by public perception of the pollution and unethical treatment of animals associated with large-scale operations (Transcript. Burns).

Pitting farmers of one country against farmers of another country. Corporations who wish to control the trade will eliminate the trade irritants when they control all the food production on both sides of the border. Farmers on each side of the border are being used to achieve a larger goal. US grain production is being used to destroy peasant farmers in southern Mexico. Canadian hog farmers destroy American hog farmers with the low dollar. The corporations are playing one against the other and destroying everybody (Transcript. Tait, Braun).

Hog factories can no longer be considered farming or agriculture, or even agribusiness. This is industry, pure and simple. We must remember that this is not a natural or inevitable evolution of agriculture. Just over a decade ago there were no factory-style swine operations anywhere in North America. This is a deliberate plan by a handful of corporations to profit from consolidation, and ultimately to control the pork industry (Transcript. Dye).

One alternative to large-scale corporate hog production is now operating in Iowa, where owner/operators raise hogs according to “high husbandry standards” and market their product to a specialty market. The animals have to be farrowed, raised in pastures and/or bedded pens, and not fed meat by-products. The owner/operator must live and work on the farm and directly care for the animals (Transcript. Willis). Where such market alternatives do not exist, farmer cooperatives, with the support of the Government of Manitoba, could enhance the position of the family farm and bring a fair price to the market.

Large-scale Meat Processing

Large-scale meat processing plants have similar social impacts, whether they process hogs, cattle, chickens, or other animals. During the past 15 years, small towns in North America that have had the sudden influx of population associated with packing plants have experienced many of the same social problems experienced by western energy boomtowns during the 1970s, including increases in homelessness, crime, domestic violence, and child abuse (Transcript. Broadway).

In Canada, High River has, so far, remained relatively immune to these social changes as most of the plant’s labour force resides in Calgary. In contrast, Brooks (with a beef processing plant employing over 2500 people) has experienced an increase in a variety of social problems. Many of those drawn to the town by the prospect of employment arrive penniless and need shelter. The company has responded by providing trailer units that in total can accommodate up to 168 single men and women. The housing is located adjacent to the plant. It is surrounded by a chain link fence and barbed wire. Entry is through a guardhouse structure. Food is provided by a system of vouchers that workers exchange in the plant’s cafeteria. Lakeside deducts the cost of rent, food, and any extra equipment the employees may have purchased, from their pay. This means that a worker has little to live on and is unable to save for a damage deposit for an apartment. Crimes and the cost of social assistance have increased (Dye 1999).

In three Missouri counties (Mercer, Putnam, and Sullivan) with large hog-processing plants, temporary “Aid to Needy Families” increased more than 10% between 1993 and1996, bucking a sharp statewide decline. Unemployment is up to 1.5% higher than pre-hog levels. Between 1990 and 1996, Putnam County had the slowest growth in personal income of any county in the State. By 1997, Mercer was the 147 th poorest county in America— 2963th of 3110 counties. Sullivan County’s public hospital is currently facing bankruptcy, saddled with the costs of treating the packing plant’s oft-injured uninsured workers. Crimes have also increased; murder (133%), assault (40%), robbery (400%), driving while intoxicated (23%), and narcotics (25%). Domestic violence also has increased each year since reporting began in 1992 (Dye 1999). Perhaps the most disturbing statistics are about the children. All 3 counties ranked poorly in relation to other counties in infant and child deaths, child abuse, and foster placements (Transcript. Dye).

The working conditions in large-scale meat processing plants are often poor. In the U.S., a large percentage of the processing industry’s nationwide labour force is migrant workers with a tenuous social standing. They are often abused, overworked, and underpaid. A lawsuit, recently brought by several migrant workers, accused the Premium Standard Foods slaughterhouse of harassing injured workers, providing squalid, vermin infested housing, and making false recruiting promises. Slaughterhouse jobs are particularly dangerous work. One in three such workers will be injured on the job this year (Dye 1999).

Seaboard’s pork plant at Guymon, Oklahoma, has been associated with seven broad areas of concern: growth and turnover, housing, health, education, social services, crime, and communication. Demand for social services will accelerate, but it is unlikely that significant financial support for these services will come from Seaboard, even though its employees and their families rely heavily on these agencies’ services and resources. Crime has increased, as it will do in any community with an influx of young men. Communication with non-English speaking immigrant workers placed demands for translators in the social and justice systems (Transcript. Stull).

Communities with large scale-meat processing plants have all faced similar challenges: growth, often rapid and explosive; population mobility; costs associated with dramatic increases in cultural and linguistic diversity; rising rates of crime, health, and social problems; strains on infrastructure and social services. These challenges stem from a common source: the meat and poultry processing industry and its constant hunger for workers. Communities that pursue economic development without adequately considering larger issues of community development find themselves concerned about what is happening in their communities and to the way of life they cherish. Low-wage jobs and the transient workforces they often create, coupled with corporate tax holidays, can actually decrease the quality of life in a community. Community leaders must look beyond economic development to community development, if they are to build a successful community in the coming century (Transcript. Stull).

Conclusions

1. Problems associated with large-scale processing plants include: homelessness, crime, domestic violence, child abuse, employee turnover, reduced wages, lack of adequate low-cost housing, health problems associated with high-speed worker lines, and stress on the infrastructure systems in education, social services, and communication. A major concern is that the citizens in a community have no control over the corporate business practices that ultimately lead to the above problems.

2. In addition to the goal of low input costs and high profits associated with the multinational meat companies, these industries should have a responsibility to the communities that host its facilities. Providing jobs is not enough, especially when jobs come with significant social and economic costs. Government should do more than lure new business with tax holidays. It should make funds available to communities to meet their needs, especially those places facing rapid growth and increasing ethnic and linguistic diversity. Grants are needed for transitional and low-cost housing. Continuing funding is necessary to offset additional drains on the institutions that provide health care, public education, and law enforcement. Host communities have an obligation as well. If they want new jobs, and the added business and tax revenue that come with them, they must provide a suitable environment for the workers who will fill those jobs.

3. Animals must be raised in a humane manner. Manitoba should follow the lead of the UK and place a ban on gestation crates in hog operations. As well, humane treatment of animals at the processing plant is an important issue. The larger the processing plant, the more stress both the worker and the animal experience. In Manitoba, The Animal Care Act, proclaimed August 1 1998, exempts from the provisions of the act any animal involved in an “accepted activity” such as agriculture, slaughter, sporting events, fishing and hunting, trapping, research, teaching, etc. This act should be reviewed and amended.

4. As citizens of this country, we need to decide what kind of a country we want to live in. A healthy, vibrant, rural economy with small family farms and small, local abattoirs is good for urban Canada as well. We need to restore public confidence in the food system (currently very low). We need to develop a food supply system that does not destroy community, here or in other countries. Farmers must be valued for the contribution they make to our society.

Recommendations

The Governments of Manitoba and of Canada should:

1. Recognize the importance and cultivate the strengths of family farms.

2. Promote, develop, and enforce fair, competitive, and open markets for family farms.

3. Dedicate budget resources to strengthen the competitive position of family farms in Canadian agriculture.

4. Promote and develop locally owned processing plants.

5. Promote vibrant rural communities where the primary production, such as hogs, are processed in locally-owned and environmentally sustainable plants.

6. Provide just and humane working conditions for all people engaged in production agriculture.