Index:
AMA resolution to eliminate antibiotics
Vet wants a stop to hog expansion July, 2000
Hog heavyweights sued June, 2000

The American Medical Association Approves Resolution to Eliminate Non-Therapeutic Use of Antibiotics in Agriculture

The AMA estimates that 80% of all antibiotics used are employed in agriculture for reasons other than to heal sick animals, such as for promoting growth, for pesticides, or to prevent disease. It opposes such uses because of the growing inability of antibiotics to cure serious human disease. For further information, click here to read the GRACE report of this issue.

Federal Veterinarian Calls on Doer to Cap Hog Expansion

July3/00

The honorable Gary Doer

Dear Mr. Doer

I am writing to you as a veterinarian working for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Before I give you some of my comments in regards to the planned expansion of the hog industry including the erection of a larger scale hog slaughter operation of Schneiders, I would like to share my and my family`s personal background:

My family immigrated to Manitoba in 1983. Our intention was to establish a hog operation and my father left a full time career as a self employed management consultant for major corporations all over Europe. In search of an environment with lower population levels, clean air and open sky, Manitoba was very suitable in more ways than one. Our family purchased a farm in the Riding Mountain National Park area. The idea of a hog operation did not seem feasible seeing that the natural environment lent itself more suitable to beef cattle and organic pesticide free farming. We are practicing an ENVIRONMENTALLY sustainable farm unit to this day and the livestock is kept on free range year round except during calving season in the months of May and June.

I personally developed an interest in Veterinary Medicine, graduated in 1991 and opened a practice on the farm. I remained in rural practice until 1998 and have been employed with the Federal Government since then. I have gained some insight into the slaughter industry and have some facts that I would like to share with you and your government at this time:

The first issue I will address is in relation to the people that work in these slaughter plants. Their work is repetitive, poses a high risk for injury , involves long hours and is low paying.

Some of the key differences that I see looking at the slaughter operation (which I have visited) of Maple Leaf at Brandon versus Schneiders, Best Brand Meats and SpringHill Farms at Neepawa is that the line speed is much higher at 1200 hogs per hour versus 250 to 499 per hour. This has implications on the work force: Faster line speeds are virtually impossible to keep up with properly, faster line speeds come with a very high employee turnover and even higher incidences of injury. Also, the work environment is that of a very high stress one. The product quality declines and the risk to the consumer of food borne illness is higher ( bacterial cross contamination of carcasses is soaring). It used to be that the wages in this industry were high and this was an employee incentive. However, those incentives are not there as the companies offer very low salaries. The employees are treated poorly and end up back on the street. This leads to further problems with poverty and increased crime rates. We already have enough of those problems and don`t want to attract more do we? The training programs that are financially supported by your government are used, not to train a long term workforce well, but a short term work force poorly. This is short term policy making and management. The only part of the system that creates revenue for itself is the plant. The people that are employed are not winning. ( In fact, the Maple Leaf plant in Winnipeg ,when they still had their slaughter operation in Winnipeg had a bomb threat from frustrated employees due to wage cuts). The economic boost to the community can`t come from slaughter house employees because their wages are poor. In other words, the government`s intention of bringing people into this province to make a good honest living is in fact not feasible to these people. ( Locally, Maple Leaf had a street sign posted " Production workers needed" ,due to the daily loss and turnover of employees). These problems are not unique to Manitoba but have certainly arisen in the United States. Employees are shipped in from Mexico to fill the low paying jobs...again so that the plant can be making the big profits...In this regard I ask that our government put on their thinking caps and think of better, more people friendly industry expansion with better long term net gains.

The next issue, I would like to address is that of animal husbandry, transportation and welfare. Our province yields ample empty space and plenty of resources in the form of soil and water. Surely, a hog raising paradise. This is correct and holds true today. But expansion in other parts of the world who started where we have are seeing the negative side effects of ground water contamination and pollution of air due to manure and ammonia. The animals are housed in barns and raised in very unnatural environments. New diseases are emerging on a regular basis. Some of strains of Influenza virus that hogs carry are transmissible to humans. So expansion of this industry would produce more of these unwanted side effects all the time. The more hogs we produce, the more hogs we have to feed and the more manure we have. Why not leave the industry at the current level, spare ourselves and the future generations of this province and instead invest in using the waste currently produced in the form of biological fuel etc. Instead of reaching a phenomenal and harmful proportion, why not become a world leader in setting the stage for more people and hog friendly ways?

Animal transportation....another issue that the department of highways and your government would have an expense. Surely at the outset there is a positive cashflow, but in order to serve a 2-3 million a year hog kill, 50 to 60 Semitrailer trucks have to travel our highways daily to supply the plant. The roadways will deteriorate at our expense. The plant is making money and we are paying for their roads. The hogs, who are not well equipped to travel at highway speed ,in extreme environmental conditions, would be wasted in even larger numbers than now due to heat stress and frost bite. Why not create employment by having more truck check stations in the province`s highways ( not just one volunteer one) to minimize the animal wastage and suffering. 3 Million animals die on Canadian highways each year, Mr. Doer. If this can be reduced, a lot more people can be fed...

Animal welfare and humane handling are issues that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency deals with on a regular basis. The plant wants to kill the hogs fast and has little regard for overcrowding or proper stunning. They want the hogs in the cooler. I can honestly say that not all companies are the same, but, generally speaking, when the line speeds are high and the employees are under pressure from their foremen, procedures are taken lightly and animals stand a risk of suffering prior to slaughter. At the expense of innocent animals, the plant makes money.

The last point I would like to share is the concern, I and many others have over pollution of their living space by hog barn smell and the affects of ground water contamination from effluent from large scale farm operations. Dirty ground water will fall into the domains of government responsibility. Clean drinking water and sewage lagoons are a huge expense and more of these operation would have to be built by the government. Farm operators are working to fill the demands of the plant. Farmers will build large expensive barns, try to pay their debt only to see hog prices go down, go broke and leaving empty structures that will bought up by the plant(s) and farmers will be hired to fill the plant`s hog quotas. Some farmers end up sinking into a depression, taking their own lives or ruining their families. And all this was started by giving a large Multi Million dollar corporation a government grant.....

In other words, you are sewing up accident victims, paying more social assistance, welfare and employment insurance benefits, have higher crime rates, are building and paying for more new highways, are building waste water treatment plants, more animals are suffering, farmers are becoming hired men (which is NOT in their blood) and above all, our beautiful environment is being polluted and destroyed forever.

Is this a good business plan? I ask that you give these items some
considerations and leave me with a response .

Sincerely,

Max Popp, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine
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Hog Heavyweights Sued

THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2000

By BRIAN FEAGANS
Wilmington Morning Star

Three North Carolina riverkeepers and a national environmental group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have sued hog industry heavyweights Wendell Murphy and Joseph Luter, demanding the state's largest swine pro- ducers halt pollution coming off farms and repair damage caused by past releases of hog waste.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Wake County Superior Court, is a broad-based assault on the system North Carolina's $2 billion pork industry uses to handle liquid manure. Farmers generally store diluted waste in open- air pits before spraying it onto fields as fertilizer.

The plaintiffs say that method has allowed nutrients and heavy metals to bleed into streams, percolate into groundwater and float through the air in the Cape Fear, Neuse and New river basins.

Riverkeepers for all three rivers filed the suit along with The Water Keeper Alliance, a private coalition of 50 river, sound and bay "keepers" around the country who act as pollution watchdogs. Mr. Kennedy, the son of former U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is president of the New York-based alliance.

The riverkeepers said the companies knowingly polluted North Carolina's coastal plain as its hog industry grew fourfold in the 1990s to more than 9 million hogs today.

They want the swine industry's deepest pockets to buy or restore millions of acres of pollution-filtering wetlands and clean up all hog lagoons and spray fields saturated with manure-related pollutants.

The lawsuit names Smithfield Foods Inc., Carroll's Foods Inc., Brown's of Carolina Inc. and Murphy Family Farms Inc. as defendants. All companies are now subsidi- aries of Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the world's largest hog producer and processor.

Also listed as defendants are Mr. Luter, the longtime president of Smithfield Foods, Mr. Murphy, who sold Murphy Farms to Smithfield Foods last year, and his son Wendell Murphy Jr., who owned a large share of Murphy Farms.

Richard Poulson, a Smithfield vice president and senior adviser to Mr. Luter, said the lawsuit is based on "voodoo science" and is intended to shut down the industry.

Rivers flowing through the hog belt are no more polluted than those winding through other parts of the state, he said. And the 29 documented releases from hog farms in 1999 paled in comparison to the 2,294 incidents at sewage systems, he said.

An end to the lagoon system would "have a devastating effect on the state economy, especially east of I- 95," Mr. Poulson said.

He pointed out that the pork industry contributed $62 million in state and local taxes in 1998 and that Smithfield alone pays $158 million to farmers in eastern North Carolina.

Doug Abrams, a Raleigh-based attorney representing the riverkeepers, said the industry's eco- nomic contribution doesn't give it a right to pollute waterways with nutri- ents that can spawn algal blooms.

"The hog and cesspool system is a public nuisance," he said. "We have asked the courts to declare it inconsistent with the laws of North Carolina."

The riverkeepers charge the defendants with negligence, trespass onto public waterways via pollution and unfair and deceptive trade practices. They seek punitive damages.

The plaintiffs estimate that more than 3.7 million wetland acres alone would be needed to treat the phosphorus produced by the state's hogs in the 1990s. That would cost roughly $150 billion, they say in the suit.

"That's just an extortion tactic," Mr. Poulson said.

He said the plaintiff's attorneys are trying to "make millions off the backs of hog farmers" by following in the footsteps of those who sued the tobacco industry.

"They're just going to go from industry to industry and see if they can hold anyone up," he said. "I assume the poultry industry will be next."
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