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Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK   Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Teresa Marks will retire on Sept. 30, the agency said Wednesday.

Gov. Mike Beebe appointed Marks in 2007 to head the state environmental regulatory agency, which has about 400 employees.

“I have been so fortunate and I will always be grateful to Governor Beebe for allowing me this opportunity,” Marks stated in an ADEQ news release. “I’ve worked with a wonderful and dedicated staff that strives each and every day to protect the environment and make Arkansas a better place to live and work.”

Marks said she looks forward to traveling with her husband this fall before deciding on her next career step.

“Whether working to protect our environment or our consumers, Teresa has spent her career providing dedicated service to Arkansas,” Beebe said. “She was one of the first appointments I made in my administration, and she will leave a team in charge at ADEQ that is well prepared to continue her fair and measured approach to the job.”

Ryan Benefield, ADEQ deputy director, will serve as interim director for the remainder of Beebe’s term, the agency said. Term limits prohibited Beebe from seeking a third term, and he will leave office in January.

ADEQ said Tammera Harrelson, currently chief of its legal division, will become interim deputy director.

Before being appointed ADEQ director, Marks served in the attorney general’s office as Public Protection Department deputy attorney general, where she supervised lawyers and support staff in representing the interests of consumers and state agencies in consumer protection, antitrust, utilities and environmental matters.

A graduate of the University of Arkansas at Monticello, Marks also worked as a high school teacher and as a deputy prosecuting attorney with the Pulaski County prosecuting attorney’s office. She briefly worked as a lawyer in private practice before joining the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law faculty in 1990.

- See more at: http://arkansasnews.com/news/arkansas/adeq-director-retire#sthash.6fCi3Inv.dpuf

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2014/07/22/governor-candidates-talk-about-hog-farms-in-northwest-arkansas

Governor candidates talk about hog farms in Northwest Arkansas

Posted By Max Brantley on Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 1:26 PM

The major party candidates for governor have had one joint appearance today and have another scheduled. No debate debates for Republican Asa Hutchinson and Democrat Mike Ross.

Here's a summary of the first appearance from KNWA. I'd like to see more detail on this snippet:

On the issue of large scale hog farms, Ross voiced support of the need for this type of farm in Arkansas and claimed Hutchinson has said there's no need for it.

I think it's more accurate to say that Hutchinson has straddled this issue. He's criticized the permitting process for the hog feeder operation in the Buffalo River watershed but has stopped far short of opposing the specific farm or ones like it. Which Ross himself has more or less said himself.

It wouldn't do, I guess, for either candidate (and the desire by each to please the farm lobby) to say that there are some special places in this state undefined such as the porous limestone substrata of the Buffalo River watershed undefined unsuitable for mass production of pig manure.

Ross continued his advocacy for private option health insurance, Hutchinson continued to dodge.

UPDATE: The Ross campaign explains more fully.

Asa’s Exact Remarks from APA Debate:

“Quite frankly, I’m not sure we need large-scale hog operations in the state."

Mike Ross' position:

My opponent is out there running commercials about how much he supports agriculture. But, just two weeks ago, he said our state didn’t need large hog operations in Arkansas. Well, Congressman Hutchinson, I don’t think it’s the governor’s role to be picking winners and losers in agriculture here in Arkansas. What will you oppose next? Big poultry farms? Large cattle ranches?

Every Arkansan has a right to farm responsibly. As governor, I won’t pick winners and losers – I’ll protect the rights of all Arkansans to farm responsibly and make a living for their families and provide food and fiber to our state and nation.

Mike Ross' remarks on hog farm from APA Debate:

We’ve got to recognize the Buffalo River is America’s first national river. We also have to recognize what it means to tourism in this state – and tourism is our state’s second largest industry. The process in which the permit was approved was a mistake. There should have been more input from the public. There should have been more public hearings. The people that live in that area who care deeply about the Buffalo River should have had more opportunities to be heard during that permitting process. I believe the permitting process, as a result of this, needs to be changed.

Having said that, the State of Arkansas approved the permit. The hog farmer hasn’t done anything wrong. He applied for a permit, and he received a permit. Governor Beebe is investing additional revenue in making sure testing is done to ensure there is no damage done to the environment as it relates to the Buffalo River from the hog farm. I will continue that testing as governor, and should that hog farm at any point in the future cause harm to the Buffalo National River or watershed, we will take appropriate actions at the time. So, we’re going to change the process and continue to monitor the existing farm there.

http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2014/jul/22/vitamins-and-groundwater-20140722/

Dr. John Van Brahana, the widely respected professor emeritus and specialist in hydrology from the University of Arkansas, must be taking mega-vitamins.

How else to explain the energy level of this man who for almost a year has volunteered his time and resources, along with a team of volunteers, to monitor the water quality at Mount Judea in the Buffalo National River watershed?

His work matters more than we can realize since C&H Hog Farms (sponsored courtesy of Cargill Inc.) opened the state's first concentrated animal feeding operation nurturing up to 6,500 swine under the new General Permit. The state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) was directly responsible for quietly issuing the permit to operate in such an incredibly sensitive environment.

The agency's wrongheaded action since triggered a continuing firestorm of public controversy by multitudes who want to protect the river.

So many hogs amount to a lot of animal waste daily that is siphoned into two open lagoons, then routinely sprayed onto fields around the factory, including several along Big Creek, a tributary of the Buffalo flowing just six miles downstream.

I've written about Brahana and his work for months now.

Most recently he and his group have been monitoring the flow of sub-surface groundwater beneath the factory's acres and around adjacent Big Creek by tracing the flow of a special dye injected into the ground. The fields beneath the factory, as with most of the the ground in the Ozarks, are underlain by fractured limestone called karst. This kind of rock creates gaps, voids and caves that can easily carry water from the surface into surrounding streams and on to the country's first national river.

I asked Brahana what's been happening lately with his efforts.

"Briefly, our dye tracing has been yielding valuable information," he said. "One trace injected into a shallow-dug well in the middle of three spreading fields came out as expected at four springs that surround the property. But the water also traveled 3.5 miles northwest, beneath high ground, to seven springs that lie in the next drainage basin to the north (Left Fork of Big Creek). Then the flow continued to transfer the injected dye for more than three weeks."

The soft-spoken Brahana explained that downstream from these seven springs algae growth is flourishing, especially compared to last year.

"We don't know the exact pathway the groundwater is taking," he said, "only that we injected dye south of the factory farm, and we found irrefutable evidence that some of that dye is coming out north and west of the farm in another surface drainage basin that flows into Big Creek."

From there, the injected dye flows at a rapid rate toward the Buffalo National River. "The flow velocity is fast, typical of karst groundwaters," he said. "Our conservative estimate of the groundwater velocity is from 1,500 to more than 2,500 feet per day. It may be as fast as several miles per day, which means there would not be much time to react should contamination get into the groundwater."

Brahana's no stranger to politics in Arkansas and the role it played in our state allowing this mega waste-producing factory in the national river's watershed, of all places.

He expressed his feelings this way: "Please encourage your readers to contact their representatives and encourage them to vote for the upcoming proposed changes to regulations, rule-making that replaces the General Permit, a flawed document that ignores key science that would protect our precious water resources, " he said.

Lots of rumors appear to be running rampant on this matter, he added, but right now facts are hard to come by.

At least I have faith that objective facts gathered from the science of water quality (rather than the political maneuverings that obviously got this factory permitted) always will be Brahana's foremost goal.

------------v------------

Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.

Editorial on 07/22/2014

Report out on E. coli near farm

RYAN MCGEENEY
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE



The environmental research team assigned by the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture to monitor nutrient and bacteria levels surrounding a controversial Newton County hog farm has released its third quarterly report.
The Big Creek Research Team, headed by Andrew Sharpley, and professor of soils and water quality at UA, was formed last year in reaction to continued public outcry over the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to issue an operational permit to C&H Hog Farms, a large-scale swine concentrated animal feeding operation in Mount Judea. The farm, which is permitted to house approximately 2,500 full-grown sows and as many as 4,000 piglets, abuts Big Creek about 6 miles upstream from its confluence with the Buffalo National River.
Researchers with the team began gathering weekly water samples from four points along Big Creek last September. The sampling points are upstream and downstream of C&H Hog Farms’ production facility and the surrounding grasslands upon which the farm owners are permitted to spread the animal waste generated by their hogs.
Although the quarterly report notes generally stable levels of contaminants in the creek, levels of E.coli were shown to spike significantly after storms in mid-May, just as they had in November. According to the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission’s Regulation 2, which governs state water quality standards, between May 1 and Sept. 30, levels of E. coli should not exceed 400 colonies per 100 milliliters of water in areas used for swimming, canoeing or other activities where individuals come into direct contact with the water.
Samples taken May 13 show E. coli levels as high as about 920 colonies of E. coli upstream from thefarm, and as high as about 1,553 downstream from the farm. By the next collection date, May 19, the levels had again dropped to well below the state limitations, ranging from about 27 colonies to about 205 colonies.
Van Brahana, a retired UA professor of hydrology, who has been conducting his own water quality sampling in Big Creek and the Buffalo National River, said that as more manure is applied to the grassland undefined much of which is already saturated with phosphorus and other nutrients from decades of fertilizer application undefined instances of nutrient and bacterial runoff into area waters will continue with each rain.
“If you overload a field, then many of those additional components are going to be moved downstream,”Brahana said. “If they get into low-velocity flows or reservoirs, those can create some significant problems with oxygen.”
Nutrients such as phosphorus can lower the levels of dissolved oxygen in water, promoting algae growth, and suffocating fish and other aquatic wildlife.
In an email Friday, Sharpley said that in areas where phosphorus content is already high, manure will be applied at a reduced rate, if at all.
“The term ‘very high’ is qualitative and there is a limit of soil phosphorus, which when exceeded will not allow any application of [phosphorus], be it as hog slurry, poultry litter, or commercial fertilizer,” Sharpley said. “That threshold or limiting soil phosphorus varies from field to field based on such relevant site factors as field slope, proximity to the stream, erodibility, and potential for runoff to occur.”
Sharpley and his team are also considering the promotion of “alternative manure management strategies,” including treating the animal waste with low-cost, locally available materials that will “render the phosphorus in the manure less soluble or environmentally less reactive either before it reaches the lagoon or in the lagoon itself,” Sharpley said.
The report also outlines the use of ground-penetrating radar on one of the 17 grassland fields surrounding the farm. Because most of Newton County has a karst geology, where porous limestone underlays typically less than a yard of soil, critics of the farm have voiced concern that nutrients may eventually percolate through the soil, and eventually into the groundwater, especially if there are large fissures in the karst near the farm.
Sharpley described the findings of the radar as being “useful,” but “not spectacular” during a presentation Wednesday at the Arkansas Water Resources Center’s annual water conference in Fayetteville. The results discussed in the study described typical karst formations with no remarkable abnormalities.
The report concludes with a checklist of future plans for the research team, including the installation of automated water sampling equipment in Big Creek, which will be useful in collecting real-time data during storms. The report says the team will also install a “subsurface flow collector trench” near thefarm’s outdoor lagoons, where animal waste from the two large barns is stored until it is either spread as manure or transported off-site.
The trench, which has already been dug down-slope of the lagoons, will help measure whether nutrients and bacteria are being washed onto the nearby grounds from the lagoons during rains, or are leaking into the ground after permeating the lagoons’ clay liners.

FAYETTEVILLE -- On the second day of a conference that has centered on "wicked problems" across the state, water quality experts spent Wednesday morning discussing the relatively recent addition of a controversial hog farm within the Buffalo National River Watershed.
After an introduction from Brian Haggard, director of the Arkansas Water Resources Center and the center's annual conference, three experts spoke in turns about efforts to establish "baseline data" on existing levels of nutrients, bacteria and pathogens in the river near its confluence with Big Creek, a major tributary to the river. The data will be used to determine whether manure from C&H Hog Farms, a large-scale swine concentrated animal feeding operation in Mount Judea, is finding its way into local surface or ground waters.

The farm is permitted to house about 2,500 full-grown sows, and as many as 4,000 piglets, at any one time. The waste from the animals is initially held in a pair of open-air lagoons, then either spread over about 630 acres of grasslands surrounding the facility or transported off site for sale. Several of the farm's fields abut Big Creek.

Faron Usrey, an aquatic ecologist with the Buffalo National River, spoke about challenges his research team face in trying to establish baseline data for levels of dissolved oxygen and the presence of E. coli in Big Creek, and its confluence with the Buffalo National River.

Usrey said that his research team began gathering water samples from several sites in March 2013, which was not given enough time prior to the farm's operation to accumulate enough data to establish "normal" amounts of either dissolved oxygen or E. coli bacteria in the area. According to inspection reports from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, operators at C&H Hog Farms began spreading manure on some fields in December 2013.

Usrey said that levels of dissolved oxygen, which are essential to many forms of aquatic life, including fish and plankton, were found to be very low in Big Creek during the summer of 2013, but have risen somewhat this year.

"In terms of dissolved oxygen, there's definitely something stressed in Big Creek," Usrey said. "We need two or three good years of differing hydrologies, to come up with a good feel for what was normal pre-CAFO. We just didn't quite get that."

Van Brahana, a retired professor of hydrology at the University of Arkansas and a vocal critic of the Environmental Quality Department's decision to grant an operational permit to C&H Hog Farms in the first place, spoke about his own efforts to partially map the karst terrain of the area surrounding the farm.

Most of the Buffalo National River watershed sits on limestone karst, a permeable and porous rock through which groundwater flows in often unpredictable ways. Because soil in the area tends to be only about one meter deep, critics of the farm, including Brahana, have voiced concern that if either of the operation's waste lagoons should rupture, massive amounts of raw manure could be introduced into the ground water very quickly. Despite the Environmental Quality Department having no record of any waste lagoon failing in such a manner in Arkansas, Brahana doesn't dismiss the danger posed by such a scenario.

In 2013, Brahana and a team of volunteers began gathering water samples throughout the area to test for nutrients and pathogens, and also began conducting dye trace studies, in which non-toxic dye is placed into ground water at a specified site, and recorded by radiological monitors when it resurfaces.

Brahana said two of the three dye traces his team has conducted showed that ground water in the area moves extremely fast; the third batch of dye never resurfaced.

"It went to Marti Gras, for all I know," Brahana said.

Andrew Sharpley, a professor of soils and water quality at the University of Arkansas, updated those in attendance on the Big Creek Research Team's efforts to both assess current levels of nutrients and bacteria in soil and water surrounding the farm, and to begin devising ways to treat the farm's manure to make it inert in the event of a run-off or leakage event.

"We know there are possibilities, we know they work from research, but none of them have worked on a farm before, because they're just too expensive," Sharpley said.

Sharpley said that the focus of both aspects of his research was to head off any damage to the Buffalo National River and other water bodies in the area.

"Once those nutrients get into the creek, we've got a problem," Sharpley said. "So one of the things we really wanted to focus on is those land application fields, and if there is a build-up [of nutrients and bacteria], to identify that before it actually gets to the creek."

"It's fine and well to measure it in the stream, but, as the saying goes, this horse has already gone out the barn by then," Sharpley said.

NW News on 07/17/2014

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2014/07/07/hutchinson-backs-existing-hog-operation-in-buffalo-watershed

Hutchinson wouldn't push to shut hog operation in Buffalo watershed

Posted By Max Brantley on Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 7:00 AM


Asa Hutchinson, the Republican candidate for governor, talked with Roby Brock at Talk Business about tax, business and education issues. He covered familiar ground, but his resistance to doing anything about an existing hog feeder operation in the Buffalo River watershed is worthy of note.

He said he supports efforts to protect Arkansas’ natural streams and has concerns about how a controversial large-scale hog farm permit was issued in north Arkansas near the Buffalo River. Hutchinson said he wouldn’t push to shut down the current hog farm operation that was approved in the area, but he wants to see the permitting process “tightened up” in the future.

“Obviously, it is a regulation that is important to protect our streams and our water quality that we value in our state. I grew up on the Spavinaw Creek drinking out of the stream,” he said. “But the farmers didn’t do anything wrong. The farmers went through the permit process, so don’t penalize the farmer. But first of all, my commitment is to protect the [Buffalo] river, and then secondly, you’ve got to make sure you tighten up the permitting process so that everyone has the notice – all the stakeholders, which they seemed not to have the last time, not adequate notice out there. So the farmers did absolutely nothing wrong. They followed the rules, so don’t penalize them. But let’s protect the Buffalo River and the quality of life that we so value in this state.”

For now, it is possible to have it both ways. But I wonder what candidates straddling this line will say if the pending lawsuit and/or pressure over concerns about pollution produce what many believe to be inevitable - either a failure to renew the farm's existing permit or a court holding that a proper environmental impact statement wasn't done. Would he cheer regulation then? Demand that the requirement for impact studies be eliminated? What?

The core question: Should hog feeder operations with tons of hog manure effluent be allowed in the Buffalo watershed, with its porous underlying geology?

 

Designer hog sees, hears better
Couple propagates, trademarks breed over 8 years
By Ryan McGeeney
Posted: July 6, 2014 at 2:27 a.m.

Ryan McGeeney
 
FAYETTEVILLE --When Rose Konold, co-owner of Mason Creek Farm in Fayetteville, roams the farm's pastures in the early afternoon to check on her hogs, she knows her star sow will recognize her instantly.

She knows Ruby can hear her when she calls and can see Konold a good ways off -- and that's by design.

Ruby is one of the farm's Boston Mountain Hogs, a unique breed that Konold and her husband, Glenn Woelk, have worked nearly eight years to perfect.

While most pigs have panoramic vision of more than 300 degrees, they typically have very poor eyesight. Combined with ears that flop down, making it difficult to hear, and layers of thick neck fat making it difficult to even look up at the horizon, pigs are often prone to startling, making them both anxious and stubborn. When Konold and her husband decided to breed their own trait-specific hogs, they took that into account.

"We have minimal equipment on the farm," Konold said. "We move everything by hand. Them being able to see us and recognize us in the pasture is really important. It makes them very easy to deal with."

The fact that the hogs have better sensory perception of their surroundings means they're startled less often, ultimately making the hogs -- the sows, in particular -- less stressed, Konold said.

"If she's an easygoing, nice, happy, fat sow, she's going to have a lot of babies."

After years of work, Konold and Woelk are trying to propagate the Boston Mountain Hog throughout the region through the creation of a breeders association -- one of the requirements of getting a U.S. Department of Agriculture trademark on the pig.

Beginning in 2006 with several Tamworth and Berkshire hogs -- two of the most popular breeds in North America -- Konold and Woelk began selectively breeding hogs with the intention of producing the most consistently substantial flanks and loins, along with a high degree of fatty "marbling."

Konold said the Tamworth breed is known as "the bacon hog," with deep sides and lack of fat.

"The downside of that is that it's not a naturally marbled breed, so the loin is just meat with no marbling," Konold said. "People tend to overcook pork, so what we were finding with the Tamworths was, they were complaining that their pork was too dry, especially if they like a thick cut or chop."

Charles Maxwell, a professor of animal science at the University of Arkansas' Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, said that specified traits are typically bred into, or out of, animals using the same theory of genetics developed by Gregor Mendel in the mid-19th century.

While some traits, known as "single gene" traits, are relatively simple to breed in or out using the Mendelian method, other traits are more complex, Maxwell said, relying on a scale of "heritability." He said breeders run experiments to see what traits people want to be passed on to succeeding generations.

"How rapid a progress you can make toward getting a specific trait enhanced in the breed you're producing would depend upon the heritability of the trait, and the variability of that trait within the population of animals you're working with," Maxwell said. Most fertile sows typically produce two litters in an average year.

After eight years, Konold said she and her husband have now propagated three separate genetic lines, and are hoping to add a fourth, to continue propagating the breed indefinitely without risking the consequences of inbreeding.

Konold said the three existing lines were created using a "line breeding" technique, in which a boar is bred back to a daughter gilt, a young female pig that hasn't been bred, and again to a granddaughter gilt.

Further research led to a rotational breeding method popularized in Britain for the production of the Gloucester Old Spot breed of pig, which substantially reduces the probability of inbreeding depression, Konold said.

Earlier this year, Konold and Woelk applied to the USDA for a trademark on the Boston Mountain Hog. One requirement for trademarking a breed is establishing a breeders association, a 501(c)5 organization. While not tax-exempt, the incorporated association's structure allows it to be made up entirely of "managing members" without having to appoint a president, treasurer or other officers.

Konold held the first meeting of the Boston Mountain Hog Breeders Association on June 18 at the Pauline Whitaker Animal Science Center in Fayetteville. About 30 small-farm owners, including Katie Short, owner of Farm Girl Meats in Conway, attended to elect seven members to the board of directors.

Nicole Civita, a professor of law at UA specializing in food-related issues, said forming a breeders association helps producers of trademarked animal breeds maintain the quality of their brand.

"Trademarking a breed is obviously quite a bit different than trademarking your fast-food franchise, or another business, because what you're looking at is really a particular line of genetics that are going to be replicated, and are quite capable of being changed and altered through breeding," Civita said.

Most of Mason Creek Farm's 60 acres is pasture, consisting of fescue grass and clover, along with several moderately wooded areas. Although adult and adolescent hogs are separated by sex, they all have vast areas to roam, fenced in by single-strand low-voltage, electrified fences.

The pigs graze throughout the day and receive twice-daily feedings of grains and minerals from Konold. This differs significantly from feeding practices in concentrated animal feeding operations, in which animals are relatively confined and typically fed a steady diet of grain from weening to slaughter.

Over the past several years, Mason Creek has been selling Boston Mountain Hog pork to restaurants and other retailers throughout Arkansas and neighboring states. In 2013, Konold and Woelk began reaching out to other small farmers interested in propagating their own lines of the unique hog.

Short began working with Konold in late 2012, and is now propagating Ozark Mountain Hogs on her property.

Short said the Boston Mountain Hogs reach a target slaughter weight of 275-280 pounds within six months, putting them squarely between a Tamworth hog, which matures at about 5 months, and a Berkshire hog, which matures at 7 months. She said she looks for sows capable of raising large litters in relatively rugged environments.

"I jumped at the opportunity. They're fantastic pigs," Short said. "I favor a very naturalistic approach to farming in general, and especially with the pigs."

SundayMonday Business on 07/06/2014

Feeding Operations A Threat To Watershed
Posted: July 4, 2014 at 1:30 a.m.

I support the proposed ban of medium and large concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in the Buffalo River watershed. This action would be a step in the right direction to protect our state from the well-documented harm a proliferation of swine CAFOs can cause to the water, air and public health of our state, especially the sensitive and highly porous karst terrain of our Buffalo River watershed.

I offer as support to this comment the American Public Health Association's Policy statement No. 20037, in which the APHA urges "federal, state and local governments and public health agencies to impose a moratorium on new concentrated animal feed operations until additional scientific data on the attendant risks to public health have been collected and uncertainties resolved" and to "initiate and support research to quantify more precisely the exposures to pollutants in air, water and soil emissions of CAFOs experienced by communities surrounding CAFOs, as well as to investigate the greater vulnerability of infants and children to harm from such pollutants, deriving from either greater exposure or increased toxicity."

Our state would do well to heed such warning statements and the numerous and growing concerns garnered from the proliferation of other swine industrialized farms in other states.

A project of the Pew Charitable Trusts and John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health has reviewed 40 years' worth of peer-reviewed empirical studies on effects of industrial livestock production, including work by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, Ohio State University and the University of Missouri.

The evidence is abundant and clear. Until the unintended, but nevertheless real, problems of industrialized farming are squarely addressed, it would be wise to consider the growing evidence of harm to the environment and to public health as our state considers a ban of medium and large CAFOs in the sensitive karst terrain of the Buffalo River watershed.

Ginny Masullo

Fayetteville

Virus Plagues the Pork Industry, and Environmentalists
By STEPHANIE STROM  JULY 4, 2014
 

A deadly virus, porcine epidemic diarrhea, or PEDv, is estimated to have killed, on average, more than 100,000 piglets and young hogs each week since it first showed up in Iowa in May 2013, wreaking havoc on the pork industry.

The number of hogs slaughtered this year is down 4.2 percent, according to the United States Agriculture Department, to roughly 50 million from more than 52 million in the same period in 2013.

That drop drove up the price of bacon and center-cut pork chops sold in the United States by more than 12 percent in May, compared with the same period a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices for bacon rose more than 15 percent, and pork chops were up almost 13 percent.

“I’ve been a vet since 1981, and there is no precedent for this,” said Paul Sundberg, vice president for science and technology at the National Pork Board. “It is devastatingly virulent.”

A swine virus appeared in the United States last spring in Ohio and in weeks had spread to four more states. How it entered the country is unknown.Hog Farms Battling to Contain Deadly VirusAUG. 4, 2013
The fatality numbers are so staggering that environmentalists have grown worried about the effects of state laws requiring the burial of so many carcasses, and what that will do to the groundwater.


A farm in North Carolina with a sign warning of the presence of porcine epidemic diarrhea. Credit Rick Dove/Waterkeeper Alliance
“We know there is a lot of mortality from this disease, and we’re seeing evidence of burial in areas with shallow groundwater that a lot of people rely on for drinking water and recreation,” said Kelly Foster, senior lawyer at the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental group.

Waterkeeper has asked the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to put a mass disposal plan into effect, and wants it to declare a state of emergency. On its website and YouTube, the organization has posted photos of dead piglets barely covered with earth and boxes overflowing with the bodies of young pigs, although it is unclear whether all were victims of the virus.

Steven W. Troxler, the state’s agricultural commissioner, has so far declined to seek an emergency declaration, saying in a letter to Waterkeeper that he thought existing disposal systems, including composting and the shipping of carcasses to rendering facilities, were up to the challenge. “We are not aware of any published scientific data that indicates any groundwater contamination as a result of PEDv,” according to the letter, which Mr. Troxler wrote in March.

Some of the huge hog operations in North Carolina have become ensnared in disputes over aerial photographing of farms, some of it unrelated to the spread of the virus, and industry officials have expressed concerns about the practice as well.

Three state lawmakers had proposed a bill that effectively would require state agencies to keep under lock and key any aerial photographs of agricultural operations that include global positioning coordinates. The move echoed an effort by United States Senator Mike Johanns, Republican of Nebraska, to impose a yearlong moratorium on the Environmental Protection Agency’s taking of aerial photographs of cattle feedlots and farming operations to monitor compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Mr. Johanns’s amendment, attached to a recent appropriations bill, was altered to require the E.P.A. to give the Senate more information about its aerial photography program.

Last summer, George Steinmetz, a photographer working for National Geographic, was arrested in Kansas under the state’s “ag gag” law after using a paraglider to take photographs of cattle feedlots and other agricultural operations for an article on the food industry.

Precisely how many pigs have died from the virus, which causes acute diarrhea that is virtually 100 percent lethal for piglets two to three weeks old, is unknown. The Agriculture Department did not require reporting of the disease until June 5, and it does not collect data on how many pigs the virus has killed, instead referring the question to the hog industry undefined which does not like to talk about it.


An aerial photograph taken in February showing hog carcasses at a farm in North Carolina. Credit Rick Dove/Waterkeeper Alliance

The National Pork Producers Council does not have a figure of its own but said it had heard that about eight million pigs had died of PEDv so far.

The U.S.D.A. said that as of May 28, nearly 7,000 samples submitted from 30 states to labs tested positive for the virus. Since May, there have been reports of pigs afflicted with the virus in a 31st state. “We do know that it is a particularly persistent virus, and it can survive long periods in less-than-ideal environments,” Joelle Hayden, a department spokeswoman, wrote in an email.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently pledged $26.2 million for a variety of efforts to fight the virus, including development of a vaccine. The largest amount, $11.1 million, is to be allocated to helping hog producers with infected herds enhance their biosecurity practices.

The money is badly needed. In an illustration of how indiscriminate the disease is, the virus was found in Vermont in March on a traditional farm with a small drift of pigs raised largely on pasture. “I was not as surprised as one might think,” said Dr. Kristin Haas, the state veterinarian. “Even though in Vermont and most of the Northeast we don’t have the same type of commercial swine operations that you find in Iowa and North Carolina, there is still a tremendous amount of livestock moving in and out of the state.”

Michael Yezzi, proprietor of Flying Pigs Farm just across the border in New York State, said farmers suspected that the virus arrived on a truck from Pennsylvania. “It’s a very big concern because we have young stock on the farm, piglets born on the farm and piglets brought in from regional breeders,” Mr. Yezzi said. “We have to make sure the farms we’re working with don’t have it, because it’s going to kill everything under a certain age.

“Nobody wants to lose 10 to 20 percent of their yearly supply of pigs, whether that would be 150 for someone like me or 15,000 for someone in Iowa.”

Prevention is no mean feat. At the Hord Livestock Company in north-central Ohio, for instance, trucks returning from feed deliveries are cleaned and disinfected and then the trailers are baked to 160 degrees for 10 minutes. Drivers wear disposable bootees, and farm supervisors are not allowed to travel between Hord’s farms.

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And yet the company has just finished the four- to five-month process of eliminating the virus from one of its farms and is working to disinfect another and build up its sows’ immunity so they can pass it on to their piglets in their colostrum. The two farms had different strains of the virus, one more deadly than the other.


On average, more than 100,000 piglets and young hogs have been killed each week by the virus, which first showed up in Iowa in 2013. Credit Lane Hickenbottom/Reuters

Pat Hord, whose family owns the business, would not say how many of its animals died from PEDv. “Even though the economic hit is definitely significant, it’s probably the emotional side that’s the worst of it for me and my family and the team here,” Mr. Hord said. “All we do every day is take care of the animals the best that we can, but there’s nothing you can do for them when this disease hits undefined it’s out of your control.”

The Hords, who also raise cattle, use composting to dispose of animal carcasses, laying dead animals on a concrete slab, mixing in sawdust and rotating the mixture as it decomposes to aerate it. Mr. Hord said disposal of the increased number of dead pigs had not been a particular problem. “The good news, if there is any in this,” he said, “is that baby pigs are very small.”

Waterkeeper, however, says that the sheer volume of dead animals poses an environmental threat.

“They’re very secretive about how many pigs have died in North Carolina, but we estimate that it’s about two million over the last year or so,” said Rick Dove, a retired Marine Corps lawyer who has taken aerial photos of pig farms for Waterkeeper’s North Carolina affiliate. “They can’t move those pigs off the farm because it will spread disease, so they’re being buried in ground along the coastal waterways where the groundwater level is high.”

State regulation requires the bodies to be buried at least two feet underground, which in many places means the dead pigs come into contact with groundwater, Mr. Dove said.

The virus does not infect humans. As the corpses decompose, however, they can become hosts for bacteria and other pathogens.

Each state has its own requirements for the disposal of carcasses. Iowa, one of the largest hog-producing states, has a set of disposal methods for use during emergency disease outbreaks. They range from burial and rendering to use of alkaline hydrolysis, a highly specialized process using chemicals and heat to break down tissues.

An Iowa State University publication describing various processes for disposing of carcasses during an epidemic estimated that it would take a pit six feet deep, 300 feet long and 10 feet wide to hold 2,100 pigs, and the pit would need to be covered with three to six feet of dirt in a site marked by GPS coordinates and regularly inspected.

North Carolina issued a warning to a pig operation for having an open burial pit on its property, Ms. Foster, the Waterkeeper lawyer, said. The organization brought the issue, which it documented with aerial photos of the farm, to the attention of the state agriculture department.

The North Carolina Farm Bureau contends that such photographs create unnecessary expenses for its members. “Third parties are making complaints to environmental regulators, and using aerial photography to document what they say are violations,” said Paul Sherman, director of the farm bureau’s air and energy programs. “The vast majority of those cases are unfounded, but farmers still have to deal with it, it eats up a good part of a day or two and often the same complaints come up multiple times.”

Honolulu Star Advertiser

Industrial food complex hastening climate change

By Gary Hooser and Simon Russell

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jul 02, 2014

In Hawaii, the debate over the safety of GMO products often centers around eating the food or being exposed to chemicals used in its production.

Both are important, even urgent, concerns. But there is another that may be just as urgent: the impact of industrial food systems on climate change.

Most experts agree that warning bells should sound when atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels reach 350 parts per million (ppm). But according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CO2 levels last year exceeded 400 ppm and are rising. Climate change is real and its impacts are far-reaching, especially for island communities such as ours.

The global food system is responsible for about half of greenhouse gases (GHG), according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Worldwide food production is generally put into two categories:

» The "industrial food complex," characterized by large-scale commodity crops (corn, soy, wheat, canola, sugar beet), concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) fed by those commodity crops, and the processed food industry which uses these two sources for raw materials.

» The "traditional food web," small-to-medium family farms, which do not grow commodity crops for industrial food. This includes pasture-fed animal operations, sustainable fish harvesting and organic farms.

According to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development's (IAASTD) Global Report undefined a joint program of the World Bank, World Health Organization and United Nations undefined traditional food produces 70 percent of what the world's human population eats but taxes resources only 30 percent. Conversely, industrial food provides 30 percent of the world's food and uses 70 percent of resources. This means industrial food is putting 5.4 times the GHG into the atmosphere for every calorie of food it produces compared to traditional food.

In the U.S., over 75 percent of food on chain grocery store shelves is from industrial food. The impacts on our planet:

» Industrial agriculture uses 26 times as much fossil fuel today to produce one calorie of food as it did in 1940.

» It takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of CAFO meat.

» CAFOs create effluent lagoons the size of lakes that emit enormous amounts of methane. Methane is 21 times more potent of a GHG than CO2.

» Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers used in industrial farming off-gas nitrous oxide, which is 310 times stronger than CO2 as a GHG.

» As oceans become more acidic from GHG retention, a life-sustaining planet needs to rely increasingly on soil to function as its "kidneys," sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere. Industrial food, with its heavy reliance on herbicides, changes the microbial balance of soil, and mono-cropping doesn't allow soil to replenish.

How do we slow down this runaway train?

The first step is to restrict and regulate the actions of large corporations through the political process. Industrial food consists of the world's largest companies driven to further their profit agenda through international trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership while externalizing their costs onto the communities in which they operate.

The industrial food complex claims the mantra of "feeding the world." But according to the IAASTD, the traditional food web feeds the 2 billion people at the bottom of the economic ladder almost exclusively with no help from industrial food.

Bottom line: We need to counteract the misinformation put out by the multinational corporations, weed out the politicians working for industrial food, and elect leaders who will implement the more resource-conscious policies of traditional food systems.

Experts estimate it will take 50 years to restore natural soil content to pre-industrial farming levels, thus reducing GHG emissions by 23-30 percent.

It will take bold community action to start this reversal and reinvigorate inspired political leadership. We are hopeful. We believe Hawaii has already begun to turn the tide in that direction. And, like many people across these islands, we believe that if any community is up for this challenge, it is ours.