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. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story 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.
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EPA study of CAFO emissions grinds on with no end in sight U.S. EPA's nine-year effort to document air pollution at livestock operations is likely still many years from completion and unlikely to be as useful as industry and environmental groups had hoped. Still incomplete is what EPA promised to do under a 2005 deal cut with livestock producers to identify air emissions for different types of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. The agency has said little about when the work will be done or when it will start three related regulatory tasks, according to sources outside EPA who track the issue closely. The long wait for results is excruciating and frustrating for stakeholders. "We just want them to come up with something," said Michael Formica, environmental counsel at the National Pork Producers Council. CAFOs for dairy cattle, swine, poultry and other food animals hold thousands of large animals or hundreds of thousands of smaller animals. Most of the regulatory focus has been on CAFOs' water pollution. But the CAFOs' barns, feedlots and manure storage areas also foul the air with ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and other contaminants. Animal waste accounts for about half of total natural and man-made ammonia in the United States, according to a 2003 National Research Council report. Those emissions are associated with health effects that range from throat irritation to major cardiovascular diseases and increased rates of morbidity. Many are also precursors to other air quality problems, such as smog and acid rain. Environmentalists have long called on EPA to put in place Clean Air Act requirements subjecting CAFOs to the same air standards that apply to coal-fired power plants and other big industrial emitters. "Without question they are a stationary source, they emit a lot of pollutants, and they should be getting permits," said Brent Newell, general counsel at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, a California nonprofit that has battled the livestock industry over pollution in court in California. But livestock producers say agricultural operations are more complicated than smokestack industries and more difficult to regulate. And even those pressing for strict CAFO regulation acknowledge that measuring exactly how much pollution is being caused by an individual operation and how that is affecting neighboring communities is a difficult task. "One piece of why it's so difficult to regulate them is that they don't fit neatly into the boxes of the statutes that apply to other industrial sectors, like the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act," Earthjustice attorney Eve Gartner said. "There's not a smokestack you can measure, they're not a pipe where you can see what kind of water is being discharged." EPA has historically approached the regulation of CAFO air emissions through right-to-know laws that require the public reporting of potentially harmful air emissions but that don't punish facilities for exceeding limits. To help make it easier for livestock industries to comply with those laws, EPA announced an unprecedented agreement in 2005 with pork, dairy and egg producers in which the agency agreed not to sue CAFO operators for violating air pollution laws in exchange for the CAFOs funding a two-year air emissions study. ...
http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2014/jun/21/epa-finds-no-issues-at-c-h-hog-farms-20/
EPA finds no issues at C&H Hog Farms Mount Judea operation, area tested By Ryan McGeeney A recent report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said inspectors found no areas of concern on or around C&H Hog Farms, the concentrated animal feeding operation raising swine in Newton County. The report, signed June 12, is based on an unannounced three-day inspection of the facility conducted April 15-17. The inspection was conducted by EPA Region 6 inspectors Carl Wills and Chris Lister. EPA Region 6 is headquartered in Dallas.
C&H Hog Farms, located in Mount Judea, holds the state's first and only Regulation 6 general permit for animal liquid waste. The farm is permitted to house approximately 2,500 sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at one time. The production facility where the piglets are birthed and weened sits on a 40-acre parcel, and is surrounded by an additional 630 acres of grassland upon which the farm's owners are permitted to spread an estimated 2 million gallons of manure generated annually by the hogs. Several of the fields associated with the farm abut Big Creek, about six miles from the stream's confluence with the Buffalo National River.
The farm's owners, Jason Henson and his cousins Richard and Philip Campbell, are contract growers for Cargill Inc.
Water samples were collected from more than a dozen sites in the area and were tested for nutrients as well as E. coli and other pathogens. E. coli levels ranged from 18 to 500 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, according to the report. Acceptable limits of E. coli in "extraordinary resource waters" such as the Buffalo National River are set at 298 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, according to the commission's Regulation 2, which governs water quality standards in Arkansas.
Evan Teague, environmental regulation specialist coordinator for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said elevated levels of E. coli in single-instance "grab samples" like those used in the EPA inspection are not unusual. "You're always going to have some numbers that are higher than others; that's just the nature of E. coli in the environment," Teague sad. "Even in completely natural settings, you'll have high numbers that exceed water quality standards; that's just the nature of natural watersheds, particularly when you have wildlife in them."
Katherine Benenati, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said that EPA inspections of sites aren't unusual, even on sites that have been repeatedly visited by state inspectors. She also said that results of the recent inspection wouldn't necessarily change the department's posture regarding its own inspections of C&H Hog Farms. "The EPA inspection wouldn't automatically have a bearing on the frequency of our own inspections," Benenati said in an email Friday. "Keep in mind, we do respond to all complaints and would follow up on any involving the facility."
The chief concern voiced by Bob Cross, president of the Ozark Society, and others has consistently been the potential pollution of both surface and ground water from the farm's hog waste. The waste is held in two outdoor lagoons that have a combined operational capacity of about 3.5 million gallons, with additional capacity to prevent spillage in the event of severe, sustained rainfall.
Because the underlying geology of Newton County is karst limestone, a failure of lagoons' clay liners could send millions of gallons of hog waste into rapidly moving ground water, Cross has warned.
According to the April EPA inspection, the lagoons appeared to be in good order, as were other aspects of the production facility.
Cross and others have also cautioned that because of the farm's proximity to Big Creek, even normal amounts of rainfall could wash freshly applied manure into an open waterway and on to the Buffalo National River. Hog waste is both nutrient-rich, with phosphorous and nitrogen, and a common carrier of pathogens including E. coli.
Cross said that although inspections of C&H Hog Farm have not detected any major problems with the facility, he was still concerned about potential hazards posed by the farm's proximity to the Buffalo National River. "While I don't see any red flags in the report, it does nothing to lessen my concerns about the farm," Cross said.
NW News on 06/21/2014
Note: The EPA Inspection Report may be found on the BRWA Documents page, immediately following the ADEQ Inspection Reports.
Eureka Springs Independent
Summary judgment sought in hog factory lawsuit Becky Gillette Wednesday, June 18, 2014 Earthjustice recently filed an 89-page document in support of a summary judgment in the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for providing $3.4 million in loan guarantees for C&H Hog Farm, a pig factory located on the Big Creek tributary of the Buffalo National River (BNR), the country’s first national river. Earthjustice is a non-profit environmental firm representing the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA), the Ozark Society and the National Parks Conservation Association in the lawsuit. “The rubber-stamping of the requested loan guarantees, the inadequate review of the environmental consequences, and the failure to notify the local community and consult with sister agencies as required, makes a mockery of the law and puts a national treasure in harm’s way,” said Hannah Chang, an attorney with Earthjustice. C&H Hog Farms received a loan, 90 percent of it guaranteed by the FSA, for the purchase of 23.43 acres of land in Mount Judea and construction of two barns. The barns have the capacity for 6,500 pigs, making the operation by far the largest of six existing swine farms in the Buffalo River Watershed. C&H Hog Farms is under contract with Cargill, an agribusiness giant that operates in 66 countries. Plans are to spread about two million gallons of waste produced by the C&H facility on 17 fields totaling 630 acres. Eleven fields are adjacent to Big Creek. The C&H facility’s loan and guarantee were issued in the summer and fall of 2012. Earthjustice said in its recent filing that because of a failure to notify residents, the community in and around Mount Judea did not find out about the facility’s construction until it was nearly complete. “The lack of adequate public notice is just one of a number of egregious failures on the part of the state and federal government to ensure that this facility will not have detrimental impacts on the exceptional natural resources of the Buffalo River watershed,” Earthjustice said. Lin Welford of Green Forest, who is active with area watershed protection groups, said that in the recent filing, Earthjustice presents a strong picture of negligence, and attempts to cover up the lack of due diligence on the part of all parties being sued in the lawsuit. The recent filing asks the court to set aside existing loan guarantees until such time as the defendants comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Buffalo National River Enabling act, and their own regulations in reviewing and authorizing loan guarantees for C&H. “Under the Administrative Policy Act (APA), this court is authorized to ‘hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions that are arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” the filing states. Earthjustice said as a result of violations of notice requirements, a large amount of federal financial assistance was provided to the first-ever large Confined Animal feeding Operation (CAFO) in the leaky karst terrain of the Buffalo River watershed. The National Park Service was never given the opportunity to comment on the project that has potential to significantly impact public safety and the environment. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to serve the public by protecting the environment from any threat of permanent damage. C&H is not named in the lawsuit, but could be affected by the ruling. C&H owners have said they are in compliance with state laws. They received a permit after the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) changed regulations to allow permitting of CAFOs without notifying local residents. ADEQ adopted a CAFO General Permit that supporters of the BNR say allows fast tracking of permit approvals, is scientifically inadequate, and strongly favors special interests. Karst geologist Dr. John Van Brahana is currently conducting monitoring in the watershed to determine if hog waste is entering the BNR. Brahana said that producing pork in the leaky, karst hydrogeologic area rich with springs, caves and underground rivers is “horribly risky.” He said the secretive nature of the project completely disregarded the concerns of legitimate stakeholders such as the National Park Service and local tourism operations, and ADEQ did not adequately review the permit; the head of ADEQ didn’t even know the permit had been issued until after the fact. “The review was pitiful,” Brahana said, a University of Arkansas professor emeritus. “An environmental firm from South Dakota came up with the waste management plan which is completely inadequate in a karst area like this. The owner says they were just following the rules, but the rules are inadequate to protect the environment.” The National Park Service has already found elevated levels of fecal coliform – an indicator of animal waste pathogens – in Big Creek. Area resident Pam Fowler said when she and relatives recently visited the old Sexton Cemetery in Mt. Judea on Memorial Day, odors from the pig factory were disgusting. “We stepped out of the car to a horrendous and overwhelming stench of hog manure and, I guess, burning hogs – distinct singed-hair smell – and the nightmarish sound of shrieking hogs,” Fowler said. “A horror film couldn’t have had more unnerving sounds. I had to tie a scarf over my face to breathe as we worked quickly to escape back into our car.” Fowler, whose family has lived in the area for generations, said it appears their concerns about the hog factory have become a reality. “This Memorial Day, I mourned not only our loved ones who have passed on, but also I mourned our loss of enjoyment of traditional outdoor activities – which is a loss of life as we’ve known it in our little valley.”
Cargill to end gestation crate use for sows
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story Donnelle Eller, deller@dmreg.com 12:21 a.m. CDT June 10, 2014 _ Cargill says all the sow barns the Minneapolis-based company owns will move to group housing by year-end 2015, moving away from gestation crates that animal welfare groups have opposed. The company said contract farms that contain Cargill-owned sows will all transition to group housing by year-end 2017. Paul Shapiro, a vice president at the Humane Society of the United States, said the move is the right one. "Cargill's decision brings us closer to the day when gestation crates will be relics of the past in the pork industry," he said. "Americans simply don't support locking animals in cages barely larger than their bodies." Cargill is one of more than 60 companies that have made similar moves, including McDonald's and Costco, the Humane Society said. Cargill has no sow farms in Iowa, either owned or under contract, the company said. It does work with up to 360 Iowa farmers to fatten pigs for market after they've been weaned. About 30 percent of the pigs harvested at Cargill pork processing plants in Ottumwa, Ia., and Beardstown, Ill., come from Cargill-owned sows, the company said. Half of Cargill's sow operations have maintained group housing over the past several years. Cargill said it has invested $60 million to buy and modernize a 22,000-acre idled hog farm in Dalhart, Texas, to enable it to move to 100 percent group housing for gestating sows. The company's work includes building sow barns containing group housing and converting existing sow housing from stalls or crates. Industry leaders have said gestation crates help protect the sows and piglets. Cargill acknowledged changing customer needs. "While Cargill was a pioneer in the use of group housing for gestating sows dating back more than a decade, in the past few years growing public interest in the welfare related to animals raised for food has been expressed to our customers and the pork industry," said Mike Luker, president of Wichita-based Cargill Pork. "While an industry change of this magnitude is challenging and costly, we believe it is the right thing to do for the long-term future of pork production in the U.S., and our customers agree with us and support our decision," Luker said.