The emerging threat from hog factories, described in the story on Page 1 of this issue of the "Chesapeake," is the latest manifestation of a fundamental change in agriculture -- one with profound implications for our state's water, food and family farms.

The consequences of an animal industrial revolution

Control of American agriculture is concentrating in the hands of a few large corporations. In each area of the agricultural economy, poultry, hogs, cattle, grain, three-to-five corporations dominate the market. To further extend their control, these corporations are instituting a factory system into agriculture much like the Industrial Revolution did in clothe and clothing production at the end of the 18th Century. But the animal factory system threatens not only animal welfare, environmental and human health; this system threatens to fundamentally change land use AND land ownership patterns in rural Maryland and the rest of the nation. This new factory production system has specific components of concern to consumers and environmentalists.

Standardized products

The natural genetic diversity that used to exist in a farmer's grain or animal crop is rapidly disappearing. In grain production, corporations lead by chemical giant Monsanto are producing and patenting genetically engineered seeds (soybeans, cotton, corn) which are manufactured to make better use of specific pesticides like Roundup or to resist specific pests (Bt corn). This is an extension of the factory assembly line concept to life itself.

Because these seeds are patented life forms, they cannot be used by farmers who don't pay Monsanto for them. And Monsanto sues farmers like Canadian canola farmer Percy Schmeiser, who have genetically engineered crops on their lands without paying the corporate piper.

A similar trend is emerging in animal production. Animals are bred or genetically engineered to have uniform characteristics that maximize profitability. For instance, chickens have been bred to have breasts so large that sometimes the chicken's legs cannot hold them up. The animal uniformity sought by the agri-business corporations allows them to predict and control costs better to squeeze out more profit. But at what cost to the animal, the farmer and the environment? There are serious questions about the sustainability of this technology, itself.

Wes Jackson of the Land Institute wrote, "What happens to the cell ecosystem when you add, subtract, double or move one 'gene' on the chromosome in the nucleolus? How long does the cell 'ecosystem' take to react and change the overall cellular landscape? This is the question posed by biotechnology."

The concern Wes Jackson raises is about the environmental and food supply consequences of the biotechnology implicit in the animal factory system. Will bioengineering and standardization leave critical food supplies vulnerable to destruction by a single disease or environmental occurrence? And what are the overall environmental consequences of the elimination of genetic diversity in grain and animals vital to the human food supply? We worry about the elimination of species in the wild. Why shouldn't we be concerned about the elimination of diversity within our food supply?

Meat...not! Pfiesteria, the toxic micro-organism that made Maryland famous in the Summer of 1997, is believed, by most experts, to be triggered by nutrient runoff produced from the production of meat protein. The Governor’s Water Quality Improvement Act of 1998 goes some way to dealing with the nutrient runoff problem into the Bay. But there are some steps we can take, as citizens and consumers, to protect the Bay from this toxic critter. We can eat less meat. Americans eat much more meat than we need. Of the 20-21 daily servings of various foods recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only two should come from non-dairy sources of protein (beans,tofu, nuts, eggs or meats). This two servings/day requirement can be satisfied by eating 4 tablespoons of peanut butter, tahini or other nuts/seeds. A mere 2.5 ounces of chicken (only two bite-size pieces) also satisfies this daily requirement. The bottom line is that you don’t need to eat much meat. And you don’t need to eat meat every day in order to enjoy a nutritious diet. In fact, if you eat less meat, you are doing something good for your own body. When we consume more meat than we need, the excess protein is converted into fat. In addition, medical studies show a correlation between protein consumption (particularly animal protein) and the incidence of osteoporosis (brittle bones), cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Most restaurant food contains far too much meat. If you eat out, buy meatless dishes and consume your meat at home, where you can prepare only the amount of meat you need. I recommend that you use the money you save to buy meat from local farmers who use “free-roaming,” “pasture-raised,” “free-range,” “free-running” or “uncaged” techniques. Because these farms raise less livestock per acres, they don’t overburden the land with their waste and thus are much less likely to pollute nearby waterways. In addition, the livestock on these farms live under much more humane conditions. Each of us shares a responsibility for the conditions that have contributed to the Pfiesteria outbreak and the general degradation of aquatic conditions in the Chesapeake and coastal bays. Help our fellow creatures in the Chesapeake live in peace; create more dignified lives for the livestock sustaining us, and take better care of our own bodies and souls. Eat less meat! by Robert Bloksberg-Fireovid

Factory production

To facilitate rapid production that utilizes a factory's economies of scale, animals that used to be raised in fields and barnyards are now raised in what the government calls Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, called CAFOs for short. In a CAFO, animals like pigs and chickens are confined in tight, controlled spaces with water and feed delivered to them through automated delivery systems. A typical hog animal factory barn is 900 feet long and contains up to 2,500 hogs weighing between 55 and 250 pounds. The animals spend their accelerated lives in these inhumane conditions.

In hog production, these factory food and water delivery systems are so automated, so computerized that prospective animal factory owner/operators sometimes are told they will have to work only one hour a day to raise thousands of hogs. As a result, these factories actually reduce the employment in rural communities, rather than increase it.

Nutrient pollution

Animal factory hogs produce liquid manure which is trapped in large concrete holding ponds under the large production sheds OR is stored in what the industry and government call "manure lagoons." We call them waste cesspools.

In North Carolina, 10 million hogs produce 19 million tons of manure containing high levels of heavy metals and unknown quantities of antibiotics and drug resistant organisms.

These lagoons routinely leak into the soil and aquifers under them. These leaks and failures can have disastrous consequences for the environment. One hog lagoon/cesspool dumped 22 million gallons of raw hog manure into North Carolina's New River. For comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound in Alaska.

In addition, the ammonia gas produced by hog manure precipitates out of the air and into the water, producing even more nutrient pollution. In North Carolina, hog factories release more than 167 million pounds of nitrogen into the air each year. Most of this nitrogen ends up in the state's waters.

The nutrient overload from all sources, including septic systems and the disposal of human sludge on land, results in damage to water quality and aquatic life including (1) massive algal blooms which dramatically reduce the dissolved oxygen levels in waterways, killing fish and other aquatic life, (2) shellfish diseases and (3) outbreaks of Pfiesteria Piscicida, the toxic critter that killed so many fish in North Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay.

Drug resistant organisms, antibiotics and heavy metals.

The nutrient runoff problems are further complicated by the presence of heavy metals, antibiotics and drug-resistant organisms, and estrogen in the manure produced by hogs and poultry. Animal factory production necessitates introductions of large amounts of antibiotics and heavy metals to promote growth in young animals (drugs produce 5% faster growth) and prevent the development of epidemic levels of disease among the closely confined, genetically similar animals.

Heavy metals such as copper, arsenic and selenium are excreted into the manure, which in turn is applied to land used to grow crops, which in turn are fed to the animals. This bioaccumulation process eventually raises heavy metal concentrations to dangerous levels. Carrots were recently found to contain extremely high levels of lead through this process.

In addition, the antibiotics breed drug- resistant strains of common bacteria which enter the land and water and can enter the food supply. In Europe, the emergence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), a so-called "superbug," in hospitals has been directly traced by Danish scientists to the use of antibiotics (avoparcin and vancomycin) in pig and poultry production. The VRE "superbug" can kill people with impaired immune systems.

"Antimicrobial use in food production is a growing threat to human health," said David Heymann of WHO's Division of Emerging and Other Communicable Diseases in an article in "New Scientist" magazine in 1998.

Finally, the concentration of a large number of female animals in animal factories produces high concentrations of the female hormone estrogen with little understood consequences to environmental and human health. In Israel, it is reported that estrogen runoff into the Sea of Galilee has resulted in large scale fish sterility. In Maryland, we have not studied the impact of estrogen buildup in the Chesapeake Bay and the coastal bay watershed.

Destruction of the independent family farmer.

Recently, headlines nationwide have called attention to the plight of independent hog farmers faced with the lowest wholesale commodity price for pork in almost 50 years. With pork selling as little as 8 cents a pound, independent farmers were losing thousands of dollars a day. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was forced to come in with a $160 million bailout in an effort to prevent farmers from going under.

Yet, the price of pork at the retail level is relatively unchanged. What is going on? The answer has profound consequences not just for family farmers, but for our nation as a whole.

The animal factory system seeks to transform economic relationships in rural America in a way that increases direct corporate control over costs and production. Traditionally, hogs have been raised by independent family farmers who sold their animals on the wholesale market. Today, that free market system is being replaced by contract hog raising, similar to the pattern in the poultry industry.

The contract system works like this: The farmer who raises the hogs is supplied by the corporate integrator (for vertical integration). He receives everything he needs for production except the hog barns, water, electricity and a way to dispose of the manure. The hog corporations own the animals, supply the feed, drugs and heavy metals and transport the animals to and from the farm.

Most of the capital for the operation is supplied by the small farmer. The price per pound of animal paid to the contract hog factory farmer/operator is not tied to the farmer's real costs.

In the depressed hog market (from a huge production oversupply), the independent family farmers operating hog factories were the first to go out-of-business. Favored contract hog operators were offered protection in this unfavorable economic environment by a new contract system, called the Ledger Contract. Under a ledger contract, a hog factory operator is guaranteed a certain price by the mega-hog corporation, regardless of what the actual wholesale commodity price for pork is. If the guaranteed price is lower than the market price, the difference between the two is credited to his "ledger account," instead of being paid directly. But if the guaranteed contract price is higher than the commodity price, a deficit is entered on the farmer's "ledger. "

The Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club worries that once the individual operator's "deficit" on the ledger gets big enough, the mega-hog corporation will foreclose on his land, transforming him into a true tenant farmer, while leaving the corporation owner of increasingly larger amounts of farmland.

The whole animal factory system is being financed by the difference between the low wholesale price of pork and the retail price. The virtually monopoly control of a few corporations in poultry and hog production allows them to prosper at the same time family farmers are being bankrupted.

Animal factories are not sustainable.

The sum of all the bad news in this article is that animal factories are just environmentally and economically unsustainable. We should stop the introduction of hog factories into Maryland and ban them altogether. And we should develop state programs to support true family farmers who engage in sustainable agricultural production. This is the path to clean water, safe food and thriving family farms.