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Citizens
for the Environment and Future in Eastern Ontario |
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Citizens
for the Environment and Future in Eastern Ontario |
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July 2003
A newsletter from the Citizens for the Environment and Future in Eastern Ontario – www.cefeo.org
Mega Hog Farms
A Threat to our Future!In St. Eugene, North-Glengarry and elsewhere in Eastern Ontario, the threat continues!
Projected Mega Hog Farms in East-Hawkesbury didn’t vanish into thin air!
No! Proponents of Factory Hog Farms continue their plans.
Interim bylaws in East-Hawkesbury and elsewhere in Eastern Ontario temporarily limit the expansion of live stock operations, to allow the study of the many possible risks of such proposed intensive livestock operations and to consider how to regulate them. These new methods of producing meat are very different from the conventional agriculture we have known. This newsletter will explain why.
The construction of many proposed industrial hog farms planned for this spring has been postponed, but the threat continues. One mega hog farm promoter told the press that the adoption of the provincial nutrient management regulations will put an end to the municipal interim bylaws and allow the projects to go ahead. The new provincial law would strip municipalities of the right to pass bylaws which respond to local considerations.
All local input and authority could be lost as soon as September 30, 2003. The mega hog farm promoters, supported by integrators, continue to prepare. Some are quickly and quietly buying up and leasing land, and signing contracts to spread manure on neighbouring farms, ensuring that they have lots of land to spread the hog waste. The more land, the more pigs.
The Citizens for the Environment and Future of Eastern Ontario remain vigilant
The worry about mega hog farms is very rational. These operations are different from "traditional" farms. First, in the number of animals they raise. We aren’t talking about 75 or 200 cows, but thousands of pigs. 4500 pigs is a different situation than the laws and regulations were meant for. Secondly, there is the involvement of integrators. These are large corporations which export big quantities (to Japan for example). With farmers who do the actual hard work, they form new corporations or sign franchise-like contracts. The integrators then control the business the way head-quarters control the fast food outlet, from a distance.
Our opposition is based on the experience of many rural communities and families in Canada; in the west, Manitoba, Québec, and Ontario, as well as in the United States and Europe, who have discovered the hard reality of mega hog farms in spite of the integrators' promises not to repeat past mistakes from elsewhere.
The dangers are many and varied. Unfortunate accidents are not uncommon.
Are you concerned, as all of us are, about your health and that of your family, about the future of our family farms, the quality of drinking water and of the air we breathe, the value of your property, the long-term economic stability of our area, about community harmony, the condition of our roads, about the common good and the preservation of our rural quality of life?
If you are, then please read on!
Why all these Mega Hog Farm projects in spite of all the opposition?
Quebec has a moratorium on new mega hog farms, so the integrators have come to Eastern Ontario. The Quebec government has stopped the expansion of hog operations for two years, because of the environmental damage they have caused, and because of the protests by dozens of communities invaded by these mega hog farms and their unforeseen negative side effects.
The big Quebec pork producers / exporters (the integrators) are looking for areas where the farmers, the citizens and their elected officials have not yet seen the effect of these mega hog farms. Their hit list, along with St. Eugene and Ste. Anne de Prescott includes North Glengarry, Dalkeith, Ste. Rose de Prescott, Pendleton, St. Albert, Curran, St. Isidore and Sarsfield. The projects have run into strong opposition from informed residents, but unfortunately the promoters are looking to start their projects as quickly as possible.
Canadian Doctors Are Concerned.
The Canadian Medical Association officially expressed its deep concern about public health in rural areas in relation to industrial hog operations. In August, 2002 it advised all levels of government to declare a moratorium on the expansion of such operations, to allow time to research the contaminants they emit.
E. Coli, the bacterium responsible for the tragedy in Walkerton, has been found in Ontario hogs.
Last winter the University of Guelph detected a toxic strain of E.coli 0157:H7 in hog excrement in 3 of 44 farms they examined in Ontario. In one farm 12 of 15 hogs were contaminated by this bacterium. In March 2003, the U.S. Center for Disease Control found this same E.coli, which is potentially toxic to humans in 2% of the hogs tested in a slaughter house. The Manitoba Minister of Agriculture asserts that E.coli can live 300 days in diverse conditions, such as in cold water or frozen ground.
Toxic Gas, Nauseous Odours
Mega hog farms emit unhealthy foul-smelling gases along with some that have no detectable odour. Some, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia can cause irreversible brain damage. Others can aggravate asthma and other respiratory conditions, cause persistent nausea, loss of appetite, headache, migraines, depression, and loss of balance and memory.
Heat and humidity intensify the stench of millions of liters of liquid hog manure. Over 150 gaseous compounds are released. Wind can push them considerable distances, and they can engulf entire communities. While hog operations themselves must keep a certain distance from houses, the manure can be sprayed much closer.
Plummeting Property Values
The quality of life can be badly affected, and thus property values drop. According to the organization PORC (Protect Our Rural Communities) in Sarsfield, even properties 3 kms from a mega hog farm lost 7% of their value. They are becoming almost impossible to sell. Who would want to have one of these operations for a neighbour?
No Positive Value for the Community
Highly automated, mega hog farms create hardly any jobs. 3000 finishing hogs require only one person half time.
Integrators buy very little in the community; they manage and supply just about everything, from the sperm for insemination to the plastic to wrap the meat; they supply the feed, the equipment, the medication, the specialists etc.
The shareholders, who expect a return on their investment, live far away from the affected sites and have no interest in those communities. Corporations have no heart. A corporation is not a neighbour with whom problems can be readily or amicably resolved. Its sole motive is profit.
Danger to the health and quantity of drinking water.
Industrial hog operations have seriously affected water courses and aquifers in many places and in many ways: chemical pollution, bacterial contamination, and wells needing to go deeper to find water. Here’s why.
- Water, a lot of it, is used to clean the barns. It washes away the manure and urine. Instead of solid compostable manure, the liquid manure (90% water) is produced, and held in giant lagoons, until it is spread in the spring or fall.
A lagoon for 4500 hogs would measure 167 feet in diameter and 16 feet deep, and hold 6,800,000 liters of liquid manure. (This is an open lagoon, which is illegal in Europe and elsewhere).
- In a lagoon, there is no air under the surface, and excrement does not decompose. Phosphates and nitrates go into solution. Gases escape into the air.
- In soil, liquid hog manure is not retained like manure mixed with straw or wood shavings would be. Rain and erosion carries some of the spread liquid manure toward open water courses, where excess nitrates and phosphates feed an explosion of algae. Decomposing algae then draw oxygen from the water and fish suffocate and die.
- Compounds from the liquid manure infiltrate the aquifer. Wells at homes and farms are threatened by contamination of material toxic to humans and animals: nitrates (carcinogenic), phosphates, bacteria and parasites (salmonella, E.Coli, etc.), heavy metals and the residue of the antibiotics used as a matter of course in intensive livestock operations.
- A contaminated aquifer takes decades to recover,
if and when the source of pollution is stopped.- Liquid manure spills do happen,
due to human error, equipment failure or natural hazards (storms, earthquakes etc.) In early May 2003, at Asbestos Quebec, 120,000 liters of liquid hog manure poured into the Nicolet river in less than 2 hours, apparently because of a broken pipe. A water intake 22 kms downstream had to be closed for many days. The incident occurred on the farm of one of the owners of Côté-Paquette, the same Quebec integrator trying to establish in East Hawkesbury and North Glengarry.- When water is contaminated by nitrates and phosphates, the cost of filtration skyrockets.
- These operations draw a large volume of water from the aquifer, to water the livestock and to clean the facility. In some places the water table has dropped by as much as 125 feet, and many wells had to be drilled much deeper. (3,000 hogs is much more than 200 cows!)
Harm to the Family Farm
Mega hog operations present themselves as farms, but in reality they are intensive industries and their potential to pollute is much greater. Agricultural and environmental laws were not drafted to cover such large numbers of animals, as the terrible examples in Quebec and North Carolina demonstrate.
If these large hog operations continue to be considered as "normal" farms, all farmers will pay the price, with stiffer regulation and more intense scrutiny. Farms, unable to resist, would be swallowed by intensive livestock operations.
In areas which have faced the reality of intensive hog operations, more and more farmers oppose them. Yes to farms! No to the integrator invasion!
Industrial concentration, harm to businesses and local initiatives.
Generally, the integrators who sign contracts with local farmers, want to fully exploit the area in a way which is most efficient from a business perspective. For example, in Canborough / Dunnville (near Lake Erie, in Ontario) citizens estimate that there are now 30,000 pigs in a 10 km radius area. They report that the first pig factory was built there only 2 years ago. Things can go fast!
If our region falls into the hands of the pork integrators, our roadways will be over-run with dozens of trucks (feed, piglets, hogs ready for slaughter 3 times per year), and hundreds of trips by manure spreaders onto the neighbouring fields.
In addition to farms, organic culture, hiking trails, bicycle paths, natural sites, family "tables champêtres", and other family or community businesses would be seriously affected by the continous odours and the damage to the environment. Gone would be the dream of a "green" future.
CITIZENS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND FUTURE OF EASTERN ONTARIO
The encouragement of the public helps and we are grateful for it.
We are determined!
We are working as volunteers for the benefit of the community; for our health, the environment, the protection of family farms, and for the quality of life for all of us.
Our web site is: www.cefeo.org
e-mail: info@cefeo.orgYour donations are used for communication, and to consult with the best lawyer in Ontario (and probably Canada) on the mega hog farm issue, Valerie M’Garry.
You may send a cheque to:
Citizens for the Environment and Future in Eastern Ontario.
C.P. 345,
St.Eugene, Ontario
K0B 1P0
SUGGESTED ACTION FOR CITIZENS
(this should not be considered as legal advice)
- Have your well water analysed now by a recognized professional.
Keep the results in a safe place.In case of an incident where an eventual mega pig farm might contaminate our wells, these analyses would be a reference showing what damage has occurred.
Collective action could be organized.- Have your property evaluated now by a recognized professional.
Keep that evaluation in a safe place.If a mega pig farm is established, you will have a reference against which to claim damages from those responsible.
Legal action could be instituted against the operators of the mega pig farm for the loss of value.
There could also be a collective action against the Township where you live.
More and more property owners have obtained municipal tax reductions due to a drop in property value and the diminished quality of life.
- E-mail us any useful relevant information. Or send it by regular post.
Unity and determination will help us to protect our future.
Mega Hog Farms
A Threat to our Future!YES to farms YES to farmers
NO to mega hog factories and the integrators