by Tom Garrett
In 1998, the proliferation of hog factories, which has embroiled state legislatures and county commissions for much of the decade, reached center stage as a national issue. On November 3, in the words of the Wall Street Journal's Bruce Ingersoll, "Pig politics became big politics."
In the two states where the hog factory came directly before the people, the verdict was unequivocal. In Colorado, Initiative 14, which places hog factories under moderately severe regulation, was approved by over 60% of the electorate. South Dakota Amendment E, which bans corporate farming in the state altogether, gained 59% of the popular vote despite a massive infusion of corporate cash and opposition from the state's Republican governor.
Lauch Faircloth was defeated by John Edwards (D, NC). Faircloth, according to CounterPunch (November 1-15, 1998) "was part owner of Coharie Farms, the 30th largest hog producer in the country. Faircloth owned more than $1 million worth of stock in two slaughterhouses. In Congress he attended to the interests of the pig men as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Water, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety." Environmentalists and small farmers across the state worked hard to defeat Faircloth. The Sierra Club flooded the airwaves with ads linking Faircloth to water pollution and pfiesteria.
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| Progress or Retrogression? Above Left: A relaxed group of pigs photographed on a family farm, almost a hundred years ago. Above right: Sows in a present-day factory farm. They can't even turn around in their 22-inch-wide gestation stalls. They express their desperation by attacking the bars that imprison them. | |
In Iowa, where hog factories have blighted northern counties and driven most of Iowa's traditional hog farmers out of business, the hog issue played heavily in Democrat Tom Vilsack's crushing upset of Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Lightfoot. In neighboring Minnesota, Reform Party candidate, Jessie "The Mind" Ventura's victory sent a seismic shock through the American political establishment. The governor-elect supports a temporary moratorium on new hog factories.
Factory farming was also a factor in the unexpectedly severe defeat of anti-environmentalist Republican candidate Ellen Sauerbrey by Maryland's incumbent governor, Parris Glendening. Glendening received high marks for his crackdown on Maryland's huge chicken farms following the 1997 pfiesteria outbreak in the Chesapeake Bay area. Environmental protection was a defining issue in the campaign.
Despite political setbacks, the industry blitzkrieg shows no sign of abating. With the producer price of hogs as Iowa as 9 cents a pound – the same price it was in the Depression Era – the last of America's family hog farmers are being driven from the business, while corporations are engaged in a brutal battle for control of the hog market. In the meantime, thousands of citizens, from the New Melloray Monastery in Iowa to Owyhee County, Idaho, are threatened by the insensate drive for more, and still more, hog factories.
Traditional farming operations
treated animals as individuals. A farmer knew the personalities
of his milk cows as well as he did those of neighboring farmers.
I knew which of my sows liked to have her back and ears scratched
– and which one would try to viciously bite if I approached.
When ewes rejected their lambs, we brought them into the house
and fed them from a bottle. As a small child, I knew which of
the old roosters would attack me (some roosters are just damned
mean) and which could be carried around in my red wagon.
Somewhere between my childhood in the 1940s and the 1970s, something went terribly wrong in food production. Schools of agriculture and the USDA, taking their marching orders from agribusiness implement and chemical companies started preaching the adoption of the Industrial Model. Get big or get out. Volume of production is more important than quality.
A diversified, sustainable system of integrated crops and animal production was abandoned in favor of monocultures. Farmers became specialists. Some grew only corn and soy beans. Others developed huge dairy or beef feedlot operations. This move had nothing at all to do with needing to feed the world, and everything to do with concentration of food production, and profits, into the hands of a few large corporations. Market control was the goal. Not many more hogs or chickens are being grown today than in the past – only the methods have changed.
Poultry was the first to totally
convert to the industrial model. Today there are almost no independent
poultry growers, all are either owned by or under contract with
large corporations. The hog industry is going the same direction.
So what? Well, animals are now raised in huge confinement structures, crammed in small pens or cages, given antibiotics to combat diseases (that can run rampant in such stressful conditions). One conveyor brings in food, another system transports out excrement. From a rather idyllic existence on the family farm to a unit of production, packed in with thousands of other units of production, animals are now treated as only a product – much as any other industrial product. Just widgets.
Chickens raised for broilers for mass consumption are now grown in confinement structures that contain up to 22,000 birds. Hatching to slaughter is only eight weeks. Those drumsticks at Kentucky Fried Chicken are from a two-month old chicken. The methods of production are nasty, brutish, and short.
Hogs are raised in arguably worse conditions. Mortality rates are very high. Sows in gestation stalls and farrowing crates cannot turn around. In the "finishing houses" where pigs are fed from around 55 pounds to slaughter size, there are from 1,200 to 2,500 hogs in a building. Emissions of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia from excrement and urine are so strong that large exhaust fans must run constantly to remove the toxic gases from the houses. If the fans shut off for more than 15 minutes, hogs begin succumbing to the gases.
In the heat of summer, the overcrowded conditions in poultry operations lead to massive die-offs. During the record breaking heat-wave last year in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, millions and millions of hens and broilers suffocated in their packed cages. All the media focused on was the monetary losses were to the owners and growers, not to the miserable deaths of millions of living creatures.
Chickens also suffer from the misfortunes of their owners or growers. In southwest Missouri, a bankrupt poultry house owner simply walked away and left 12,000 hens to starve and die. Two years later, the skeletons of thousands of hens remain packed in their little cages in a crumbling poultry house overgrown with weeds. A horror story in the best Stephen King tradition – and one that pretty much sums up industrial-strength hog, chicken and egg production.
Ken Midkiff, formerly a hog farmer, now is the Director of the Missouri Sierra Club
In 1958, following overwhelming public support, the Humane Slaughter Act was adopted. In 1978, the Federal Meat Inspection Act was amended to empower USDA inspectors to stop the slaughter line on the spot if any cruelty is observed. Once the line has stopped, slaughter may not legally recommence until deficiencies, whether of equipment, or of abuses by personnel, are corrected. Since that time the public has assumed that the law has been enforced. Gail Eisnitz' s 1997 book, Slaughterhouse (see AWI Quarterly Fall 1997), was a rude awakening to the fact that deregulation had caused enormous speed-ups in the slaughter line so that animals were no longer being slaughtered in conformity with the law. On the contrary, the book revealed that fully conscious pigs and cows were being beaten, strangled, scalded, skinned and dismembered in the nation's slaughterhouses.
Two government reports, "Survey of Stunning and Handling in Federally Inspected Beef, Veal, Pork, and Sheep Slaughter, Plants" January 7, 1997) and "Special Survey on Humane Slaughter and Ante-Mortem Inspection" (March 1998) provide further documentation of the failure of slaughter plants to handle and kill animals humanely. Many apparent violations of federal law were found despite the fact that the these inspections of slaughter plants were announced in advance, providing ample opportunity for plant managers to cover-up.
The 1997 report documented excessive use of electric prods, slippery floors and hazardous ramps, citing 64% of the slaughter plants visited for ineffective use of captive bolt stunners to render animals unconscious and insensible. The 1998 report noted that "it is considered inhumane to allow an animal to regain consciousness after the stunning procedure, so the bleeding should be done as quickly as possible after stunning." Yet, 57.6% of the plants permitted a lengthy period of time between stunning and bleeding. The report concludes that 28% of the plants visited have "serious problems." A detailed resolution calling for strong enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act was presented to the United States Animal Health Association's Animal Welfare Committee by AWI's Director Cathy Liss. The USAHA represents federal and state regulatory veterinarians throughout the nation and has done so since its founding in 1897. Seeking to quash attention to this issue, a representative of the Livestock Marketing Association objected to virtually all of the text claiming it could not be substantiated. The industry representative even objected to text cited from the two government studies, claiming that these studies, too, could not be substantiated. In the interest of obtaining the necessary votes to adopt a resolution in support of the Humane Slaughter Act, a compromise version was agreed. The final resolution, which appears in the box, was adopted by the Animal Welfare Committee of the USAHA. On the following day it was adopted by the full board of the Association.
As of January, four widely used growth-enhancing antibiotic drugs will be banned for use in the European Union.
Unlike therapeutic or medicinal drugs, sub-therapeutic drugs are not used to help a sick animal recover, but rather to induce rapid and unnatural growth or keep a stressed animal from dying while in cruel factory farms. Up to 80 percent of all Europe's cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry are given sub-therapeutic antibiotics.
Britain, Sweden, Germany, and France led the campaign to exclude the use of the drugs as growth-enhancers. Three nations, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium abstained from the vote, arguing that the ban will push up the price of meat. Denmark and Sweden already enforce a unilateral ban on sub-therapeutic drugs.
Several large agencies, including the World Health Organization, The British House of Lords, and the British National Consumer Council have spoken out against sub-therapeutic drugs. The Soil Association, representing Britain's organic farmers, reports that the use of antibiotics had increased by up to 150 times in the past 30 years. Their press release reads, "We must create a new climate in which animals are kept in more natural, less stressful conditions and are routinely treated with respect, rather than antibiotics."
Controversy over the labelling of organic animal products was resolved by a January 14, 1999 decision of the US Department of Agriculture. By early spring, stores will have USDA certified products. The organic label means that animals have not been confined to the dreadful factory farms where they are virtually immobilized in tiny cages and stalls during their entire lives of painful imprisonment. Instead, the animals must have access to pasture, fresh air and sunshine and not be given growth hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics.
AWI Quarterly Fall/Winter 1998-1999, Vol. 47/48, No. 4/1
