The Cruel Corporate Assault on Family Farmers and Their Pigs

"Above gold and silver... more precious than rubies; a race of virtuous and independent farmers; loyal supporters of their country"
—Senator Thomas Hart Benton, 1823

Today, America's system of family farms is in extremis. A succession of economic shocks, beginning in the Eisenhower administration, has so thinned the ranks of family farmers and ranchers that only a beleaguered remnant, aggregating less than 2% of the population, remain on the land. Thomas Hart Benton's "race of virtuous and independent farmers" is being replaced by a new feudalism, governed from corporate boardrooms, in which "contract growers" fulfill the role of serfs, and migrant workers the role of slaves.

The corporate takeover of agriculture relies on control and manipulation of markets, and a degree of vertical integration unthought of in manufacturing industries. Its way is being greased by one of the most powerful and unscrupulous lobbies in the nation with corruptive tentacles enmeshing the Congress and federal agencies and penetrating into state governments and legislatures across the country.

Gross abuse of farm animals, on a scale and to a degree unimaginable a generation ago, is the distinguishing feature of industrial agriculture. Its dernier cri is found in the hog factories mestastizising across the farm belt and into the intermountain west where pigs live their brief lives in huge, densely packed buildings suffused with the overpowering stench of liquefied hog manure. Gestating sows stand on naked concrete slats in a space so tiny that they are unable to turn around. During farrowing, the space allotted them is so narrow that they must lie on one side, segregated from their piglets by bars spaced widely enough apart that the latter can suckle. The piglets themselves, under "segregated early weaning" are taken from their mothers at only 10- 14 days of age so that the sows can be re-inseminated without loss of time.

Death losses under such conditions and in an atmosphere laden with hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, are understandably high. Twenty million pounds of antibiotics are fed to farm animals each year. Even with daily, subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics, without which raising animals in factories would be impossible, vast numbers of piglets fail to survive weaning or fall behind and are "culled." The annual death rate among sows is reported to average 20%. Those who survive are "used up" and culled after three or four farrowings. Some of these young sows are unable to even walk to their own deaths. The natural life expectancy of a pig is ten years; sows in factory farms rarely exceed the age of two and one half.

At Seaboard's huge, vertically integrated hog complex near Guyman, Oklahoma, the death loss—by the company's own admission—has reached 35,000 animals in a single month. Company officials seem unconcerned. This is not really "wastage" they argue; the animals are taken to the company's rendering plant, ground up and fed to the surviving hogs. This is what "closed cycle" evidently means.

Why can't traditional farms, where there is little death loss and sows remain productive for years, compete with this grotesque system? Given a "level playing field" they can. But the field is anything but level. The profit or loss of independent farmers depends on the producer price; the price of animals "on the hoof." But for corporations like Seaboard who maintain their own packing plants, and—increasingly—sell at retail under their own label, producer prices are irrelevant; the determinants are wholesale and retail prices. The producer price of hogs plummeted 40%, from 59.3 cents a pound in July 1996 to 36.3 cents a pound in July 1998. But the wholesale price dropped only 23% during the same period, from $1.22 to 95 cents and the crash affected retail prices not at all: pork averaged $2.26 per pound in July 1996; $2.31 per pound in July 1998.

Another way vertical integration allows corporations to muscle aside family farms is to deny them markets altogether. In recent years, most of the sale barns and central markets to which farmers traditionally shipped their hogs have closed down and most independent packing plants—those operating without a "captive supply"— have been forced out of business. Tens of thousands of small farmers have quit raising hogs simply because they cannot sell them.

In the meantime, despite the collapse of Asian markets and consequent glut of hogs, hog factory expansion continues apace. Huge new complexes are planned for points as diverse as southeastern Idaho, northern Texas, the San Luis valley of Colorado, the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Fulton County, Illinois and Platte County, Wyoming, as the corporations with the deepest pockets take advantage of the price crash to seize additional market share.

But for all their money and political influence, factory farmers are vulnerable. Factory farming does not work economically unless many of its real costs are imposed on others; to sustain such a system requires a high degree of political control. At the federal level, where honest enforcement of the Packers and Stock-yards Act and various environmental laws would unravel the entire system, corporate dominance is hardly challenged. But a citizen's revolt against hog factories is gaining strength in communities across the country as normally diverse— even antagonistic—constituencies unite against the common enemy.

• In Colorado, where absence of regulation has attracted over twenty large hog factories, a coalition of farmers, environmentalists and humane activists are bringing the issue before the voters in the November election. Initiative 14 would force hog factories to combat stench by enclosing sewage lagoons, require persistent environmental monitoring by both state and county authorities, make the owners fully liable for "remediating" damages and give affected citizens standing to go to court, when necessary, to bring about enforcement. Agribusiness corporations have raised millions of dollars—reportedly including one million dollars from the pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, to stop the initiative. Industry groups such as the Farm Bureau Federation and the National Pork Producers Council, are in full hue and cry.

• South Dakota farmers, led by Dakota Rural Action, have placed an initiative on the ballot aimed at forcing agribusiness corporations altogether out of the state. Amendment E, modeled on Nebraska's anti-corporate law, would ban corporate owned farming operations in South Dakota, including feeding contracts involving corporate-owned animals. This would not prevent privately owned hog factories from operating in South Dakota, but Nebraska's experience suggests that without pressure from outside investors very few will. The South Dakotans are, once again, facing a flood of corporate money and the Republican Governor Janklow is inveighing against the initiative.

• Western Kansas has become a veritable battleground between corporate investors and citizens. Fortunately, it is possible, under the Kansas constitution, for counties to decide for themselves whether such development is to be allowed. Public initiatives have been held on the question of hog factories in 20 Kansas counties. Only one county, Edwards, voted by 590 to 585 to admit hog factories. 71.6.% of all the voters participating in the elections voted "No." In three of the fourteen counties where commissioners granted permission for hog factories to come in, outraged citizens forced them to rescind the decision.

• Iowa has traditionally been a bastion of family farming as well as the largest hog producing state in the United States. It is still first in hogs, but the number of independent hog farmers has plunged from 41,000 to 18,000 in a decade and most of Iowa's hog production is now in the hands of corporations. The corporate takeover has degraded Iowa's environment, created social turmoil, battered the already depressed rural economy. However, the 1995 passage of File 519, eliminating the right of counties to regulate hog factories, and the right of citizens to file suit against hog factories, created an intense backlash. Nine Republican legislators who voted for file 519 were tossed out by the voters in 1996, and Democrats are counting on the issue to regain control of the Iowa legislature this year. In the meantime, the Iowa Supreme Court recently ruled the provision denying citizens the right to file nuisance suits against hog factories to be "blatantly unconstitutional."

• In Oklahoma, where waste from chicken factories in the eastern part of the state contaminated the Tulsa water supply, citizens finally forced a moderately strong regulatory bill— applying to the state's hog factories— through the state legislature. Moratoriums on new construction remain in effect in Mississippi and North Carolina. South Carolina, with North Carolina's ghastly example to guide it, passed a sufficiently severe law to deter development.

"Forget the pig as an animal. Treat him just like any other machine in a factory. Schedule treatments like you would lubrication. Breeding season is the first step in an assembly line."

—Hog Farm Management Magazine

A Better Way—Hog Farming that Meets the Animal's Social Instincts

Farrowing and finishing hogs have been core activities on the Frantzen farm for over 55 years, spanning my and my father's farming careers.

In 1978, I changed the way hogs were housed and raised at our farm. A room in our barn was remodeled to hold 14 steel farrowing crates with slat floors. A small underground pit was dug to catch the pig's waste. I distinctly remember how those "modern improvements" changed the very nature of our farm. Slat floors and the stagnant watery manure beneath it created a repulsive odor. Any activity that stirred this fecal soup greatly increased the smell. At that time, I thought that this was just a part of being modern. Noxious odors were not the only bad features of the slat floors and crates. For the next 13 years, I would struggle with countless animal health problems associated with slat floors.

Above: This hoophouse sow carries straw into her farrowing hutch, building a nest for her piglets. Above right: Sow and piglet snuggle in deep straw. Right: Hogs at the Frantzen farm in their straw-bedded hoophouse. The pigs root through the straw bales, creating their own nests.

Sows in the crates would slip on the (very expensive) slat flooring, causing various injuries. Little pigs suffered knee abrasions from sleeping on the hard floors. Pneumonia and injury-related health problems were common. The finishing pigs that were closely confined in a slat floored pen, as recommended by modern textbooks on pork production, did gain weight quickly, but they exhibited cannibalistic behavior. Tail biting became a serious problem.

In 1994, my wife, Irene, and I spent two weeks touring Sweden with a small group from Iowa and Minnesota. The trip was organized and hosted by Marlene Halverson of the Animal Welfare Institute and Mark Honeyman of Iowa State University. The farms we visited were employing deep bedded facilities to provide low stress, humane conditions for their livestock. I was awed by the healthy and content disposition of the stock, and the farm families too!

Every time I observed my old, crowded, slat floor hog barn and the stressed pigs living in it, I too became stressed. Their social brutality (tail biting, bar chewing) was caused by failing to meet their basic social instincts. On a hoopbuilding tour, I was told that pigs have three desires: they want to run around, build a nest, and chew on something. This behavior is impossible in a metal pen on a slat floor. Early one September morning, I opened the door of my grower barn to check on the pigs. One of the pens was covered with fresh blood. Their level of stress was so high they became violently aggressive toward each other. I could take no more! I announced with a bit of profanity that my slat floor days were going to end.

Deep-bedded hoophouse facilities appeared in the Midwest in the mid 1990s. It was exciting to observe this development. Not since being on the Swedish farms had I observed a humane shelter! More exciting yet, was the promise of an economical and ecologically sound building. In a hoophouse or structure, straw-bedded pens replace metal crates and slatted floors. The straw bedding mixes with the hog waste which is self composting, creates very little odor and no ecological hazards.

Plans were set to build three hoophouses on the farm. By September of 1997 one of the houses was ready for the pigs. I was very anxious to use the new facilities. On moving day we bedded the new hoophouse with fresh straw, and lots of it.

One hundred and sixty pigs from the old grower were released into their new home. Boy, did those pigs have fun! In the new hoopbuilding they have lots of room to run, straw to chew and heaps of bedding to nest in. They ran around all day—and even in to the night. The next morning when I went into check on them, I will never forget what I found. As I walked up to the door, it was quiet, very quiet. I peeked into the hoophouse to see 160 pigs in one massive straw nest, snoring with great content! I laughed until I cried. Their stress was gone and so was mine.

	Above left: A family farm sow and her piglets. Left: Family games: piglets climb over their mother's head. Above: Pigs are all-weather animals, and enjoy snow as well as sunshine.

Our deep bedded buildings are now a year old. We are selling the second group of pigs this fall. We have not observed any social behavior problems. Even when the bedding pack is four foot deep, the odor level is very low. Nutrient losses from rain and snow runoff is nearly nonexistent. Hoopstructure housing is the most significant development I have observed in moving agriculture towards practices that really make sense. It took a long time but our pigs finally have a happy home.

Tom Frantzen is a fourth generation farmer from Alta Vista, Iowa.

Rescue of 171 Pigs Raised in a Factory Farm

What was to be a one way journey to the slaughterhouse turned into a trip to porcine paradise for 167 pigs abandoned in a Washington, DC neighborhood. Tightly packed into a huge, three-tiered, eighteen-wheeled truck trailer, the pigs were being transported from a Rocky Mountain, North Carolina factory farm to Hatfield Quality Meats, a Pennsylvania slaughterhouse. The DC Metropolitan police who found the terrified pigs contacted the Washington Humane Society, who had the truck towed to Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary in Poolesville, Maryland.

The hogs had been on the truck for at least 14 hours before they were finally unloaded. Four of the pigs died of stress while on the truck or shortly after being unloaded. Only 5 to 6 months old, the pigs already averaged a whopping 200 to 250 pounds. Some had unsightly growths and hematomas, most had difficulty walking and all had their tails cut off and large sores on their bruised and swollen legs. It was clear that their short lives on concrete slats had taken a permanent toll.

When the operations manager of Hanor Corporation, Inc. (the company that owned the pigs) arrived at the sanctuary to retrieve the pigs, he was escorted by a Washington lawyer and a bevy of Montgomery County, Maryland police officers. Poplar Spring presented the manager from the Hanor factory farm with a bill of $11,630 for expenses incurred for the pigs' transport, care and feeding. The bill constituted a legal lien in the state of Maryland. After intense negotiation, the manager agreed to write a check to cover the amount. The pigs' lawyer, Laura Nelson of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, called his bluff and demanded the sum be either in cash or a certified check. Unwilling or unable to produce a secured payment for the pigs, the manager ceded the pigs to Poplar Spring. An interesting footnote: According to police sources, the driver was picked up the next day by Washington, DC police for driving under the influence of alcohol. It was also discovered that this had not been the first time the driver had deserted a trailer full of animals.

Terry Cummings and Dave Hoerauf, co-founders of the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary sit among the weary, abandoned pigs who had never before experienced the joys of soft bedding to rest on, fresh air to breathe, freedom to walk on the ground, or theeel of sun on their backs.

The hogs will now live out their natural lives as true pigs, in grassy fields with their friends. If you are interested in adopting or sponsoring one of the Poplar Spring pigs, please contact Terry Cummings at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, PO Box 507, Poolesville, MD 20837, (301) 428-8128.

AWI Quarterly Summer 1998, Volume 47, Number 3