The Pennsylvania State University
The Graduate School
College of Agricultural Sciences
GREENING THE FACTORY FARM: TOWARD A THEORY OF AGRI-
ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOSCIENCE
A Dissertation in
Rural Sociology
By
Jonathan Lawrence Clark
© 2010 Jonathan Lawrence Clark
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
August 2010 The dissertation of Jonathan L. Clark was reviewed and approved* by the following:
Kathryn Brasier Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee
Clare Hinrichs Associate Professor of Rural Sociology
Carolyn Sachs Professor of Rural Sociology and Women’s Studies
E. Paul Durrenberger Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Richard C. Stedman Special Member Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Policy and Management Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Ann R. Tickamyer Professor of Rural Sociology Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology
*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School.
ii Abstract
During the past several decades, as ecological concern about industrial agriculture has intensified, some sectors of agriculture have become subject to environmental regulations, a trend rural sociologist Fred Buttel called the environmentalization of agriculture. Although this transformation has had a crucial technoscientific dimension, and although agricultural technoscience has long been an important topic in rural sociology, rural sociologists have had little to say about the relationship between environmental regulations and agri-environmental technoscience. In this thesis I address this relatively neglected topic by examining a particular regulatory system: the nutrient management regulations that attempt to reduce nutrient runoff from industrial livestock and poultry operations. The thesis examines the regulatory science that laid the scientific foundation for the regulations as well as three techno-fixes that were developed to reduce the risk of runoff. I explain how these two types of agri-environmental technoscience have helped keep regulatory compliance costs in check, maintaining the profitability of the regulated industry and of regions as locations for it. My thesis is that agri-environmental technoscience plays a crucial role in overcoming (socio)ecological obstacles to the accumulation of capital. I also use this case study to grapple with the larger intellectual problem of how to understand the relationship among capitalism, technoscience, and nature in an era of increasing environmental concern. Focusing on one of the techno-fixes in particular, the Enviropig™, the first animal ever genetically engineered to be more “environmentally friendly,” I highlight the emergence of a striking new development in the capitalist production of nature: the reconstruction of nature––in this case, the body––as a way of overcoming (socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES!...... vii LIST OF FIGURES!...... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS!...... ix Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION!...... 1 Chapter 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK!...... 6
I. Overcoming natural obstacles to capitalist agriculture!...... 6
II. Socioecological obstacles!...... 12
III. The role of environmental technoscience in overcoming (socio) ecological obstacles to capital accumulation.!...... 19
A. Regulatory Science!...... 19
B. Techno-fixes!...... 23
IV. The real subsumption of nature!...... 28 Chapter 3. METHODS!...... 35
I. Introduction!...... 35
II. Conceptual Model and Research Questions!...... 35
III. Data Collection and Analysis!...... 42
A. Document Collection!...... 42
1. Question One 42
2. Questions Two and Three 43
3. Question Four 51
B. Document Analysis!...... 52
iv IV. Plausibility!...... 54 Chapter 4. REGULATORY OBSTACLES!...... 56
I. Introduction!...... 56
II. Surplus Manure!...... 61
III. The Excess Manure Phosphorus Challenge Facing the U.S. Pork Sector!...... 62
IV. Follow the Phosphorus: The Ecological Consequences of Manure Disposal!...... 66
V. Nutrient Management Regulations!...... 71
VI. Conclusion!...... 81 Chapter 5. AGRI-ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATORY SCIENCE!...... 87
I. Introduction!...... 87
II. The Bay and the first imminent manure disposal crisis!...... 88
III. Nitrogen-based regulations help avert the crisis!...... 93
IV. “New” science on phosphorus causes a second imminent manure disposal crisis!...... 108
V. Averting another regulatory crisis: the role of agri-environmental regulatory science!...... 117
VI. Conclusion!...... 141 Chapter 6. AGRI-ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNO-FIXES!148
I. Introduction!...... 148
II. Environmental Nutrition!...... 152
III. Adding Microbial Phytase to Feed!...... 161
v IV. Enviropig™!...... 175
A. Introduction!...... 175
B. Technical Background on the Enviropig™!...... 179
C. The Alleged Benefits of the Enviropig™!...... 184
1. Itʼs simple. 184
2. Feed friendly 186
3. Regulatory friendly 186
4. Environmentally friendly 191
D. Will the industry adopt the Enviropig™?!...... 206
V. Conclusion!...... 215 Chapter 7. CONCLUSION!...... 218 Appendix: Interview Guides!...... 224 REFERENCES!...... 227
vi LIST OF TABLES
Table 5-1: Maximum legally acceptable manure application rate with each version of the agronomic approach...... 119
Table 5-2: Maximum legally acceptable manure application rates with environmental threshold of 200 ppm Mehlich-3 P...... 120
Table 5-3: PA P Index (Version 1) and maximum legally acceptable manure application rate...126
Table 5-4: PA P Index (Version 2) management guidance...... 140
vii LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2-1: The circulation of capital...... 12
Figure 2-2: Nature and the circulation of capital...... 13
Figure 2-3: Conceptual Model...... 19
Figure 3-1: Case-specific conceptual model...... 39
Figure 4-1: An Integrated Agri-Food System with Cyclical P Flows...... 66
Figure 4-2: A Disintegrated Agri-Food System with Linear P flows...... 67
Figure 4-3: Pennsylvania’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed...... 77
Figure 4-4: Manure P minus P removal capacity of crops for Pennsylvania counties in 2002...77
Figure 4-5: Average levels of plant-available P in the soils of PA counties in 2002...... 78
Figure 5-1: Phosphorus runoff...... 103
Figure 5-2: The Critical Source Area Concept...... 121
Figure 6-1: Enviropigs™...... 176
Figure 6-2: How the Enviropig™ works...... 177
Figure 6-3: Raising Enviropigs™ Might Lead to Less Environmental Damage...... 181
Figure 6-4: How the Enviropigs™ were created...... 183
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the Penn State Graduate School, the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, the Penn State Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, the Rural Sociological Society, and the Animals & Society Institute for supporting my dissertation research. The Animals & Society Institute also deserves special thanks for giving me the opportunity to spend the summer of 2008 at Michigan State University as a Human-Animal Studies Fellow. I would like to thank the members of my committee and my colleagues at Ursinus College for their patience and encouragement. Most of all I would like to thank my partner, JB, for helping me make it through.
ix Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
Ever since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring ([1962] 2002), her pathbreaking critique of pesticides, industrial agriculture has been the target of ecological scrutiny in the
United States. Rural sociologist Fred Buttel referred to this major historical shift as “the environmentalization of agriculture” (Buttel 1995:2; see also 2003b; 1995; 1992). In response to this increased public concern, certain sectors of agriculture have attracted the attention of environmental regulators (Buttel 2003b; 1995; Henke 2008:149). If stringently written and adequately enforced, environmental regulations can create such high compliance costs that they undermine the profitability of a regulated industry, or of particular regions as locations for it.
Focusing on the industrial livestock and poultry sectors, this thesis examines how agri- environmental technoscience affects compliance costs.
The study builds on previous research in the sociology of agricultural technoscience, which emerged in the 1970s as part of the sociology of agriculture. A literature review published in 1990 referred to this body of work as the sociology of agricultural science (Buttel, Larson, and
Gillespie 1990:135-145), but a more recent review used the term technoscience (Goodman
2003), reflecting the influence of the field of science and technology studies, and the work of
Bruno Latour (1987:174-175) and Donna Haraway (1997:50) in particular. As Haraway
(1997:50) explained, the term technoscience “mimes the implosion of science and technology into each other in the past two hundred years around the world.” It has become the preferred term among sociologists because it helps us avoid “making an arbitrary distinction” between science and technology (Kleinman 2005:9).
1 Sociologists working on agricultural technoscience have grappled with several key intellectual problems, four of which are relevant to this study. Much of this research has focused on the research agenda of the public agricultural research system, which includes the state land- grant universities, the state agricultural experiment stations, the state cooperative extension offices, and the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (USDA-
ARS) (Buttel and Busch 1988). The first stream of research, based on the pioneering work of
Lawrence Busch and William Lacy (1983), examines the internal and external social forces influencing land-grant research (for reviews, see Buttel et al. 1990:135-139; Goldberger 2001). A good example is the literature on university-industry relations (see, e.g., Glenna et al. 2007;
Kleinman 2003; Rudy et al. 2007). The second stream of research examines the relationship among capitalism, technoscience, and nature. As explained in the next chapter, these studies suggest that agricultural technoscience has helped overcome natural obstacles to the penetration of particular sectors of agriculture by capitalist social relations (see, e.g., Goodman, Sorj, and
Wilkinson 1987; Kloppenburg [1988] 2004). Building on political sociology, particularly theories of the capitalist state, the third stream of research suggests that in capitalist societies public agricultural research is a form of state intervention that helps balance the state’s contradictory goals of facilitating capital accumulation and maintaining legitimacy (Kloppenburg and Buttel 1987). Finally, Lawrence Busch and his colleagues have examined “the role that science plays in the formulation, maintenance, and enforcement of food and agricultural standards,” which include environmental regulations (Busch 2005:6).
A fair amount of research has already been done on the topic of agri-environmental technoscience. Sociologists have tracked the emergence of sustainable agriculture as an
2 important issue on the public agricultural research agenda (see, e.g., Buttel 1993; Goldberger
2001; Goldberger and Buttel 2001). Much of this work has been quite critical. For example, Fred
Buttel suggested that the public agricultural research system had managed to co-opt the discourse of sustainability without fundamentally altering its research agenda (Buttel 1993; Buttel and
Gillespie 1988; see also Harp and Sachs 1992). This agenda was unbalanced, Buttel argued.
Much more research was being done to develop techno-fixes for ecological problems that were inherent in the industrial agri-food system than was being done to help lay the foundation for more ecologically sustainable and socially just alternatives (Buttel 2006; 2003a).
The techno-fix critique has been a key theme in the literature (see, e.g., Buttel 2006;
Glenna 1999; Hall 1998; Kloppenburg and Burrows 2001; Marsden 2008; Scrinis and Lyons
2010; Ward et al. 1998; Wolf and Buttel 1996; Wolf and Wood 1997; Worster 1993:71-83). A good example is Steve Wolf’s work on precision farming, which he and Spencer Wood suggested was primarily about “legitimat[ing] chemically-based agriculture in an era of increasing environmental concern” (Wolf and Wood 1997:186; see also Wolf and Buttel 1996; cf. Glenna
1999; Hall 1998). According to Buttel (2006), agri-environmental techno-fixes, and the public and private agricultural research institutions that develop them, tend to do more ecological harm than good because they help sustain ecologically unsustainable forms of agriculture. The main theme that emerges from this literature is that agri-environmental technoscience is often more about solving the political problem of environmentalism than about solving environmental problems as threats to human beings and other living things (cf. Henke 2008:149).
Although a good deal has already been written about agri-environmental technoscience, little has been written about its relationship to environmental regulation. We know little about
3 whether (and if so to what extent) regulatory pressure is shaping public and private agricultural research agendas, or about what role, if any, the public agricultural research system plays in the regulatory system. A review of the literature found only two studies that touch on these issues: anthropologist Laura DeLind’s (1995) research on Michigan’s right-to-farm law and sociologist
Christopher Henke’s (2008) work on the relationship among cooperative extension, agribusiness, and environmental regulators in California. Both studies imply that, whatever its effectiveness at solving environmental problems, agri-environmental technoscience is effective at helping certain sectors of agriculture solve their regulatory problems.
This thesis takes a closer look at the relatively neglected relationship between agri- environmental technoscience and the environmental regulations governing certain sectors of agriculture. The study makes several theoretical contributions to the literature on agricultural technoscience. Putting an ecological spin on the natural obstacles literature, I argue that agri- environmental technoscience––specifically regulatory science and techno-fixes––helps overcome regulatory obstacles to capital accumulation. And by examining the relationship among capitalism, technoscience, and nature in an era of heightened environmental concern, I am able to demonstrate that regulatory pressure is catalyzing new developments in the capitalist production of nature.
The remainder of the thesis is organized as follows. Chapter two articulates my theoretical framework, and chapter three describes my methods. Empirically, I studied a particular regulatory system: the phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations that attempt to reduce phosphorus runoff from livestock and poultry operations. I examined the scientific foundation for the regulations, along with three techno-fixes that have been developed to reduce
4 phosphorus runoff. Chapter four provides essential background on the ecological problem of phosphorus runoff and explains how the threat of stringent regulations turned this ecological problem into a regulatory problem for the industrial livestock and poultry sectors and for regions hoping to attract or retain them. Chapter five examines the role of public agricultural researchers in the development of Pennsylvania’s regulations. Chapter six examines the three techno-fixes, including, most notably, the Enviropig™, the first animal ever genetically engineered to be more
“environmentally friendly.” In these two main empirical chapters, I find that agri-environmental regulatory science and techno-fixes help keep compliance costs in check. In the conclusion I discuss the theoretical contributions of the thesis, suggest ideas for future research, and make some policy recommendations.
5 Chapter 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Rural sociologists have examined the role of agricultural technoscience in overcoming
“Natural Obstacles to Agrarian Capitalism” (Mann 1990:28-46; see also Goodman et al. 1987;
Kloppenburg [1988] 2004; Mann and Dickinson 1978). But given its origins in “agrarian question problematics,” David Goodman (2003:220) explained, this literature tended to neglect environmental issues. One of the goals of this chapter is to update the literature so that it can be used to help make sense of these issues. Beyond its influence within rural sociology, the natural obstacles literature made a major contribution to interdisciplinary debates about the relationship among capitalism, technoscience, and nature (Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman 2001; Castree
2001; Castree and Braun 2006; 1998). Along with contributing to the sociological literature, the second goal of the chapter, and of the thesis as a whole, is to contribute to this broader, interdisciplinary debate.
I. Overcoming natural obstacles to capitalist agriculture
In a pioneering article, Susan Mann and James Dickinson argued that there are natural obstacles “to the development of a capitalist agriculture,” or, more precisely, to the “capitalist penetration of certain spheres of agriculture” (Mann and Dickinson 1978:466, 473, italics added; see also Mann 1990:3, 28-46). This argument raises two questions: What did they mean by nature? And what is nature an obstacle to? Because different sectors of agriculture rely upon different parts of nature, one’s answers to these questions will depend upon which sector one is examining. Nevertheless, the existing literature enables us to make a few general observations.
6 Mann and Dickinson (1978) dealt mainly with biological (or organismal) obstacles.
Agriculture is a biologically based industry in which microbes, plants, livestock, poultry, and other nonhuman organisms do much of the work it takes to produce food (Benton 1989; Boyd et al. 2001). Mann and Dickinson suggested that certain aspects of the biology of these organisms can become obstacles, most notably “biological time . . .” (Prudham 2003:638, citations omitted, italics in original). Building on Marx’s Capital, they divided production time into two intervals: labor time and biological time (Mann 1990:33-34; Mann and Dickinson 1978). Labor time is production time during which human labor is engaged in production (e.g., when seeds are being planted), and biological time is production time during which nonhuman organisms are producing (e.g., when seeds are growing into mature plants). Labor time and biological time do not necessarily overlap. In fact, in some sectors, Mann and Dickinson explained, biological time exceeds labor time, resulting in long stretches of production time during which the nonhumans are “working” but the humans are not.
As for the second question, it is important to understand that Mann and Dickinson (1978) were grappling with the agrarian question (Boyd et al. 2001; Goodman 2003). David Goodman recently offered a useful summary of what this intellectual problem was all about:
Agrarian question problematics refers to the framing of political economic analyses whose overriding purpose is to determine the path, or trajectory, of rural social relations and structural change in capitalist societies. That is, more specifically, would agriculture replicate the capitalist-proletarian class structure of manufacturing industry or, alternatively, provide opportunities for the reproduction of peasant family labor-based farms? (Goodman 2003:236 n.1).
Mann and Dickinson (1978) sought to explain how non-wage forms of agricultural labor, such as the so-called family farm, are able to persist even in advanced industrial societies like the United
States.
7 Their thesis was that, in certain sectors of agriculture, there are “natural obstacles to the use of wage labor” (Mann 1990:3). More specifically, they argued, biological time is an obstacle to the use of wage labor in certain sectors of agriculture. Their argument was grounded in Marx’s labor theory of value. According to Marx, only humans labor, and only this labor, not the “work” done by nonhumans, creates value.1 Any production time during which nonhumans are producing but humans are idle “create[s] neither value nor surplus value” (Mann and Dickinson
1978:472). In some sectors, the preponderance of biological time is so great that it makes the use of wage labor unattractive to capital (Mann and Dickinson 1978:473). This is what Mann and
Dickinson meant by a biological obstacle to the use of wage labor.
Jack Kloppenburg ([1988] 2004) examined a different kind of biological obstacle in his now classic book, First the Seed. As he explained, the ability of the seed to reproduce itself had long served as a “biological barrier to its commodification” (Kloppenburg 2004:11, 37, 280).
Because farmers could save seeds and replant them, instead of having to buy a new batch, there was little incentive for companies to get into the seed business. Whereas Mann and Dickinson focused on biological obstacles to the use of wage labor, Kloppenburg focused on biological obstacles to the commodification of the means of agricultural production––or what David
Goodman and his colleagues called “appropriationism,” that is, the “discontinuous but persistent undermining of discrete elements of the agricultural production process, their transformation into industrial activities, and their re-incorporation into agriculture as inputs . . .” (Goodman et al.
1987:2, italics omitted). What both studies had in common, however, was the idea that certain
1 Marx “presuppose[d] labour in a form in which it [was] an exclusively human characteristic” (Marx 1990:284-284). Several scholars have questioned this premise, asking whether it might make sense to say that livestock and poultry labor, too (see, e.g., Haraway 2008:46, 73; Hribal 2003; Ingold 1983; Noske 1997:17; Russell 2004:9-10; Torres 2007:Ch.2). By saying that nonhumans create no value, Marx did not mean they create no wealth (on this distinction, see Foster and Clark 2009).
8 sectors of agricultural production are biologically “recalcitrant,” that they confront capitalism with a set of biological obstacles, barriers, or constraints that block, slow, or at least shape “the penetration of agriculture by capital” (Kloppenburg 2004:10).
Such obstacles are not necessarily insurmountable. As geographer Noel Castree
(2005:161) explained, “firms operating in a capitalist economy will seek to overcome the
‘barriers to accumulation’ that are thrown up by the non-human world.” One way of doing so, he wrote, is by enrolling technoscience in the project of “‘making nature to order’” (Castree
2005:161). (Re)making nature to overcome natural obstacles to capital accumulation is an example of what fellow geographer Neil Smith has called the capitalist production of nature
(Castree 2005:161; see also 2001; 2000; 1995; Smith 2008:Ch.2; 2006; 1998; 1996). Smith’s idea highlights how “nature is increasingly made (or, more accurately, remade), not found
[,]. . .‘socially produced’ by industry and science” (Prudham 2003:637).
Agricultural technoscience has remade nature to eliminate natural obstacles to the penetration of certain sectors of agriculture by capitalist social relations (Berlan and Lewontin
1986; Castree 2005:161; 2001; Boyd et al. 2001; Goodman 2003; Goodman et al. 1987:188-189;
Goodman and Redclift 1991:167, 169, 197, 250; Kloppenburg 2004:9-11, 35, 281; Lewontin
2000; Lewontin and Berlan 1986; Mann 1990:41-42, 139; Mann and Dickinson 1978; Page
2000). By redesigning nonhuman organisms, agricultural biotechnology, in particular, has helped capital overcome biological obstacles (Goodman 2003). For example, as Kloppenburg and others have explained, research on hybridization helped overcome the biological obstacle to the commodification of seeds, at least for certain crops (Berlan and Lewontin 1986; Castree 2001;
Kloppenburg 2004:93; Mascarenhas and Busch 2006; cf. Bugos 1992). This led Kloppenburg to
9 conclude that “agricultural research can . . . be seen as an important means of eliminating the barriers to the penetration of agriculture by capital” (Kloppenburg 2004:10, 35, 281; see also
Lewontin and Berlan 1986). Yet he was also careful to qualify his argument. As he wrote,
to view the public research institutions as mere automatons blindly advancing the interests of capital is both to misread history and to fail to assess the contemporary political possibilities for enhancing the degree of public control over important and productive organs of the state apparatus. Capital has in fact had to struggle to move public research efforts in desired directions. (Kloppenburg 2004:39).
The notion of making nature to order exaggerates the power of technoscience, which has yet to reduce nature to mere putty in capital’s hands (Benton 1992; 1989; Goodman 2003;
Whatmore 2002:120-145). We should reject “the idea that technology has the prospect of limitless pushing-back of natural barriers,” Ted Benton (1992:67) wrote. Consider genetic engineering. As Benton (1989:68) explained, “the newer biological technologies have been
‘sold’ within a voluntaristic Promethean discourse which has invariably occluded or rendered marginal the limits, constraints and unintended consequences of their deployment in agricultural systems.” The extent to which organisms can be (re)designed is limited, Benton explained:
[Genetic engineering] makes it possible to produce new types of organism, more rapidly, with greater flexibility, and with a wider horizon of possibility than was the case with, for example, selective breeding. But, like any other technology, it also has limits to its scope . . . The popular notion of a new power to generate imagined organisms at will is a fantasy, albeit one sustained by the misleading Neo-Darwinian conception of an organism as a contingent ‘bundle’ of atomic ‘characters’. (Benton 1992:66-67, italics in original).
Indeed, even an organism that has been so thoroughly modified by technology that it essentially a cyborg is still a living thing, and the need to keep organisms alive, healthy, and productive confronts biologically based industries with constraints that other industries need not confront
10 (Benton 1992; 1989; Boyd et al. 2001).2 Give the necessarily incomplete understanding of what biotechnological interventions are likely to do, the potential for unintended consequences is unavoidable, Benton explained. Furthermore, efforts to use biotechnology to overcome organismal obstacles to capital accumulation must also confront the possibility of public controversy, which can become an obstacle itself (Prudham 2003).
Although the natural obstacles literature has highlighted important aspects of the relationship among capitalism, technoscience, and nature, it has two significant shortcomings.
First, by focusing on obstacles to the development of capitalist agriculture, it pays too little attention to how natural obstacles might continue to operate even in those sectors, such as industrial livestock and poultry production, that have already become capitalist.3 Second, the literature ignores obstacles that arise from agriculture’s impacts on the environment. Little attention has been paid to what Buttel described as ecological and socioecological obstacles
(Buttel 1997; 1995), and even less thought has been given to what role agricultural technoscience might play in attempting to overcome such obstacles. In the rest of this chapter I attempt to fill these theoretical gaps in the literature.
2 The distinction between biologically and non-biologically based industries comes from William Boyd and his colleagues (Boyd et al. 2001). By biology they meant nonhuman organisms. Of course, all industries that rely upon human laborers are biologically based because human beings are living organisms, too, a biological fact with which industries must deal (Henderson 1998). But in the kinds of biologically based industries that Boyd and his colleagues had in mind––agriculture, aquaculture, etc.––biological processes such as digestion and reproduction are at the center of the production process in a way that they are not in other industries.
3 See Lewontin (2000) for a discussion of the proletarianization of contract swine and poultry growers. For a similar assessment of the natural obstacles literature, see Boyd et al. (2001).
11 II. Socioecological obstacles
Figure 2-1: The circulation of capital (Source: adapted from Castree 2001; Harvey 2010:316).
Figure 2-1 illustrates the circulation of capital. Using money (M), the capitalist buys two types of commodities (C)––human labor power (LP) and means of production (MP)––which are combined in a labor process (P) to produce a third commodity (C ́) for sale. If things go as planned, this third commodity is sold for the original money (M) advanced plus a profit (also known as surplus value or Δ). Part of the profit is invested in another round of production, either in the same commodity chain or in another, and the process begins again (Castree 2001; Harvey
2010:316).
Left unchecked, capital will circulate forever. As David Harvey explains, quoting Marx,
capitalism is always about growth. There can be no such thing as a capitalist social order that is not about growth and accumulation on a progressively increasing scale. “Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production.” (Harvey 2010:259).
The flow of capital can, however, encounter various barriers, blockages, or obstacles that threaten to stop it in its tracks, resulting in an accumulation crisis. Harvey explains:
Impelled onward by the coercive laws of competition, capitalists appear . . . to be forced to use part of the surplus-value to create even more surplus value. Accumulation for accumulation’s sake and production for production’s sake become the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, producing compound rates of growth forever, unless capital encounters limits or insurmountable barriers. When this happens, capital encounters a crisis of accumulation (simply defined as lack of growth) . . . The fact that capitalism has
12 survived to this day suggests that the fluidity and flexibility of capital accumulation . . . have somehow allowed limits to be overcome and barriers to be circumvented.
Close inspection of the flow of capital allows us to identify some potential points of blockage that can be the source of serious disruptions and crises. (Harvey 2010:316, italics added).
Although Harvey identifies several types of potential barriers (Harvey 2010:315-343), we will focus on one in particular, which he calls “barriers in nature” (Harvey 2010:322).
Like all modes of production, capitalism depends upon nature. As James O’Connor put it, the system uses ecosystems and other parts of nature as natural “conditions of capitalist production” (O’Connor 1998:164-165). More specifically, parts of nature are used as “sources of raw materials, sinks to absorb wastes, and [sites] to accommodate the production and circulation of commodities” (Prudham 2005:7). To highlight capitalism’s dependence upon nature, we need to add the natural conditions of production (NCP) to our illustration of the circulation of capital
(Figure 2-2). The capitalist does not necessarily buy these conditions or access to them; often they are treated as gifts (Benton 1996:191-192).
Figure 2-2: Nature and the circulation of capital.
Like labor power and the means of production, the natural conditions of production are a potential blockage point in the flow of capital. The accumulation of capital requires that industries be able to secure access to them at low cost. As O’Connor explained,
serious bottlenecks in the supply of . . . natural resources . . . threaten the viability of individual capital units—and even of entire sectoral or national capital programs. If generalized, these bottlenecks would thus threaten the sustainability of capitalism by
13 driving up costs and impairing the flexibility of capital. “Limits to growth” thus do not appear, in the first instance, as absolute shortages of . . . raw materials, clean water and air, . . . and the like, but as high-cost . . . resources . . . (O’Connor 1998:243).
If the cost of securing access to the natural conditions of capitalist production cannot be kept in check, O’Connor argued, a special type of economic crisis can occur, which environmental sociologist John Bellamy Foster has described as an “ecologically induced economic crisis” (Foster 2009:208). In his well-known second contradiction of capitalism thesis, O’Connor argued that capitalism has an inherent tendency to generate this kind of crisis (O’Connor
1998:Ch.8).
Ecologically induced economic crises can occur in two general ways, O’Connor
(1998:242) explained, the one direct, the other indirect (see also Castree 2007). In the direct route, capitalism essentially digs its own grave by undermining its own ecological conditions of production (Dickens 2001). A good example would be the depletion of a low-cost source of an essential raw material. But these kinds of “‘natural barriers’” should be understood as
“capitalistically produced barriers,” these “scarcities in nature” as “capitalist scarcit
[ies]” (Harvey 2010:321, 322; O’Connor 1998:159, 160), for they are caused, at least in part, by the system’s relentless logic of accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake (Harvey 1996:147; Perelman 1979; Smith 2008:84). Driven by the logic of
“perpetual accumulation,” the system tends to deplete its own sources and flood its own sinks, creating scarcity in these natural conditions of capitalist production, which, in turn, can become an obstacle to capital accumulation (Harvey 2010:322; O’Connor 1998:173 n.8).
In the indirect route, efforts to protect the environment or conserve natural resources result in restrictions on access to ecosystems and other parts of nature, and these restrictions
14 create the scarcity. As O’Connor (1998:149) explained, environmental laws “regulate capital’s access to external nature” (O’Connor 1998:149). By placing restrictions on the use of nature as a source, a site, and a sink, these laws create a certain degree of what we might call legally induced scarcity in the natural conditions of production required be the regulated industries. For example, the environmental laws enacted in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s “sought to limit environmental despoliation at the hands of capital, and in the process—sometimes deliberately, sometimes not—created a certain scarcity of what can be called ‘allowable natural destruction’” (Smith 2006:17). With this kind of legally induced scarcity, the “scarcity is socially produced” (Harvey 1996:147; see also 1974). What become scarce are actual biophysical conditions, but these conditions are not inherently scarce. Rather, the scarcity is the result of legal restrictions placed on the use of them. Legally induced scarcity should be thought of as a
“socioecological” obstacle rather than one that is purely ecological (Buttel 1997:348). And when this kind of scarcity leads to an accumulation crisis, we should call it a “[socio]ecologically induced economic crisis” (Foster 2009:208).
I acknowledge that the phrase socioecological has the potential to create confusion. After all, both the direct and the indirect routes to crisis lead to obstacles that are socially constructed in the sense of emerging from capitalist-induced ecological changes.4 What I am trying to capture with this distinction is the fact that some capitalist-induced ecological changes automatically become obstacles to capital accumulation, whereas others become obstacles only if they are politicized in certain ways (see also Castree 2007). This is the essence of O’Connor’s
4 Scarcity could result from ecological changes that are not caused by capitalism. In other words, capitalism must also deal with (socio)ecological obstacles that are not self-imposed.
15 distinction between the direct and indirect routes to the emergence of barriers or obstacles in nature.
It is important to acknowledge that O’Connor’s second contradiction thesis has been challenged. For example, Foster has questioned whether ecologically or socioecologically induced economic crises are likely to topple the capitalist system as a whole (Foster 2009:Ch.
10). For him, the real danger of the system is that it can undermine the ecological conditions of life for many human beings and other living things without undermining its own ecological conditions. Nevertheless, Foster (2009:209) did acknowledge the possibility of “localized crises,” the kind O’Connor (1998:128) described as affecting “certain industries, in certain places, at certain times. . .”
Geographer Gavin Bridge’s (2000) case study of copper mining in the U.S. southwest illustrates this kind of localized crisis. It also highlights the institutional mechanisms by which such crises can be averted––temporarily at least (Bridge 2000). Bridge’s study reminds us that, like biological obstacles to the development of capitalist agriculture, ecological and socioecological obstacles to the profitability of particular industries, or of particular regions as locations for those industries, are not necessarily insurmountable.
Bridge’s study can be read as a pathbreaking contribution to the study of Governing
Environmental Flows (Spaargaren, Mol, and Buttel 2006). But unlike most of this literature, which builds on ecological modernization theory, Bridge (2000) drew on regulation theory, an institutional political economy approach (see also Bridge and McManus 2000). As he explained,
“the ‘metabolism’ of production—the flows of raw materials, energy, and wastes central to the production of commodities from the natural environment—can contribute to an accumulation
16 crisis in particular places and at particular moments” (Bridge 2000:240). These flows are
“‘ecological contradictions,’” Bridge argued, but instead of being inherent in the capitalist system as a whole, they are inherent in the way particular industries are organized in particular regions (Bridge 2000:237). Consider the disposal of mining wastes. “Wastes are a contradiction for mining firms,” Bridge argued, “since they are an essential part of production, yet disposing of wastes can increase the costs of production—through increased haulage costs, regulatory requirements to treat and manage wastes, and as a result of organized opposition to many low- cost waste disposal options—to the extent that they potentially undermine profitability” (Bridge
2000:248). The idea that the production of wastes is a systemic contradiction because environmentalists might object to how they are handled seems to me to be a bit of a stretch. After all, couldn’t environmentalists object to almost any aspect of the production process? Does that make the entire process one giant ecological contradiction? Instead of following Bridge (2000) by treating the potential for crisis as a contradiction, I will focus on the emergence of socioecological obstacles to capital accumulation––and legally induced scarcity in particular.
That said, Bridge’s application of regulation theory is quite useful. As he explained, regulation theory is not just about revealing ecological contradictions, understood, in his view, as tendencies toward ecologically or socioecologically induced economic crises; it is also about how these crisis tendencies are managed in such a way as to avert full-blown crises (Bridge
2000; Bridge and McManus 2000). Focusing on his particular case, Bridge suggested that environmental regulations had helped manage the waste contradiction. As he put it, “the state strove to resolve this contradiction by introducing regulations that facilitated the continued use of the natural environment as a disposal option but under a set of specific conditions designed to
17 reduce the most acute impacts.” In other words, the state created what Castree (2008:145) described as a “regulatory fix” for the industry’s waste disposal problem, a fix which promised to help the regulated industry maintain access to low-cost waste sinks (see also Bridge and
McManus 2000:21). Yet this fix failed “to sufficiently corral protest,” Bridge (2000:249) explained. “The continuing political potency of the ‘waste volume’ contradiction—and the failure of ‘real regulation’ to contain it—is expressed each year in popular protests and more narrowly focused legal challenges to mineral development which take place throughout the western US” (Bridge 2000:249). So although regulating waste disposal may have averted a crisis temporarily, the underlying contradiction, and the potential for another crisis to emerge in the future, remained––a situation Bridge (2000:253) described as the “constancy of contradiction.”
Bridge’s analysis focuses our attention on the institutions that are involved in attempting to overcome (socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation. Bridge did not stress the relationship between environmental technoscience and environmental regulation. He did not describe the scientific foundation of the waste disposal regulations, and although he noted that techno-fixes can help manage ecological contradictions and contain their crisis tendencies, this was not the focus of his article (Bridge 2000:253). Building on Bridge’s work, my conceptual model highlights the relationship between environmental regulations, on the one hand, and regulatory science and techno-fixes on the other (see Figure 2-3).
18 Figure 2-3: Conceptual Model
III. The role of environmental technoscience in overcoming (socio) ecological obstacles to capital accumulation.
By creating scarcity in the natural conditions of production required by the regulated industry, environmental regulations can undermine the profitability of the industry or of certain regions as locations for it. High compliance costs, in particular, are what can become an obstacle to profitability. As with organismal obstacles to the development of capitalist agriculture, however, these regulatory obstacles are not necessarily insurmountable. What we need to understand, therefore, is how they might be overcome. I suggest that two types of environmental technoscience––regulatory science and techno-fixes––can help keep compliance costs in check.
!A. Regulatory Science Regulatory science, a concept derived from the field of science and technology studies, refers to research done for the purpose of laying the scientific foundation for regulations and other policies (Hunt and Shackley 1999; Irwin et al. 1997; Jasanoff 1992; 1990:76-79; 1995;
19 1989; 1987). By using this label to describe certain research, I intend to highlight the purpose for which it was done. I do not mean to imply anything about its validity (cf. Jasanoff 1987:227 n.
20).
Closure is especially important in regulatory world. As Sheila Jasanoff (1992:214) explained, “ultimately it is . . . a fact or claim that provides the hook for regulatory action” Given the high economic stakes, regulatory politics can be quite contentious, and often the debate is about the scientific basis for regulatory action. For the regulatory agency, Jasanoff (1992:214) explained, the challenge is to find a way to “close off debate to the extent necessary for stating an authoritative claim . . .” (question mark and footnote omitted). Seeking to bring debate to a close, regulatory agencies often rely upon outside scientists for advice, in hopes that the perceived objectivity of these scientists will imbue the regulations with legitimacy, even if the advice pertains to issues that are not purely scientific but mix science with policy (Jasanoff 1992).
Scientific advisors are policymakers. According to Jasanoff (1990:230), “[s]tudies of scientific advising leave in tatters the notion that it is possible, in practice, to restrict the advisory process to technical issues . . .” Regulatory agencies in the U.S. are often described as the fourth branch of government because of their power to make policy. For similar reasons, the scientists who advise these agencies arguably occupy the fifth branch (Jasanoff 1990:3).
To be effective, scientific advisors must be seen as neutral. Insofar as they are perceived to be partial to particular interests, their ability to imbue regulations with scientific legitimacy can be called into question (Jasanoff 1995; 1990:81). As Jasanoff (1990:81) explained, “[t]he most obvious source of bias in the regulatory environment . . . arises from the fact that expert
20 referees may either be formally affiliated with particular interest groups or otherwise have a stake in the outcome of the regulatory process.”
With agriculture facing increased regulatory pressure in recent decades, we have seen the emergence of a new area of research on the public agricultural research agenda: agri- environmental regulatory science. In his analysis of California Cooperative Extension, Henke
(2008:151) suggested that the farm advisors he studied were intermediaries between regulators and the regulated industry but were “not an official part of the regulatory state . . .” Yet by offering advise to regulators, some public agricultural researchers arguably have become part of the unofficial fifth branch of government. In this capacity, they help lay the scientific foundation for the environmental regulations governing agriculture. Given the close relationship between these scientists and the regulated industry, we need to be alert to the possibility of bias. We need to examine how they strike the balance between environmental protection and the profitability of the regulated industry.
Regulatory science has the potential to help keep compliance costs in check. As explained above, environmental regulations create legally induced scarcity in the natural conditions of production, and this scarcity can result in high compliance costs. With the help of scientists, however, regulations can be designed in such a way as to minimize this scarcity. In the case of waste disposal regulations, my focus here, regulatory science is involved in defining the legally exploitable loading capacity of waste sinks. Maximizing this capacity helps keep compliance costs in check.
21 Consider, for example, historian Arn Keeling’s (2005) work on the idea of assimilative capacity,5 a kind of socionatural resource created by efforts to legitimize waste disposal while reducing its impacts on the environments that are used as sinks (on the idea of socionatural resources, see Harvey 1996:147; Watts 2004b). This idea suggests that aquatic ecosystems can assimilate a certain amount of pollution before becoming polluted––a concept that is of obvious use to industries looking for low-cost waste sinks (Keeling 2005). According to Keeling
(2005:59), “assimilative capacity came to be regarded as a resource—like forests or fisheries— that could be quantitatively measured and rationally exploited.” This concept is simultaneously restrictive and permissive. It allows ecosystems and other parts of the environment to be used as waste sinks, but not as bottomless sinks. Pollution control laws based on this concept restrict the amount of each regulated pollutant that may be discharged into the environment, creating, in the process, a scarce socionatural resource that we might call legally exploitable pollutant loading capacity.
As an official, legal matter, exploiting this capacity causes no environmental harm. To put it in sociologist Ulrich Beck’s (1992:64) memorable terms, discharging the legally acceptable level of pollutants into an ecosystem “is, by social definition, ‘harmless’––no matter how harmful it may be.” Whether a particular pollution control law provides adequate environmental protection is, of course, debatable, and it is always possible to question the acceptability of the legally acceptable levels (Beck 1992:64). More fundamentally, it is possible to reject the whole notion that an ecosystem ought to be used as a waste sink, or that its alleged capacity to assimilate pollutants without becoming polluted ought to be fully exploited right up to its limits.
5 See also the interesting work on terrestrial carbon sinks by Eva Lövbrand (2007), along with Nathan Sayre’s work on the idea of carrying capacity in range management (Sayre 2008).
22 As historians and other scholars have shown, throughout history there have been countless debates about these issues (see, e.g., Asdal 2008; Hays 1987:153-155; Hines 1976; Keeling
2005; Milazzo 2006:218-223; Tarr 1996:175).
By restricting the use of ecosystems as waste sinks, pollution control regulations create a certain degree of scarcity in waste loading capacity, a key natural condition of capitalist production. In theory, this scarcity can lead to compliance costs that are high enough to threaten the profitability of the regulated industry, or of regions as locations for it. But it is also possible that regulatory agencies, with the help of their scientific advisors, will design regulations in such a way as to minimize this scarcity. In any given case, we need to examine the social process by which waste loading capacity––and thus scarcity––is defined.
!B. Techno-fixes Like regulatory science, techno-fixes have the potential to help keep regulatory compliance costs in check. According to John Bellamy Foster, environmental technology plays a crucial role in sustaining the capitalist system. As he put it, “ecological problems are treated even by many
‘green’ thinkers as mere barriers to be surmounted, usually by technological means, with the primary object of sustaining capital accumulation” (Foster 2007:53; see also 2009:19-22). Brett
Clark and Richard York made a similar point, arguing that, in a capitalist system, environmental technology tends to be used to “attempt to overcome barriers for the sake of accumulation, regardless of the ecological implications” (Clark and York 2008:19). From this perspective, techno-fixes are more about overcoming (socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation than they are about solving environmental problems––an argument that echoes the claims made by sociologists of agricultural technoscience.
23 Jack Kloppenburg’s work on agricultural biotechnology has been especially influential in developing a sociological perspective on whether environmental technoscience can solve agri- environmental problems. All too often, the debate about what role, if any, modern biotechnology should play in efforts to create an ecologically sustainable and socially just agri-food system tends to fixate on the technology itself, ignoring the issue of whether its full ecological potential can be realized in a capitalist system. As Kloppenburg explained in a new chapter in First the
Seed, “[e]cological and social sustainability will follow principally from the social arrangements we construct, not from the technologies we create” (Kloppenburg 2004:314). “To imagine otherwise,” he wrote, “is to succumb to a species of technological determinism” (Kloppenburg
2004:314). Rejecting “blanket condemnation” of agricultural biotechnology, Kloppenburg suggested that “biotechnology in general—and genetic engineering in particular—might be used in safe, socially progressive, and sustainable ways,” but only “if social circumstances allow them to be developed in a manner appropriate to those goals” (Kloppenburg 2004: 295, 314, italics in original). The problem, according to Kloppenburg, is “corporate biotechnology,” not biotechnology as such (Kloppenburg 2004:351, italics in original). In his view,
. . . to focus too much on the tools rather than on who is using the tools and for what the tools are being used is to misapprehend the problem. What is really needed is not so much the banning of one tool or the approval of another, but a revision of the way in which we develop tools and for what we imagine we are using them. (Kloppenburg 2004:352).
Of course, not all tools are neutral. Some technologies are “suited to a capitalist mode of production,” David Harvey explained, and are best thought of as “capitalist technologies” (Harvey 2010:218, 219). “If you take the technologies of a capitalist mode of production and try to construct socialism with them,” Harvey (2010:218) wrote, “[y]ou are likely
24 to get another version of capitalism . . .” Although Kloppenburg suggested that some applications of agricultural biotechnology might be useful in efforts to create an ecologically sustainable and socially just non-capitalist agri-food system, he also suggested that other applications are capitalist in Harvey’s sense. “[U]ntangling” these technologies from their capitalist “integument” might not be possible, he wrote (Kloppenburg 2004:352, 294). One possible example is the infamous Terminator Technology, the main purpose of which is to sterilize seeds to facilitate their commodification, a technology which apparently “lack[s] . . . any agronomic utility,” except, perhaps, its ability to help keep transgenes contained (Kloppenburg 2004:319, 320).
The idea that emerges from Kloppenburg’s analysis is that capitalism is one of the main social obstacles that prevent us from realizing the full agroecological potential of biotechnology.
Karl Marx wrote that “the entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profit[,] stands in contradiction to agriculture, which has to concern itself with the whole gamut of permanent conditions of life required by the chain of human generations” (Marx 1991:754 n.27). Subordinated to the logic of accumulation for accumulation’s sake, the tools of agricultural biotechnology are used to achieve short-term profits, not the long-term goal of building an ecologically sustainable and socially just agri-food system (Kloppenburg 2004:315). Under pressure to generate these short-term profits
(“accumulation now,” as Kloppenburg put it), biotechnology companies produce biotechnological fixes for a capitalist agri-food system that is in need of a radical social transformation (Kloppenburg 2004:315, italics in original, see also pp. 316, 318). “[I]ndustry tends to develop technical products which redress symptoms rather than solve underlying problems,” Kloppenburg and Beth Burrows wrote, and “[e]xisting systems of agricultural
25 production are left intact while the root causes of unsustainability are left untouched” (Kloppenburg and Burrows 2001:105). This is the kind of bandaid approach that
Buttel described as “Sustaining the Unsustainable” (Buttel 2006). The idea that both goals— short-term capital accumulation and long-term food security and ecological sustainability—can be achieved is precisely the notion that Marx rejected (see also Magdoff, Foster, and Buttel
2000:21). As Foster (2009:11-35) has argued, capitalism is at the root of our ecological problems, and these problems cannot be solved by technology alone. What is needed, Foster
(2009) argues, is revolutionary social change.
My focus here is on what we might call regulatory friendly technologies. In “The
Environment Industry: Profiting from Pollution,” Joshua Karliner (1994) suggested that one of the ways in which this industry was profiting was by producing technologies that helped other industries keep their costs of complying with environmental regulations in check (see also Pratt and Montgomery 1996). It makes sense to describe such technologies as regulatory friendly, as opposed to “environmentally friendly,” because it is not at all clear that the environmental regulations that are currently on the books are adequate to protect the environment. By keeping compliance costs in check, regulatory friendly technologies can help maintain the profitability of the regulated industry, regardless of the ecological consequences. Used in this way, these technologies can provide a techno-fix for an industry’s regulatory problems. Yet the phrase regulatory friendly is potentially misleading, for it suggests that solving regulatory problems is all these technologies can do. It is more accurate to say that the technologies can be used in regulatory friendly ways, and that in a capitalist system that is how they are likely to be used.
The production of these kinds of technologies is a good example of how “[c]apitalism, or
26 particular sectors of capital, find ways to make money on that which seems to pose an obstacle to it” (Henderson 2009:281, italics omitted; see also Boyd et al. 2001; Buttel 1997). Some firms profit by helping other firms overcome (socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation. This is part of what “green capitalism” is all about.
By focusing on techno-fixes for environmental regulatory problems, we arrive at a major difference between governing environmental flows in mining and governing agri-environmental flows, one that points to new developments in the capitalist production of nature. Bridge distinguished waste production in mining from waste production in manufacturing, noting that,
“unlike manufacturing––an additive or combinational process where the volume of many waste streams can be decreased through improvements to process efficiency––the production of waste in mining is integral to the process of segregating and concentrating valuable mineral ores” (Bridge 2000:243, footnote omitted). In this respect, agriculture is more like manufacturing than like mining, for in agriculture flows pass through living organisms, both human and nonhuman, whose biology can be manipulated, at least to some extent, as a way of reducing or otherwise controlling the flows. For example, in the livestock, poultry, and aquaculture sectors, flows pass through the bodies of the farmed animals, which become potential “sites of intervention” for governing these flows (Marvin and Medd 2006:144). By manipulating an animal’s diet––or, more radically, its body––the industry might be able to reduce the flow of regulated pollutants through its body, potentially reducing the demand for pollutant loading capacity. In other words, it might be possible to develop a “biotechnological fix” for an industry’s regulatory problems (Di Chiro 2004).
27 IV. The real subsumption of nature
To appreciate the broader theoretical significance of this kind of biotechnological fix, I turn to the emerging literature on the real subsumption of nature under capital (Boyd et al. 2001;
Burkett 1999:67; Prudham 2003; Smith 2006). This idea is based on Marx’s discussion of the real subsumption of labor under capital. Marx distinguished real subsumption from formal subsumption and explained how surplus value is extracted in each case (Marx 1990:1019-1038).
Understanding what Marx meant by the real subsumption of labor can help us understand what is meant by the real subsumption of nature.
With the formal subsumption of labor under capital, capital takes a pre-capitalist labor process as it finds it. As Marx explained,
the labour process becomes the instrument of the valorization process, the process of the self-valorization of capital––the manufacture of surplus-value. The labour process is subsumed under capital (it is its own process) and the capitalist intervenes in the process as its director and manager. For him it also represents the direct exploitation of the labour of others. It is this that I refer to as the formal subsumption of labour under capital. It is the general form of every capitalist process of production; at the same time, however, it can be found as a particular form alongside the specifically capitalist mode of production in its developed form, because although the latter entails the former, the converse does not necessarily obtain [i.e. the formal subsumption can be found in the absence of the specifically capitalist mode of production]. (Marx 1990:1019, italics and brackets in original).
Formal subsumption is thus the shift from pre-capitalist to capitalist social relations of production (Marx 1990:1020). A good example is “[w]hen a peasant who has always produced enough for his needs becomes a day labourer working for a farmer” (Marx 1990:1020). “A man who was formerly an independent peasant now finds himself a factor in a production process and dependent on the capitalist directing it, and his own livelihood depends on a contract which he as
28 commodity owner (viz. the owner of labour-power) has previously concluded with the capitalist as owner of money” (Marx 1990:1020). But just because one stops working for oneself and starts working for a capitalist does not necessarily mean that the nature of one’s work has changed. As
Marx explained, formal subsumption “does not in itself imply a fundamental modification in the real nature of the labour process, the actual process of production” (Marx 1990:1021). “On the contrary,” he wrote, “capital subsumes the labour process as it finds it, that is to say, it takes over an existing labour process, developed by different and more archaic modes of production” (Marx
1990:1021, italics in original removed, new italics added). “The work may become more intensive, its duration may be extended, it may become more continuous or orderly under the eye of the interested capitalist,” Marx explained, “but in themselves these changes do not affect the character of the actual labour process, the actual mode of working” (Marx 1990:1021). Unlike
“the development of a specifically capitalist mode of production (large-scale industry, etc.),” which “not only transforms the situations of the various agents of production, [but] also revolutionizes their actual mode of labour and the real nature of the labour process as a whole,” the formal subsumption of labor under capital entails “the takeover by capital of a mode of labour developed before the emergence of capitalist relations” (Marx 1990:1021, italics in original). “Technologically speaking,” Marx wrote, “the labour process goes on as before, with the proviso that it is now subordinated to capital” (Marx 1990:1026, italics in original). That capital takes over a pre-capitalist labor process has consequences for how surplus value can be extracted. With formal subsumption, Marx explained, “surplus-value can be created only by lengthening the working day, i.e., by increasing absolute surplus-value” (Marx 1990:1021, italics in original).
29 With the shift from formal to real subsumption, the labor process is transformed technologically, facilitating the extraction of relative surplus-value (Marx 1990:1023-1025). As
Marx explained,
[t]he general features of the formal subsumption remain, viz. the direct subordination of the labour process to capital, irrespective of the state of its technological development. But on this foundation there now arises a technologically and otherwise specific mode of production––capitalist production––which transforms the nature of the labour process and its actual conditions. Only when that happens to we witness the real subsumption of labour under capital. (Marx 1990:1034-1035, italics in original).
This shift is often described as one in which workers are reduced to mere appendages of machines. “Through the processes of mechanisation, labour fragmentation and capitalist control,” Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho (2004:82) wrote, “the factory system transforms the independent artisans and skilled craftspeople into appendages of the machines that they are paid to operate . . .” (see also Ketabgian 1997). Neil Smith captured this dynamic with the metaphor of workers as cogs in a machine:
Modern industry constitutes ‘a productive organism that is purely objective, in which the labourer becomes a mere appendage to an already existing material condition of production’. Capital accumulation here is increasingly accomplished in the form of relative surplus value, garnered through the intensification of production via technological innovation and other forms of labour control . . .
The formal subsumption of labour took place when workers entered a wage relationship with capital but still maintained some immediate, creative control over the daily labour process. The real subsumption of labour to capital occurred when workers became cogs in the machinery of modern industry, hence the reversed valence of power. Not only were they subsumed as a result of the direct wage relation; they were now subsumed within the multidimensional web of capitalist technology and social organization. (Smith 2006:27, 28, italics added).
According to Smith, the idea of real subsumption, of workers becoming caught in a technological web or becoming cogs in a machine, can help us understand not only “the fate of
30 labour at the hands of capital,” but also “the fate of nature” (Smith 2006:27). Just as in the formal subsumption of labor capital takes a preexisiting labor process as it finds it, so in the formal subsumption of nature capital takes nonhuman nature as it finds it (Boyd et al. 2001). And just as in the real subsumption of labor technology is deployed to increase the productivity of labor, so in the real subsumption of nature technology is deployed to increase the productivity of nonhuman nature. As William Boyd and his colleagues explained,
[u]nder the formal subsumption of nature, firms confront nature as an exogenous set of material properties and bio-/geophysical processes, but are unable to directly augment natural processes and use them as strategies for increasing productivity. In contrast, under the real subsumption of nature, limited to biologically based industries, firms are able to take hold of and transform natural production, and use this as a source of productivity increase. (Boyd et al. 2001:557).
The notion that organisms are the only nonhumans whose productivity can be increased is questionable; catalysts, for example, can increase the rate of chemical reactions. Nevertheless, increasing the biological productivity of nonhuman organisms is a good example of the real subsumption of nature under capital. Boyd and his colleagues described this process:
The key to understanding the distinction between formal and real subsumption of nature lies in the difference between biological and nonbiological systems and the unique capacity to manipulate biological productivity. The real subsumption of nature refers to systematic increases in or intensification of biological productivity (i.e., yield, turnover time, metabolism, photosynthetic efficiency)—a concept that obviously applies only to those biologically based sectors that operate according to a logic of cultivation. Moreover, although the concept applies to productivity increases based on the use of exogenous inputs such as growth hormones, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and improved environmental control, the primary vehicle driving the real subsumption of nature is the manipulation of the genetic program, both through traditional breeding programs and, more recently, through the application of new biotechnologies, such as recombinant DNA techniques. The desired result, of course, is higher yields, shorter turnover times, improved disease resistance, etc. Nature, in short, is (re)made to work harder, faster, and better. (Boyd et al. 2001:564, italics in original).
31 As described by Boyd and his colleagues, the real subsumption of nature is a technoscientific project in which nonhuman organisms, their environments, or both are manipulated with the goal of accelerating biological productivity. Although they mention other goals, such as improved disease resistance, their discussion tends to stress increased productivity.
This makes perfect sense given that they derived their idea from Marx, who was writing about the productivity of labor. But it is also, in my view, too narrow an understanding.
The profitability of biologically based industries depends upon the manipulation of nonhuman organisms and their environments for reasons other than increasing biological productivity. For example, today animal biotechnology is being used to address some of the public’s concerns about the impacts of factory farming on animal welfare and the environment, concerns which threaten to reduce profits (Twine forthcoming). In my view, the idea of real subsumption should apply to any manipulation of an organism or its environment that helps facilitate the accumulation of capital.
In their discussion of modern biotechnology, quoted above, Boyd and his colleagues refer to the process of (re)making nature––in this case organisms––to facilitate the accumulation of capital. As Neil Smith (2006) explained, capitalism produces nature both intentionally and unintentionally; GMOs are a good example of the former, global warming of the latter. Another way of broadening the idea of the real subsumption of nature beyond accelerating biological productivity is to see it as the intentional capitalist production of nature.
This is a technoscientific project that follows a “reconstitutive rationality,” a logic in which “the objects of nature are not merely used and exploited in their received form, but increasingly encountered as malleable and available for reconstruction from the ground
32 up . . .” (Scrinis and Lyons 2007:24, italics omitted; see also 2010). In other words, nature is not taken as given (formal subsumption), but is reconstructed (real subsumption) with the ultimate goal of facilitating the accumulation of capital. This reconstructive logic––which applies to both the organism (or other entity) and its environment (or surroundings)––captures the most fundamental aspect of the real subsumption of nature under capital. With the emergence of genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology, we are now living in an era when organisms and other parts of nature can, at least to some extent, be reconstructed. Writing about the possibility of making nonhuman animals to order, Mike Michael described this reconstructive project as “technoscientific bespoking” (Michael 2001:206). Yet as discussed above, one should not exaggerate the power of modern technoscience. After all, nature must be (re)constructed according to natural laws that cannot be suspended or rewritten (Soper 2009).
Some scholars have begun to examine the real subsumption of animal bodies under capital (Benton 1993:152-161; Boyd 2001; Castree 2003; Castree and Braun 2006; Clarke 2007;
Dickens 2003; Shukin 2009:69-70, 84; Vint 2009; Watts 2005a; 2005b; 2004a; 2000). Consider the industrial broiler chicken (Boyd 2001; Horowitz 2004; Watts 2005a; 2005b; 2004a; 2000). As one poultry scientist put it in the late 1950s, this animal’s body had been “‘made to order to meet the needs of the meat industry’” (quoted in Boyd 2001:658). A cyborg, Donna Haraway
(1997:51) explained, is “a cybernetic organism, a fusion of the organic and the technical forged in particular, historical, cultural practices.” According to Michael Watts, the industrial broiler is a cyborg:
In order to maximize the production of breast meat and to facilitate mechanized slaughter and cutting, radical changes in the skeletal form of the chicken have been required. The broiler is a sort of Frankenstinian product of biotechnical mechanization (the nutrition-feed-health-confinement complex), consumer preference and the rigours of
33 competitive capitalism. The chicken is, in short, a cyborg: part machine, part bird, part culture, part nature, but in an inseparable, one might say organic sense” (Watts 2005b: 155-156, italics omitted).
Describing the industrial broiler chicken as a cyborg highlights the fact that the technological dimension of real subsumption goes much deeper with farmed animals than with human workers.
As Watts put it,
[w]hat is striking about the chicken—indeed the meat industry more generally—is the extent to which the ‘working body’ [of the chicken] has not simply been ‘Taylorised’ in some way, but actually constructed physically to meet the needs of the industrial labour process. The poultry industry in this sense combines the worst of productive consumption of the human body (the appalling working conditions and health deficits associated with working the line) with the most horrifying forms of reconstituted nature . . . (Watts 2000:300).
As with laboratory animals, “[n]ot only has the animal been totally incorporated into human technology; it has become a fully designed instance of human technology” (Haraway 2004:142; see also Noske 1997:20). The cogs in the machine are cyborgs.
That the bodies of farmed animals are being reconstructed to overcome obstacles to the accumulation of capital is nothing new. For example, fast-growing transgenic salmon have been designed to reduce biological time (Kelso 2003). What is new are the kinds of obstacles that bodies are being designed to help capital overcome. William Boyd concluded his pioneering article on the role of agricultural technoscience in the making of the industrial broiler chicken by noting that, “[t]he problems of nature, previously considered as a set of obstacles to be overcome via the industrialization of avian biology, has reemerged as a question of ecological risks and vulnerabilities” (Boyd 2001:664). But he did not examine how agricultural technoscience, including environmental applications of animal biotechnology, was responding to these new
(socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation. This is where I pick up the story.
34 Chapter 3. METHODS
I. Introduction
In this chapter I describe the research design that guided this two-stage qualitative case study. The chapter is organized into four sections, including this introduction. The second section describes the initial, primarily inductive stage of the project. It also includes both my general research questions as well as the more specific, case-focused conceptual model and research questions I developed to guide the second, more deductive stage of the project. Section three describes this second stage, which involved a much more systematic, deductive, and theory- driven analysis of the data. More specifically, the third section explains how I went about collecting and analyzing data to answer my research questions. In the fourth and final section, I explain the specific steps I have taken, and plan to take in the future, to ensure that my conclusions are plausible.
II. Conceptual Model and Research Questions
I set out two answer two general research questions:
(1) What role, if any, does environmental regulatory science play in the process of keeping regulatory compliance costs in check?
(2) What role, if any, do environmental techno-fixes play in the process of keeping regulatory compliance costs in check?
These questions emerged out of my preliminary research, during which I was collecting information about my case while reading the existing literature for ideas that might help me make sense of what I was finding. This interplay between theory and data led me to develop a preliminary understanding of my case and the kinds of questions that might be interesting to ask
35 about it. Like most qualitative research projects, this project was an ongoing, simultaneously deductive and inductive process. I collected information while reading the literature, and what emerged from this process was a working theory, which then guided subsequent research, which, in turn, helped me refine my working theory. In short, the project involved a continuous dialogue between theory and data.
Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that the project began because of my personal interest in Pennsylvania’s nutrient management regulations, a starting point which undoubtedly shaped the entire project. And although Pennsylvania is a good case for exploring the relationship between environmental technoscience and environmental law, I did not pick the case for that reason. Rather, this is something I became convinced of only after starting the research.
I first became interested in Pennsylvania’s regulations while working as an intern for
Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture), a state-level environmental advocacy group.
During the summer of 2003, before I began my PhD, and just after I had left a job as an environmental lawyer with the federal government, PennFuture hired me to help them with a study investigating how Pennsylvania’s regulations were being implemented in the Pequea-
Octoraro Creeks Watershed, which includes parts of Lancaster County, an area with one of the highest densities of livestock and poultry to farmland in the United States. At the time Penn
Future was critical of the regulations, arguing, among other things, that the regulators had focused solely on nitrogen and had ignored phosphorus (PennFuture 2003a:6; 2003b:8).
Although the phosphorus issue was not the focus of the project I was working on––which involved the question of whether the regulations were being adequately implemented, as opposed
36 to whether they were adequately designed––my discussions with activists at PennFuture piqued my interest in phosphorus. After finishing the project, I started investigating the history of the regulations, attempting to figure out whether (and, if so, why) phosphorus had been ignored.
Another crucial event in the development of this project occurred during the spring of
2004, when the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board struck down Pennsylvania’s regulations, holding that the regulators had indeed failed adequately to address phosphorus.
Interestingly, much of the opinion discussed the scientific foundation of the regulations. The judges noted that Penn State agronomist Doug Beegle had served as a scientific adviser to the regulators. This case suggested to me that, to understand the phosphorus issue, I would need to understand the role public agricultural research institutions like Penn State had played in laying the scientific foundation for the regulations. I would need to understand both the regulations and the regulatory science.
Finally, my immersion in the scientific literature on phosphorus introduced me to the various techno-fixes that have been developed to reduce the risk of phosphorus runoff. One set of technologies in particular, which are designed to reduce the flow of phosphorus through the digestive system of livestock and poultry, captured my interest. As I read more about these technologies, I noticed that their proponents made connections between them and nutrient management regulations. I wanted to know more about the nature of this connection.
My legal training gave me the tools to understand the technical legal issues involved in this project, but I also needed to understand the scientific issues as well. That I majored in biology as an undergraduate probably helped. By reading publications by the scientists who were involved in Pennsylvania’s regulatory system, and by those who had developed the techno-fixes,
37 I increased my knowledge of the science. I also took advantage of two other opportunities to learn more. In the fall of 2006, I sat in on Nutrient Management in Agricultural Systems (AN
SC/AGECO/SOILS 418), an undergraduate course at Penn State that was taught by Beegle and several of his colleagues. On June 11-13, 2007, I attended the annual meeting of SERA-17, a group of scientists who developed the phosphorus index (P Index), the approach to phosphorus- based nutrient management that was ultimately adopted by Pennsylvania and most other states
(Sharpley et al. 2003; Weld and Sharpley 2007). As I read the scientific literature, I noticed that the issue of regulatory compliance costs was raised by both the scientists who had developed the
P Index and those who had developed the techno-fixes. I began to suspect that these two realms of technoscience play a crucial role in helping to keep compliance costs in check. At this point I began to develop a conceptual model that reflected my working theory (see Figure 3-1).
38 Figure 3-1: Case-specific conceptual model.
The model highlights the potential relationship between phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations and two types of agri-environmental technoscience: (1) agri- environmental regulatory science and (2) agri-environmental techno-fixes. Building on my working theory, I set out to answer the following four specific research questions:
(1) Has the call for stringent phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations transformed phosphorus into a potential obstacle to the profitability of industrial livestock or poultry production, or of particular regions as locations for these sectors?
(2) If so, has this kind of regulatory obstacle emerged in Pennsylvania?
(3) If this kind of regulatory obstacle has emerged in Pennsylvania, what role, if any, did regulatory science play in either its emergence, in the process of attempting to overcome it, or both?
39 (4) What role, if any, have the three environmental applications of animal biotechnology played in the process of attempting to overcome this regulatory obstacle in Pennsylvania or elsewhere?
By overcoming the regulatory obstacle, I mean keeping compliance costs in check.
Two issues about this case should be clarified. The first question is why I focused on phosphorus rather than on some other nutrient or potential pollutant in manure. The reason for focusing on nutrients, rather than on some other category of potential pollutants, is that nutrients are the potential pollutants that have gotten the most regulatory attention to date. Initially, most nutrient management regulations focused solely on nitrogen, but in the 1990s regulators began to focus on both nitrogen and phosphorus. Chapter five describes how this shift played out in
Pennsylvania. This thesis is ultimately concerned with how regulatory compliance costs are kept in check. Given this focus, it makes sense to pick a case in which the costs have the potential to be especially high. I focused on phosphorus because managing excess phosphorus in ways that comply with regulatory restrictions tends to be more costly than managing excess nitrogen. The reasons for this difference in compliance costs will become apparent in chapter four. I chose to focus on a particular regulatory approach, the phosphorus index, because it is the dominant approach to phosphorus-based nutrient management regulation in the United States (Sharpley et al. 2003; Weld and Sharpley 2007). I chose Pennsylvania to investigate the regulatory science that laid the scientific foundation for this approach because this is where much of the relevant research was done.
The second question is why I focused on swine production. After all, managing surplus manure—and excess phosphorus in particular—is an economic challenge confronting all industrial livestock and poultry sectors, albeit to different degrees (Gollehon et al. 2001; Kellogg
40 et al. 2000; Ribaudo et al. 2003). There are several reasons for focusing on swine. First, the swine sector has recently experienced an especially rapid increase in the density of animals to farmland, making it a good case for examining the environmental issues raised by the industrialization of livestock and poultry production (Ribaudo 2003). Second, it makes sense to study the swine sector, rather than the dairy or beef sectors, because, unlike cows, swine are non- ruminant animals. As such, I explain in chapter five, they tend to generate high-phosphorus manure when fed the typical industrial diet of corn and soybeans, and this presents the industry with a biological challenge when attempting to comply with nutrient management regulations governing land application of manure. Of course, chickens and other poultry are non-ruminants, too, but there is a third reason for focusing on swine. Unlike in the poultry sectors, where manure tends to be managed as a solid, in the swine sector it tends to be managed as a liquid, which results in higher manure transportation costs. This can result in higher regulatory compliance costs if regulations mandate that at least some surplus manure be exported from the operation where it was produced. As a result of these three factors, regulatory compliance is an especially daunting challenge for the swine sector, though I would not want to suggest that this sector always faces higher compliance costs than the others. One last reason for focusing on the swine sector is that there is a wealth of data on the manure management challenge facing it (Ribaudo
2003; Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff 2003; Ribaudo et al. 2003), including, most notably, a recent USDA-ERS report on changes in manure management practices between 1998 and 2004
(Key, McBride, and Ribaudo 2009).
To sum it up, then, this research project was a qualitative case study examining the relationship between agri-environmental technoscience, on the one hand, and environmental
41 regulations, on the other. It focused on a particular regulatory system: the phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations governing high-density livestock and poultry operations. My analysis focused on the relationship between this regulatory approach and two types of agri- environmental technoscience: (1) agri-environmental regulatory science and (2) a suite of agri- environmental techno-fixes that were designed to deal with the environmental problem the regulations were designed to address. In the rest of this chapter I explain how I went about examining this relationship in a systematic way.
III. Data Collection and Analysis
As explained above, I used participant observation as part of my background research. As explained below, in the section on plausibility, I have used, and will continue to use, interviews to ensure that my thesis is plausible. However, documents were my primary source of data, and in this section I explain how I obtained and analyzed them. The subsection on data collection is divided into several parts, organized by research question. The single subsection on analysis applies to all four questions because I used the same method to analyze the data for each.
!A. Document Collection
1. Question One There has been a considerable amount of research on the phosphorus issue in the United
States. Researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
(USDA-ERS) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) have published a series of influential studies mapping county-level excesses of phosphorus in the United States, including in Pennsylvania. Studies by USDA-ERS researchers have also addressed the potential economic impacts of phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations, including the potential
42 for regional differences in compliance costs. These studies, which were published as government reports and are available on the agencies’ websites, have been widely cited and have had a major impact on nutrient management policy. Indeed, many studies of the phosphorus issue rely upon these reports to demonstrate that excess phopshorus is a major issue in the United States.
Because these reports have been so influential in framing the discussion of the phosphorus issue, my analysis relied mainly on them and on studies citing them. Finding studies citing the reports was initially a problem. The reports are part of the grey literature, and traditional citation indexes do not enable one to track who has cited them. To get around this problem, I utilized google scholar and ordinary google searches.
2. Questions Two and Three This section explains how I obtained the data for the Pennsylvania analysis. I offer much more detail about the documents for these two questions than about the documents for the other questions because of the technical legal nature of many of the documents. To get at the issue of regulatory pressure, I had to engage in a legal analysis. Some of these documents were difficult to come by; I had to request some from government agencies, and I might have the only copies of a few. This is one of the reasons why I have discussed them in so much detail in this section.
In addition, a legal analysis must be thorough––indeed, exhaustive––in order to be valid; I have specified which documents I analyzed, even ones that I did not cite or quote in the empirical chapters, so that the reader can be assured that my analysis did not miss anything important.
In cooperation with researchers at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-
ARS) research station in State College, researchers at Penn State have studied the phosphorus
43 issue. Some of this work is described on several Penn State and USDA websites.6 These researchers have published several reports mapping regional excesses of phosphorus within the
Commonwealth. Data and maps are also available on the website of the Mid-Atlantic Water
Program, a partnership between the USDA and land grant colleges and universities.7 I used these sources for my analysis of the excess phosphorus issue in Pennsylvania.
To examine the issue of regulatory pressure, I compiled a legislative history of the
Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act (NMA) of 1993, which was replaced in 2005 by a statute commonly known as the Agriculture, Communities, and Rural Environment (ACRE) legislation. I also compiled a regulatory history of the nutrient management regulations that were promulgated to implement these statutes. The original regulations were promulgated in 1997 and were revised in 2006.
My legislative history of the NMA8 consists of the following documents: (1) the seven bills that were introduced in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, including HB 100, the bill that ultimately became the NMA;9 (2) transcripts of the two legislative hearings that were held;10 (3)
6 http://agenvpolicy.aers.psu.edu/default.htm (last visited on May 21, 2010); http://www.das.psu.edu/research- extension/nutrient-management/ (last visited on May 21, 2010); http://panutrientmgmt.cas.psu.edu/ (last visited on May 21, 2010); http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/docs.htm?docid=2300 (last visited on May 21, 2010).
7 http://www.mawaterquality.agecon.vt.edu/ (last visited on May 21, 2010).
8 I also reviewed the legislative history of ACRE, but the phosphorus issue was not a central aspect of the debate, which focused mainly on the issues of local ordinances and corporate farming.
9 Some of the bills went through several versions, each of which had its own printer’s number. I reviewed every version of every bill. The bills were: (1) HB 2616, Session of 1988, printer # 3624; (2) HB 1980, Session of 1989, printer # 2562; (3) HB 1838, Session of 1989, printer #2347; (4) HB 496, Session of 1991, printer #s 1914 and 553; (5) HB 448, Session of 1991, printer #507; (6) SB 1444, Session of 1991, printer #s 2641, 2634, 2625, 2514, 2350, 1811, and 1733; and (7) HB 100, Session of 1993, printer #s 178 and 109.
10 Both hearings were held by the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee. On October 19, 1989, the committee held a hearing on HB 1838 (transcript on file with author, 277 pages). On March 19, 1991, the committee held a hearing on HB 496 (transcript on file with author, 126 pages). I was unable to obtain any of the written testimony submitted at the hearings. At these types of hearings witnesses typically read their written testimony, and I have the transcript of the oral testimony of the witnesses, but it is possible that witnesses wrote things in their written testimony that they did not say in their oral testimony.
44 transcripts of the three floor debates;11 and (4) a report issued by Governor Casey’s Select
Committee on Nonpoint Source Nutrient Management, which made the case for nutrient management legislation.12
The documents in the regulatory history I compiled came from several sources. The
NMA required the State Conservation Commission (SCC) to promulgate regulations implementing the act. The act created a Nutrient Management Advisory Board (NMAB) to advise the SCC. Before promulgating final regulations, the SCC was required to give the NMAB an opportunity to comment on drafts. On December 30, 1995, the Pennsylvania Bulletin published proposed regulations.13 On June 28, 1997, the Bulletin published the final regulations, along with the SCC’s response to the comments it had received on the proposed regulations.14 I reviewed the proposed regulations;15 the final regulations;16 a May 3, 1996 summary of the public comments that had been received on the proposed regulations;17 a February 13, 1997 draft comment/response document;18 and the SCC’s final response to public comments.19 On August
7, 2004, the Pennsylvania Bulletin published proposed revisions to the regulations.20 On June 3,
11 The House heard debate on HB 496 on June 26, 1991 (Legislative Journal-House, pp. 1163-1173). The House heard debate on SB 1444 on November 24, 1992 (Legislative Journal-House, pp. 2055-2073). The House heard debate on HB 100 on February 2, 1993 (Legislative Journal-House, pp. 114-134).
12 Governor Robert P. Casey’s Select Committee on Nonpoint Source Nutrient Management, Final Report: Controlling Nutrient Pollution from Nonpoint Sources in Pennsylvania (December 20, 1990).
13 25 Pa.B. 6161 (December 30, 1995).
14 27 Pa.B. 3161 (June 28, 1997).
15 25 Pa.B. 6161 (December 30, 1995).
16 27 Pa.B. 3161 (June 28, 1997).
17 http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/nutman/mayresp.htm (last visited on June 14, 2009).
18 Nutrient Management Regulations Comment/Response Document (Feb. 13, 1997 draft) (on file with author).
19 27 Pa.B. 3161 (June 28, 1997).
20 34 Pa.B. 4361 (August 7, 2004).
45 2006, the final regulations were published, along with the SCC’s response to the comments it had received on the proposed regulations.21 I obtained copies of the public comments.22 I also obtained three Q&A publications on the proposed regulations.23
Because of the important role the NMAB played in the regulatory process, I reviewed the minutes of the board’s meetings.24 As I explain in footnote twenty-four, I was unable to obtain the minutes for several meetings, including all the meetings held in 1998 and 1999, a crucial period during which phosphorus became a major political issue and the board formed its phosphorus subcommittee. I contacted Tom Juengst at the DEP, Doug Goodlander at the SCC,
Doug Beegle at PSU, and Lamonte Garber at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, but none of them had the minutes. To attempt to mitigate this problem, and to triangulate my data, I reviewed the
21 36 Pa.B. 2636 (June 3, 2006).
22 The public comments are on file with the author.
23 Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Program Frequently Asked Questions (SCC, April 16, 2004); Phosphorus Related NMA Regulation Revisions Questions and Answers (SCC, October 4, 2004); and Nutrient Management Act Regulation Revisions Questions and Answers (SCC, October 20, 2004).
24 I was unable to locate the minutes of several meetings, presuming, that is, that they were held. The Board’s first meeting was held on September 29, 1993, and the most recent, as of June 14, 2009, was held on October 23, 2008. On May 16, 2007, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection mailed me copies of the records of the first nineteen meetings, along with agendas and supplementary documents (on file with author). I obtained minutes for the 20th, 21st, 24th, 25th, and 29th meetings on-line: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/nutman/ nutman.htm (last visited on June 14, 2009). I was unable to locate minutes for the 22nd, 23rd, 26th, 27th, and 28th meetings. On May 2, 2007, the SCC emailed me the minutes for meetings 37-42, excluding 38. I was unable to obtain minutes for meetings 30-36. After the 42nd meeting, which was held on October 2, 2001, the minutes stopped specifying the number of the meeting, referring only to the date. The SCC emailed me all the minutes they had from this point on. I also obtained minutes from the SCC’s website: http://panutrientmgmt.cas.psu.edu/ main_scc_nmab.htm (last visited on June 14, 2009). I have the minutes of the following meetings: April 2, 2002; August 13, 2002; October 15, 2002; December 12, 2002; February 20, 2003; May 1, 2003; June 23, 2004; October 22, 2004; November 12, 2004; April 11, 2005; April 15, 2005; May 6, 2005; January 5, 2006; February 10, 2006; April 13, 2006; December 5, 2006; February 6, 2007; April 3, 2007; July 12, 2007; September 5, 2007; October 10, 2007; April 24, 2008; and October 23, 2008.
46 minutes of the SCC’s meetings.25 Although I have minutes for almost all the SCC meetings, some of the minutes are missing pages. To further triangulate my data, I reviewed the minutes for meetings held by two related advisory boards: (1) the Agricultural Advisory Committee to the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources,26 which became the Agricultural
Advisory Board to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources and later the
25 In July of 2009, the SCC mailed me all the minutes it had from January of 1993 through November of 2002. Here are the dates: January 7, 1993; March 11, 1993; May 13, 1993; October 4, 1993; January 6, 1994; March 10, 1994; [missing July 28, 1994]; October 3, 1994; January 5, 1995; March 30, 1995; June 21, 1995; August 9, 1995; October 2, 1995; November 14, 1995; January 4, 1996; March 14, 1996; May 8, 1996; July 25, 1996; October 7, 1996; January 9, 1997; March 13, 1997; May 8, 1997; July 24, 1997; October 6, 1997; January 7, 1998; March 12, 1998; May 7, 1998; July 29, 1998; October 5, 1998; January 7, 1999; March 17, 1999; May 20, 1999; July 28, 1999; November 9, 1999; January 19, 2000; March 15, 2000; May 23, 2000; July 26, 2000; September 13, 2000; October 31, 2000; January 23, 2001; March 14, 2001; May 24, 2001; July 18, 2001; October 26, 2001; January 22, 2002; March 13, 2002; May 23, 2002; July 23, 2002; November 1, 2002. I also obtained minutes here: http:// www.agriculture.state.pa.us/agriculture/cwp/view.asp?a=3&q=129482 (last visited on June 14, 2009). Here are the dates: January 24, 2003; March 11, 2003; May 27, 2003; July 18, 2003; July 22, 2003; September 8, 2003; September 9, 2003; October 30, 2003; January 20, 2004; March 9, 2004; May 25, 2004; September 9, 2004; January 18, 2005; May 24, 2005; July 26, 2005; October 19, 2006; December 20, 2006; January 18, 2007; February 14, 2007; March 14, 2007; April 18, 2007; May 22, 2007; June 26, 2007; July 17, 2007; September 13, 2007; October 17, 2007; November 14, 2007; December 19, 2007; January 17, 2008; February 20, 2008; March 13, 2008; April 16, 2008; May 20, 2008; June 18, 2008; July 28-29, 2008; August 25, 2008; September 16, 2008; October 15, 2008; November 18, 2008; and December 17, 2008.
26 I obtained minutes and related documents for the following meetings: April 2, 1992; June 4, 1992; August 6, 1992; October 1, 1992; December 3, 1992; February 4, 1993; April 8, 1993; June 3, 1993; and August 5, 1993. The August meeting was the last one held by the committee, which became the Agricultural Advisory Board. See note 27.
47 Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection;27 and (2) the SCC’s Chesapeake Bay
Advisory Committee.28
In 2001, the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee held two oversight hearings on the Nutrient Management Act. I analyzed the transcripts of these hearings;29 the written testimony I was able to collect;30 the SCC’s Nutrient Management Program Update, which was submitted at the April 26, 2001 hearing; and an October 19, 2001 letter discussing the hearings, which was sent by Raymond Bunt, Jr., Majority Chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs
Committee, to Karl Brown, Executive Secretary of the SCC.31
27 The first meeting was held on December 3, 1993. From DEP I obtained minutes and supplementary documents for the following meetings: December 3, 1993; February 16, 1994; April 20, 1994; June 15, 1994; August 24, 1994; October 19, 1994; December 21, 1994; April 26, 1995; June 21, 1995; and August 25, 1995. Minutes and supplementary documents for subsequent meetings (from February 21, 1996 to April 15, 2009) were obtained from this website: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/ag/ag.htm (last visited on June 14, 2009). Here are the dates: February 21, 1996; April 24, 1996; June 26, 1996; August 28, 1996; October 23, 1996; December 18, 1996; February 26, 1997; April 23, 1997; June 25, 1997; October 22, 1997; December 17, 1997; February 18, 1998; April 15, 1998; May 18, 1998; August 26, 1998; December 16, 1998; February 17, 1999; April 21, 1999; June 16, 1999; August 25, 1999; October 20, 1999; February 16, 2000; April 19, 2000; October 18, 2000; December 20, 2000; February 21, 2001; April 18, 2001; June 20, 2001; October 17, 2001; December 19, 2001; April 17, 2002; June 19, 2002; August 28, 2002; December 18, 2002; February 19, 2003; June 18, 2003; August 27, 2003; December 17, 2003; August 25, 2004; December 15, 2004; February 16, 2005; April 20, 2005; June 15, 2005; August 24, 2005; October 19, 2005; December 21, 2005; April 19, 2006; June 21, 2006; October 18, 2006; December 20, 2006; February 21, 2007; April 18, 2007; June 13, 2007; August 22, 2007; October 20, 2007; December 19, 2007; April 16, 2008; August 27, 2008; December 17, 2008; February 18, 2009; April 15, 2009.
28 Minutes and supplementary documents are available at this website: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/ advcoun/chesbay/chesbay.htm (last visited on June 14, 2009). I examined minutes and other available documents for all the meetings listed on the website as of June 14, 2009. Here are the dates: September 6, 1995; December 6, 1995; March 6, 1996; June 5, 1996; September 4, 1996; December 4, 1996; March 6, 1997; June 3, 1997; September 4, 1997; December 4, 1997; March 5, 1998; June 4, 1998; September 3, 1998; December 3, 1998; March 11, 1999; June 3, 1999; September 2, 1999; December 2, 1999; March 2, 2000; June 1, 2000; September 7, 2000; December 13, 2000; March 1, 2001; June 7, 2001; September 6, 2001; December 6, 2001; March 7, 2002; June 6, 2002; September 5, 2002; March 6, 2003; September 4, 2003; December 4, 2003; March 4, 2004; June 3, 2004; December 2, 2004; March 3, 2005; June 2, 2005; September 1, 2005; December 8, 2005; March 2, 2006; June 1, 2006; September 7, 2006; March 1, 2007; September 21, 2007; December 14, 2007; March 13, 2008; June 5, 2008; September 11, 2008; and December 4, 2008.
29 The first hearing was held on April 26, 2001 (Transcript on file with author, 221 pages). The second was held on July 10, 2001 (Transcript on file with author, 179 pages).
30 In addition to the transcript of their oral testimony, I have the written testimony of all but four of the witnesses who spoke at the April 26, 2001 hearing. The most important one I am missing, assuming it exists, is that of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. I do have the transcript of CBF’s oral testimony. For the July 10, 2001 hearing, I have the transcript as well as written testimony from all the witnesses who spoke.
31 On file with author.
48 The May 12, 2004 decision by the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board that I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter led to an interim policy for phosphorus management in Pennsylvania.32 I read the decision then traveled to Harrisburg to review the 697 page transcript of the three-day hearing that was held during the litigation. Because I was not allowed to photocopy the transcript, I took notes.33 I also analyzed the interim policy 34 and a Penn State publication on it (Beegle, Dodd, and Abdalla 2004). Finally, in its comments on an application for a nutrient management plan in 1999, Penn Future raised an issue similar to the one raised in the lawsuit. I reviewed the comments.35
To further triangulate my data, I also reviewed books, journal articles, reports, and Penn
State extension publications that discussed the legislation or regulations (Abdalla 1997; Abdalla and Dodd 2005; 2002a; 2002b; Abdalla, Lanyon, and Hallberg 1995; Abdalla and Shaffer 1997;
Beegle 1997a; Beegle and Lanyon 1994; 1993; Beegle, Lanyon, and Lingenfelter 2001; 1997;
Dodd and Abdalla 2004; Dodd, Beegle, and Abdalla 2004; Favero 1997; Favero and Abdalla
1997; Ernst 2003:Ch.4; Meloy 2002; Shortle and Musser 1992).
In the late 1990s, several publications began to focus on the issue of whether the regulatory science upon which Pennsylvania’s regulations were based was still valid (Beegle
1998; Chesapeake Bay Commission 1998; Dionis 1999). Around this time, the NMAB’s
Phosphorus Subcommittee began to examine the issue. I analyzed the scientific reports that
32 Adam v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania EHB Docket No. 2002-189-MG (May 12, 2004).
33 Adam case transcript notes (on file with author, 7 pages).
34 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, State Conservation Commission, Interim Guidance: Addressing Phosphorus and Other Nutrients in Nutrient Management Plans (May 25, 2004).
35 Comments of the Powell’s Valley Conservation Association, Inc. on the Nutrient Management Plan Submitted for the “Sow Unit” of Mr. Joseph Conners (April 7, 1999, on file with author); Supplemental Comments of the Powell’s Valley Conservation Association, Inc. on the Nutrient Management Plan Submitted for the “Sow Unit” of Mr. Joseph Conners (April 29, 1999, on file with author).
49 resulted from this effort (Beegle et al. 2001a; Beegle et al. 2001b; Kogelmann et al. 2006; 2004a;
2004b; Kogelmann, Lin, and Bryant 2002; PA NMAB, Phosphorus Sub-Committee 2001; Weld et al. 2002). These reports were the key documents in my analysis of the regulatory science because in them the scientists addressed the question of which approach to phosphorus-based nutrient management regulation Pennsylvania ought to adopt. I also reviewed a 2002 Chesapeake
Bay Program report on phosphorus-based nutrient management that addressed a similar question for the watershed as a whole (CBP 2002).
To put the work of the Phosphorus Subcommittee in perspective, I analyzed additional documents on the regulatory science behind the P Index approach. I collected scientific journal articles, books, and chapters. I also collected documents from the grey literature, including reports, white papers, and conference papers. In the empirical chapters below, I cite or quote the documents upon which my argument relies. Although I cannot list all the documents I read, given that they number in the hundreds, I do want to explain how I went about obtaining them.
Most of the researchers who worked on the Pennsylvania P Index were either at Penn
State or at the USDA-ARS research station on the University Park campus. Some of these scientists were affiliated with SERA-17. I collected documents from the SERA-17 website,36 from Penn State’s nutrient management websites,37 and from the website of the USDA-ARS station.38 I also used the main USDA-ARS website’s digital documents repository, which is
36 http://www.sera17.ext.vt.edu/SERA_17_Publications.htm (last visited on June 14, 2009).
37 http://agenvpolicy.aers.psu.edu/default.htm (last visited on May 21, 2010); http://www.das.psu.edu/research- extension/nutrient-management/ (last visited on May 21, 2010); http://panutrientmgmt.cas.psu.edu/ (last visited on May 21, 2010).
38 http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/docs.htm?docid=2300 (last visited on May 21, 2010).
50 searchable by author.39 I used google scholar and science citation index to search for articles, books, and chapters citing key studies on the P Index.
One of the most influential researchers in the area of phosphorus management was Penn
State agronomist Les Lanyon. Sadly, Lanyon passed away before I had the chance to meet him.
Doug Beegle gave me access to Lanyon’s files, where I found several useful documents. Penn
State Agriculture was also a useful source of information on the role of Penn State researchers in the development of Pennsylvania’s regulations.
The Bay Journal and PennAg Journal were also useful sources for following developments in regulatory policy. The Bay Journal covers environmental politics in the Bay watershed, and has long covered the issue of nutrient management. Published by Pennsylvania’s largest agribusiness trade group, PennAg Journal helped me get the regulated industry’s views on Pennsylvania’s regulations.
3. Question Four
For a broad discussion of the issue of techno-fixes for the phosphorus issue, I relied upon several sources, particularly reports by the USDA-ERS, the Council for Agricultural Science and
Technology, the Farm Foundation, and the NMAB’s Alternative Manure Utilization and
Treatment Committee. For the analysis of the three specific techno-fixes (i.e., environmental nutrition, phytase, and the Enviropig™), I used google scholar and science citation index to find scientific studies. For the analysis of environmental nutrition, I also relied upon several CAST reports and the National Research Council’s handbook on swine nutrition. For the phytase analysis, I supplemented my analysis of the scientific literature by examining the websites of the
39 http://ddr.nal.usda.gov/handle/10113/18453//browse-author (last visited on June 16, 2009).
51 companies that produce this enzyme. Enviropig™ is still a developing story, so it is important to note that this thesis is based upon data that were collected between May of 2008 and February of
2010. These data were collected by performing google searches for the word Enviropig™ at least once a month. Along with the scientific literature (both peer-reviewed and the grey literature) obtained through google scholar and science citation index, the Enviropig™ data included news stories, press releases, websites, videos, and transcripts. Archived versions of the University of
Guelph’s Enviropig™ website were also obtained.
!B. Document Analysis
My coding scheme closely tracked my conceptual model and working theory. For questions one and two, I focused on the issue of regulatory pressure. I asked whether, how, and why it emerged; I noted any discussion of regulatory compliance costs, including regional variation; and I noted any discussion of the potential effect of these costs on the profitability of the regulated industry, or of regions as locations for it. For question three I focused on the relationship between regulatory science and compliance costs. I coded the data for the potential role of the scientists not only in the process of attempting to overcome regulatory obstacles to profitability, but also in creating such obstacles. I noted any discussion of compliance costs or of the ecological adequacy of the regulations. For question four I focused on the relationship between the three techno-fixes, on the one hand, and the regulations, on the other. I noted any examples where proponents of these technologies discussed this relationship. To avoid a one- sided account, I investigated what else these technologies might do besides reducing compliance costs. To that end, I coded the data for the potential benefits of the technologies that were cited by the proponents of the technologies. More specifically, I examined the claims proponents made
52 about the potential economic and ecological benefits of the technologies. I applied the same analysis to the claims made by critics of the technologies.
I kept a hard copy of each document so that I would not lose it. I read each document at least three times, and some I read even more frequently. This close reading and rereading helped me increase my background knowledge of the law and science. Just as importantly, it enabled me to have confidence that the themes I ultimately highlighted were not isolated ideas taken out of context. I did my best to avoid making too much of an isolated statement just because it might have supported my working theory. Indeed, as I read and reread, I searched for data that had the potential to undermine my theory, not just data that supported it.
I initially engaged in open coding of the documents, highlighting interesting passages as I read. This initial work is what enabled me to develop my working theory. After I had developed this theory, I began using a more focused, deductive, and theory-driven coding scheme. I reread each document, but this time through the theoretical lens of my conceptual model (for a discussion of coding, see Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995:Ch.6). I focused my analysis on the passages that were relevant to my research questions, looking for text that either supported or called into question my working theory—namely, that regulatory pressure had made excess phosphorus a potential obstacle to the profitability of high-density livestock and poultry production, and of certain regions as locations for it, and that regulatory science and techno-fixes had helped overcome this obstacle by keeping compliance costs in check.
As mentioned above, I worked with hard copies of the documents. I highlighted the relevant passages in the texts. I did not just extract passages from the documents and paste them into a separate file. While writing up drafts of the empirical chapters, I reread the highlighted
53 passages from each document. Having to return to the original document to find a particular statement, as opposed to using a file full of extracted statements, helped prevent me from losing the context in which each statement was made.
IV. Plausibility
I have taken, and will take, several steps to ensure that my interpretations of the data are plausible. Triangulating data sources was one. Another was citing and quoting the documents upon which I relied so that other researchers can check whether I used the evidence fairly. With this kind of study, however, where one is offering a somewhat critical interpretation of someone else’s research, one of the best ways of establishing the plausibility of one’s thesis is by giving them a chance to object (Latour 2000; Whatmore 2003). This kind of member check means more than just giving them a chance to say whether one has understood the technical scientific issues––although this is, of course, important. It also means giving them an opportunity to object to one’s theoretical interpretation of their work. This is what I will do in the future, if I decide to publish any articles about their work.
I have already conducted preliminary interviews (Penn State IRB # 29510). I interviewed
Doug Beegle and Andrew Sharpley, two of the most important scientists who were involved in the development of the Pennsylvania P Index. The Beegle interview was conducted in person, and the Sharpley interview was done over the phone. The interview guides are attached to this dissertation as an appendix. I planned to interview Cecil Forsberg and John Phillips, two of the
University of Guelph scientists who created the Enviropig™,40 but they decided not to sign the informed consent form. Although we talked about the Enviropig™ over the phone, I may not use
40 Time constraints prevented me from interviewing scientists about the other two techno-fixes.
54 the substance of the discussion for research purposes because I did not obtain their consent. The main benefit of these initial conversations was that they gave me confidence that I had a reasonably firm grasp on the science.
55 Chapter 4. REGULATORY OBSTACLES
I. Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to explain how excess phosphorus became a potential obstacle to the profitability of industrial swine production, and of certain regions as locations for the industry. The chapter offers a general overview of this issue rather than focusing on the situation facing the industry in any particular region. This background will enable the reader to better understand the more focused, regional analysis presented in the next chapter.
In the U.S., swine production has rapidly industrialized over the past several decades, particularly since the early 1990s (Key and McBride 2008a; 2008b; 2007; McBride and Key
2008; 2007; 2003; Rhodes 1995; Van Arsdall and Gilliam 1979). Industrialization is an umbrella term that covers several structural transformations, including the increased specialization and scale of swine operations, technological changes in swine production, and the vertical coordination of swine production with pork packing (see, e.g., Anderson 2008; Coppin 2008;
2003; 2002; Finlay 2004; Key and McBride 2008a; 2008b; 2007; McBride and Key 2008; 2007;
2003; Page 1997; Rhodes 1995; Rich 2008; Thu and Durrenger 1998; Ufkes 1998; Van Arsdall and Gilliam 1979; Watts 2004a). Traditional farrow-to-finish farms, which raise animals from birth to slaughter, have given way to specialized breeding and feeding operations that focus on particular stages of production. Technological changes have included the shift to year-round confinement, selective breeding for lean animals, and the widespread use of artificial insemination. To ensure a relatively predictable flow of uniform bodies into the incompletely mechanized disassembly lines of their slaughterhouses, packers have become increasingly
56 involved in swine production, through vertical integration, contractual relationships (i.e., marketing and production contracts), and other forms of vertical coordination. But the most striking transformation of all has been the consolidation of swine production on fewer, larger operations (Key and McBride 2008a; MacDonald and McBride 2009).
Particularly since the early 1990s, the scale of swine operations, as measured by the number of animals, has increased sharply (Key and McBride 2008a; MacDonald and McBride
2009). Between 1992 and 2004, the number of swine operations declined by more than 70%, but the number of animals stayed roughly the same. The size of the average operation increased from
945 animals in 1992 to 4,646 in 2004. The share of the U.S. swine inventory on operations with at least 2,000 animals increased from approximately 30% in 1992 to nearly 80% in 2004, and operations having at least 5,000 animals accounted for more than 50% of the total inventory in
2004 (Key and McBride 2008a). The “locus of production,” which is “the farm size that’s at the center of the distribution of production, where half of annual production comes from larger farms and half comes from smaller farms,” also increased (MacDonald and McBride 2009:5). For all operations taken together, regardless of which stage they specialize in, it was 1,200 in 1987, but by 2002 had risen to 23,400, “reflecting a major reorganization of production into stages, as well as shifts to larger operations in every stage of production” (MacDonald and McBride 2009:6). In
2004 the locus of production was 60,000 for farrow-to-wean operations; 25,000 for wean-to- feeder operations; 50,000 for farrow-to-feeder operations; and 12,000 for feeder-to-finish operations (MacDonald and McBride 2009:9-10). The locus of production increased in other sectors as well, but the percentage increase was greatest in the swine sector. Between 1987 and
57 2002, it increased 60 percent in the broiler sector, 100 percent in beef, and 240 percent in dairy, but 2,000 percent in the swine sector (MacDonald and McBride 2009:iii).
The trend toward fewer and larger operations has been driven by economic forces, particularly the pursuit of economies of scale in swine production and pork packing (Haley
2004:10; MacDonald and McBride 2009:20; Welsh, Hubbell, and Carpentier 2003). As a result of this structural transformation, agribusinesses have profited and consumers have benefited from lower food prices, but these changes have also created what environmental sociologists Bob
Edwards and Adam Driscoll (2009:154) called negative ecological “‘externalities of scale.’”
One of the main unintended ecological consequences of the industrialization of livestock and poultry production has been the production of surplus manure (Gollehon et al. 2001; Kellogg et al. 2000). The greater the number of animals, the greater the amount of manure. It is thus tempting to attribute the production of surplus manure to the increased scale of industrial livestock and poultry operations. Yet this would be a mistake, for a large-scale operation will not generate surplus manure if it has sufficient acreage to use all the nutrients in the manure as fertilizer, and a small-scale operation will generate surplus manure if it has too little farmland to use all the nutrients (Lanyon et al. 2006).
The problem is density rather than scale. With the industrialization of swine production,
USDA researcher Marc Ribaudo explained, “[i]ncreasing hog numbers were not matched with increasing acreage,” and so the density of animals to farmland available for manure application increased (Ribaudo 2003:33). As animals have become concentrated in space, so has their manure, along with the nutrients it contains. Some operations have such high densities of animals to farmland that they generate excess manure nutrients. Today, Ribaudo explains, “[t]he . . .
58 industry is trying to come to grips with too many animals on too few acres” (Ribaudo 2003:33).
Although large-scale swine operations tend to have higher densities than small-scale operations do (Key, McBride, and Ribaudo 2009:12-13; MacDonald and McBride 2009:28; Ribaudo
2003:33), this does not change the fact that “[t]he ratio of animals to land on which their manure can be applied is the ecological bottom line” (Jackson 1996:36).
For many swine operations with surplus manure, the most cost-effective way of dealing with it––given current manure management technologies, infrastructure, and markets––is to dispose of it on site by applying it to farmland that does not need all the nutrients. Though cost- effective, using farmland as a low-cost sink for the disposal of surplus manure can increase certain ecological risks, including the risk of nutrient runoff, which, in certain watersheds, can accelerate the eutrophication of lakes, estuaries, and other surface waters. In the 1990s, in response to scientific research linking land application of surplus manure to water pollution, the
U.S. EPA and various state agencies were under pressure to promulgate nutrient management regulations forcing operations to apply manure at or below maximum legally acceptable nutrient application rates.
This chapter explains how regulatory pressure can transform surplus manure––and excess phosphorus in particular––into a socioecological obstacle to capital accumulation. Yet as I explained in chapter one, such obstacles are not necessarily insurmountable. Indeed, the main purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of agri-environmental technoscience in overcoming them. But before we can understand these efforts to keep regulatory compliance costs in check, we must first understand the nature of the excess phosphorus issue, including how regulatory pressure transformed phosphorus into an obstacle that the industry had to somehow overcome.
59 The chapter is divided into four sections, plus a conclusion. The first section discusses surplus manure. Building on the most recent USDA estimates, the second section discusses the magnitude of the excess phosphorus challenge facing the U.S. swine sector. Section three discusses the ecological consequences of manure disposal, particularly phosphorus runoff. The fourth section examines the nutrient management regulations that have been promulgated to mitigate the risk of runoff. Instead of examining a particular jurisdiction’s regulations (something
I do in the next chapter), this section offers a more general discussion. Building on the work of various USDA economists, I suggest that regulatory compliance costs are unlikely to undermine the economic benefits of large-scale swine production, but that they could influence the location of the industry. A region with relatively high compliance costs (compared to other regions) could become an unprofitable location for the industry. Indeed, in theory, relatively high compliance costs could undermine the profitability of a region where the industry is already located, with potentially dire socioeconomic consequences for those who depend upon the industry for their livelihoods. Finally, the conclusion discusses the theoretical significance of my findings by explaining how they help clarify our understanding of socioecological obstacles. The conclusion also explains how the findings change our understanding of the role of land in industrial livestock and poultry production. This chapter sets the stage for the next two, which examine the role of agri-environmental technoscience in helping to keep compliance costs in check, thereby maintaining the profitability of regions that have become host to what has become an increasingly “footloose” industry (Naylor et al. 2005:1621).
60 II. Surplus Manure
On a self-sufficient farm that grows all the feed for its animals (whether pasture, feedstuffs, or both), the capacity of the farmland to grow feed serves as an “agroecological constraint” on the number of animals who can be raised, and thus on the density of animals to farmland (Lanyon 2005:477). Before World War II, most farms were bound by this constraint
(Lanyon 2005; 2000; 1995; Magdoff, Lanyon, and Liebhardt 1997). After the war, however, the constraint was overcome. The development of the fertilizer and feed industries made it possible for some operations to specialize in growing feedstuffs and others to specialize in feeding and breeding animals (Lanyon 2005; 2000; 1995). A new industrial agroecosystem emerged: the high-density livestock or poultry operation that treats feed as an input, enabling it to raise a greater number of animals than would be possible if it had to grow all its own feed.41 By importing feedstuffs, even whole regions were able to overcome the agroecological constraint.
Today, thanks to the international market in feedstuffs, the number of animals who can be raised on an operation or in a region no longer depends upon how much feed can be grown there (Burke et al. 2009; Galloway et al. 2007; Lanyon 2005; Naylor et al. 2005).
Yet as has happened so often in the history of industrial agriculture, the industry overcame one obstacle only to create another. As Wendell Berry wrote, the agroecological constraint on density had prevented farmers from producing “unmanageable surpluses of manure” (Berry 1997:62). By overcoming this constraint, the industry created a new ecological
41 Although such operations became more common after the war, it is likely that some existed before the war as well.
61 challenge: the challenge of managing surplus manure (Key, McBride, and Ribaudo 2009:9;
MacDonald et al. 2009:4, 40; McBride and Key 2003:34).
An operation or region has surplus manure if it produces more manure nutrients than it needs as fertilizer––not counting any nutrients from other sources, such as commercial fertilizer and sewage sludge. Because of the difference between the N:P ratio in most manures and the ratio needed by most crops, excess phosphorus tends to be the bigger challenge for the livestock and poultry sectors. An operation has excess manure phosphorus if it produces more than is needed by all the farmland on the operation. A region has an excess if it produces more than is needed by all the farmland in the region, not just on the livestock and poultry operations where the manure was produced. Although nutrient management regulations apply to operations not regions, it is important to consider regional excesses because they can increase compliance costs for operations. The next section examines the magnitude of the excess manure phosphorus challenge facing the U.S. pork sector today.
III. The Excess Manure Phosphorus Challenge Facing the U.S. Pork Sector
USDA economist Marc Ribaudo’s 2003 analysis provides the best available estimate of the amount of excess manure phosphorus generated by U.S. swine operations:
[L]arge, specialized operations—with an average of 16.7 hogs per acre of cropland on the farm versus 1.4 hogs for small operations—are mostly unable to reasonably dispose of manure nearby. The crops receiving manure on large farms cannot generally assimilate the manure’s nutrients. An estimated 51 percent of nitrogen and 64 percent of phosphorus —both potentially harmful to water quality—in manure from confined hog operations nationwide exceeds onsite crop needs. And most of that excess occurs on large farms. The largest 2 percent of U.S. hog farms control only 2 percent of land on hog farms but produce 53 percent of the total excess nitrogen in hog manure and half the total excess phosphorus. (Ribaudo 2003:33-34).
62 Though useful as a rough indicator, this estimate has two major shortcomings. First, it is based upon 1998 data, which are now out of date. A second, more serious problem is that it is also based upon a flawed definition of excess phosphorus.
The definition focuses on how much phosphorus is likely to be removed from the soil by harvested crops or grazing animals. According to this definition, which has also been used in other USDA studies, “[f]arms that produce more manure nutrients than can be applied to the land without accumulating nutrients in the soil have excess manure nutrients” (Kellogg et al. 2000:52, italics added; see also Gollehon et al. 2001; Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff 2003; Ribaudo et al. 2003). Nutrients accumulate in the soil if they are applied at a rate that exceeds the land’s
“nutrient assimilative capacity” (Gollehon al. 2001:7), which for cropland is “the amount of nutrients taken up by the crop and removed at harvest” (Kellogg et al. 2000:50), and for pastureland is the amount removed by grazing animals (Gollehon et al. 2001:7 n.6). Applying as much phosphorus as is likely to be removed will maintain the existing level of soil phosphorus, applying less will decrease it, and applying more will cause it to increase. According to the
USDA’s definition, an operation has excess manure phosphorus if it produces more than can be assimilated by all the farmland on the operation. In other words, an operation has excess manure phosphorus if it would not be able to apply all its manure on site without causing soil phosphorus to increase in at least one field.
This definition is based upon two problematic assumptions: first, that it is never necessary to increase the level of phosphorus in the soil; and, second, that applying as much phosphorus as is likely to be removed is always a good idea, both agronomically and environmentally. Setting aside the environmental issue for now, what makes these assumptions
63 problematic as an agronomic matter is that they fail to consider how much, if any, phosphorus is actually needed as fertilizer. The amount that is needed depends upon several factors, including what is being grown and the expected yields, but one of the most crucial factors is how much plant-available phosphorus is already in the soil, a factor which the USDA ignored. Neglecting this factor probably caused the USDA to underestimate the amount of excess manure phosphorus produced by U.S. swine operations.
To appreciate this, consider Penn State’s recommendations for maintaining the fertility of cropland. Penn State agronomists have defined the optimum range for plant-available phosphorus in the soil. Using this range, they have developed recommendations for how much, if any, additional phosphorus should be applied (see, e.g., Beegle and Durst n.d.). If the level of plant-available phosphorus already in the soil is below the lower limit of the optimum range, one should apply more phosphorus than the crops are likely to remove so that the level increases to somewhere within the range. If the existing level is already within the optimum range, one should apply as much phosphorus as is likely to be removed so that the level stays where it is (or, at least, stays within the range). If, however, the existing level exceeds the upper limit of the optimum range, applying as much phosphorus as is likely to be removed is unnecessary. In fact, when the level is this high, crops can typically be grown without adding any additional phosphorus. One should allow harvests to remove phosphorus from the soil until the level falls to somewhere within the optimum range. There are, of course, exceptions. For example, “[i]n some cases, applying a small amount of phosphorus as starter [fertilizer] on soils testing above [the upper limit of the optimum range] may be beneficial” (Beegle and Durst nd:3; see also Beegle,
Roth, and Lingenfelter 2003). Even so, the amount of phosphorus added as starter fertilizer is
64 much less than is added when phosphorus is applied at the crop’s phosphorus removal rate.
Moreover, on some fields where the existing level of plant-available phosphorus exceeds the upper limit of the optimum range, particularly fields where the risk of phosphorus runoff is especially high, any agronomic benefits associated with adding starter fertilizer are likely to be outweighed by the increased ecological risks (Beegle et al. 2003).
Taking plant-available phosphorus into account enables us to arrive at a crucial observation: on livestock and poultry operations where many fields already have levels of plant- available phosphorus that exceed the upper limit of the optimum range, almost all the manure phosphorus is excess phosphorus because almost none of it is needed. As explained below, there are regions of the U.S. where the level of phosphorus in much of the soil is above the upper limit, and where the amount of excess phosphorus accumulating on industrial livestock and poultry operations is thus truly staggering. The question is what becomes of all this excess phosphorus.
Applying more manure than is needed as fertilizer constitutes waste disposal, and any ecological risks associated with this practice outweigh the nonexistent, or at most trivial, agronomic benefits.42 Yet as I explain in the next section, much of the excess manure phosphorus produced by industrial livestock and poultry operations is disposed of on site by applying it to farmland that does not need it.
42 Although the excess phosphorus in the manure offers few, if any, agronomic benefits, manure contains more than just phosphorus. Some of these other constituents, such as organic matter, can supply agronomic benefits; others, such as antibiotics, heavy metals, and hormones, are associated with various ecological risks. If we examined the full range of risks and benefits associated with applying manure at rates that supply excess phosphorus, in some cases the risks might outweigh the benefits, but in others the analysis could come out the other way (NRC 1993:407). Of course, making these tradeoffs and determining the acceptable level of risk involve normative judgments.
65 IV. Follow the Phosphorus: The Ecological Consequences of Manure Disposal
Integrating animal feeding with feedstuff production, both within and among farms
(Russelle, Entz, and Franzluebbers 2007), can result in cyclical flows of phosphorus, as illustrated in Figure 4-1. Especially when the animals are located near the fields where their feedstuffs are grown, the phosphorus in their manure can be returned to the soil from which it came.43 In this kind of integrated system, phosphorus can be recycled and reused, reducing the need to import additional phosphorus into the system.44
Figure 4-1: An Integrated Agri-Food System with Cyclical P Flows. Source: Sharpley (2006:12).
Before World War II, U.S. farms tended to be integrated in this way, but the postwar industrialization of livestock and poultry production “disintegrat[ed]” animal feeding from
43 Some of the phosphorus in the manure could be derived from feed supplements rather than from the soil in which the feedstuffs were grown.
44 It is impossible to design an agri-food system with perfect nutrient cycling (Magdoff et al. 1997:65). At least some phosphorus will be lost from any system, though some systems are “leakier” than others. Even on a farm that does not generate surplus manure, nutrient runoff as a result of manure spreading cannot be completely avoided. Moreover, phosphorus is exported from farms along with animal bodies and body products such as milk and eggs. Unless this phosphorus is replaced—by, for example, returning the phosphorus in human excrement, food scraps, and slaughterhouse waste to the fields from which it came—the soil will eventually become depleted.
66 feedstuff production, breaking the phosphorus cycle and creating the kinds of far-flung, one-way flows of phosphorus illustrated in Figure 4-2 (Gleissman 2007:269; see also Foster and Magdoff
2000; Lanyon 2000; 1995; Magdoff and van Es 2000:56; Magdoff et al. 1997:44; Naylor et al.
2005; NRC 1993:Ch. 11).45
Figure 4-2: A Disintegrated Agri-Food System with Linear P flows. Source: Sharpley (2006:12).
Crop operations grow feedstuffs, which are transported to feed mills in the regions where animal production has become concentrated. The feed mills supply feed to the livestock and poultry operations in these regions. Given the long distances typically separating livestock and poultry operations from the crop operations that supply them with feedstuffs, the cost of transporting manure back to the farms from which the phosphorus in it came is too high to make this a profitable option (Burke et al. 2009; Galloway et al. 2007; Naylor et al. 2005). So is the cost of removing phosphorus from manure or processing manure into a fertilizer that is less costly to
45 I am not suggesting that nutrients always cycled in prewar systems, or that they never cycle today. I am discussing general tendencies.
67 transport. Because nutrient cycling tends to be unprofitable, phosphorus tends to follow linear flows.
These one-way flows create ecological challenges at both ends.46 As Worldwatch researcher Gary Gardner once wrote, “reliance on linear flows instead of the traditional organic
‘loop’ comes at a price that is paid at both ends” (Gardner 1997:6).47 “[T]he flow must be fed at one end,” he explained, “and emptied at the other” (Gardner 1997:9; see also Magdoff et al.
1997).
At the upstream end, the fertilizer industry is depleting geologic deposits of phosphate rock, “a finite nonrenewable resource” (Stewart, Hammond, and Van Kauwenbergh 2005:17). To maintain soil fertility, crop operations must replace the phosphorus they export along with the feedstuffs they grow. They tend to rely upon commercial fertilizer to replenish their soil.48 The fertilizer industry mines phosphate rock, processes it into fertilizer, and then transports this fertilizer to the crop operations. In the process of feeding these linear flows, the industry has depleted deposits of phosphate rock.
46 The ecological impacts of nutrient cycling would depend upon how it was done. I cannot explore this issue here, except to note that transporting manure long distances would require energy (Lanyon 1995; Magdoff et al. 1997). The amount of energy needed might be reduced by processing manure, though that would require energy as well. The ecological consequences of encouraging nutrient cycling within the existing system need to be compared with the consequences of redesigning this system to make it more amenable to ecologically rational nutrient cycling.
47 In the case of phosphorus, the problems are not confined to the upstream and downstream ends of the flows. For example, phosphorus runoff from the crop operations that grow the feedstuffs can also be an issue (Carpenter 2008). We could also examine what becomes of all the phosphorus in the urine and excrement of humans who eat meat, milk, eggs, and other animal products, not to mention the phosphorus in the slaughterhouse waste, food scraps, and other bodily tissues that are not eaten. To fully understand the impact of industrial livestock and poultry production on the earth’s phosphorus cycle, we would need to follow the phosphorus wherever it took us. For my purposes here, however, the crucial link in the commodity chain is the livestock (or poultry) operation, for this is the link to which nutrient management regulations apply. Why the regulations apply to this link in the chain and not to any others is an interesting question, but one I cannot explore here. I do mention another link—the phosphate mine—to make the point that phosphorus runoff is not the only important environmental issue.
48 For some crop operations, sewage sludge and manure from nearby livestock and poultry operations are also potential sources of nutrients.
68 Agriculture requires a readily available supply of essential nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. For its phosphorus modern agriculture depends upon phosphate rock. Although some observers have raised the specter of “Peak phosphorus,”49 experts disagree about how much rock remains (Cordell, Drangert, and White 2009; Smil 2000; Stewart et al.
2005:19; Vaccari 2009; Van Vuuren, Bouwman, and Beusen, in press). Of more immediate concern than running out of phosphate rock is the fact that some of the deposits that are currently being depleted are less contaminated with naturally occurring cadmium than are those that might have to replace them (Smil 2000). The presence of cadmium in the food system is a public health concern. Phosphate mining also has local ecological impacts, transforming the landscape near the mines and producing various streams of waste, including phosphogypsum piles containing radium and heavy metals (Brown 2005; Smil 2000).
At the downstream end of the one-way flows, the challenge is how to manage the excess phosphorus accumulating on high-density livestock and poultry operations. As already mentioned, for many operations the least costly option is to dispose of surplus manure on site by applying it to farmland that does not need all of (or in some cases any of) the phosphorus in it.
This kind of “organic dumping,” as Gardner called it, not only wastes a valuable resource, but can also increase certain ecological risks, including the risk of phosphorus runoff (Gardner
1997:46).
In some regions, high-density livestock and poultry operations have been disposing of surplus manure on farmland for years or even decades, causing plant-available phosphorus to accumulate to levels that exceed the upper limit of the optimum range. Manure disposal is not
49 http://www.energybulletin.net/node/33164 (last visited on August 24, 2008). See also http://phosphorusfutures.net/ files/2_Peak%20P_SWhite_DCordell.pdf (last visited on August 24, 2008).
69 the only factor that has caused phosphorus to reach such high levels. Past fertilizer recommendations that now seem excessive also contributed to the problem (Smil 2000). But manure disposal has been, and continues to be, a major part of the problem.
Some of these high-phosphorus soils are located in the watersheds of aquatic ecosystems that are ecologically vulnerable to an influx of phosphorus. In these regions, the accumulated phosphorus is like “a ‘chemical time bomb’ in the soil,” ecologist Elena Bennett and her colleagues wrote (Bennett et al. 1999:74). Storm-induced runoff can wash the phosphorus into a surface water, where it can accelerate the process of eutrophication (Bennett and Carpenter 2002;
Bennett, Carpenter, and Caraco 2001; Carpenter 2008; 2005; Carpenter et al. 1998; Reed-
Andersen, Carpenter, and Lathrop 2000). (Some researchers are now concerned that climate change could increase runoff in certain regions by increasing the frequency and severity of storms.) If phosphorus is the nutrient limiting algal growth, an influx can lead to algae blooms.
After the bloom, when the algae die and sink to the bottom, microbes use oxygen to decompose them, depleting oxygen levels and creating hypoxic or even anoxic conditions in parts of the water column. Fish kills are an all-too-common occurrence in aquatic ecosystems that have become eutrophic.
To summarize, then, nonrenewable geological deposits of phosphate rock are being depleted, and then instead of being recycled and reused, the extracted phosphorus is being disposed of as a waste, sometimes in ways that increase the risk of phosphorus runoff and the accelerated eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems. This mismanagement of phosphorus is a good example of the irrationality of capitalist agriculture (cf. Foster and Magdoff 2000). A readily available supply of an essential nutrient is being depleted, jeopardizing the food security of
70 future generations, and this is being done to maximize short-term profits and provide consumers with relatively inexpensive animal products.
To my knowledge, no law bans the disposal of excess phosphorus or requires that the livestock and poultry sectors recycle and reuse this nutrient. If existing laws are any indication, policy makers do not seem to be concerned about conserving phosphate rock. Instead, what we have, where we have any laws at all, is a “eutrophication-driven regulatory regime” that accepts the disposal of a valuable resource, so long as it can be done without creating what the regulators define to be a legally unacceptable level of risk to aquatic ecosystems (Liu et al 2008:242). These regulations are the topic of the next section.
V. Nutrient Management Regulations
By the early 1990s, the link between manure disposal and eutrophication had led to calls for stringent nutrient management regulations restricting land application of manure (NRC
1993:406). This section discusses these regulations, focusing, in particular, on the issue of compliance costs. Although each jurisdiction’s regulations are somewhat unique, the basic structure is the same. The regulations define legally acceptable nutrient application rates, and by limiting the amount of nutrients that may be applied per acre, they limit the amount of manure that may be applied as well. In other words, the maximum legally acceptable nutrient application rate translates into a maximum legally acceptable manure application rate.
This rate has important economic implications for high-density livestock and poultry operations that generate surplus manure. Any surplus manure that may not legally be applied on site must be managed in some other, potentially more expensive way, such as hauling it to a farm that needs the nutrients and is willing to accept manure as a substitute for commercial fertilizer
71 or some other source of nutrients. All other things being equal, the higher the legally acceptable manure application rate, the greater the amount of manure that may be applied on site, and the lower the compliance costs. Because of its importance, we need to understand how this rate is set.
A key question is which nutrient should be used to set the rate. Initially, most states’ regulations dealt solely with nitrogen, basing the rate on how much nitrogen the land needed as fertilizer. Because of the N:P ratio issue mentioned above, “when manure is applied at rates sufficient to supply adequate nitrogen for most cropping conditions, excess amounts of phosphorus . . . are added” (NRC 1993:406). If, on the other hand, “manure application rates are based on achieving a balance between the phosphorus applied in the manure and the phosphorus requirement of the crop, twice as many or more acres will be required for manure application,” increasing manure disposal costs (Beegle 2000:165). In addition, nitrogen fertilizer will have to be added to supply the nitrogen needs of the crop. By allowing manure to be applied at a nitrogen-based rate, the regulations legalized the application of at least some excess phosphorus, though the nitrogen-based rate did place an upper limit on how much excess phosphorus could be applied.
By the late 1990s, for reasons explained in the next chapter, the regulated industry was facing the prospect of a shift to a phosphorus-based regulatory system—that is, a shift to regulations that would use phosphorus rather than nitrogen to set the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate. The industry feared that a phosphorus-based rate would be lower, forcing some regulated operations to adopt alternatives to on site disposal for at least some of their surplus manure. For many operations, these alternatives were more expensive, as
72 they still are today. So with the potential shift from a nitrogen-based to a phosphorus-based regulatory system, Ribaudo and his colleagues explained, certain sectors were facing the possibility of increased compliance costs:
Phosphorus-based standards are more costly than nitrogen-based standards. A farm-level analysis of hog and dairy CAFOs suggests that their production costs could increase by twice as much, on average, under a phosphorus-based versus a nitrogen-based standard. The higher cost associated with the phosphorus standard reflects higher concentrations of phosphorus in manure than of nitrogen, relative to crop nutrient needs. More land is required to spread manure under a phosphorus standard than under a [nitrogen] standard because less manure is needed per acre to satisfy crops’ phosphorus needs . . . (Ribaudo et al. 2003:iv, italics omitted).
Ribaudo and his colleagues presumed that the maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate would be based not on crop needs, but on assimilative capacity (Ribaudo et al.
2003:14, 16, 38). Starting from this premise, they demonstrated that compliance costs would likely be higher with a phosphorus-based rate than with a nitrogen-based rate. Yet they also noted that “[t]he cost gap between the nitrogen and phosphorus standards would shrink if regulations allow[ed] phosphorus to accumulate in the soil profile” (Ribaudo et al. 2003:iv). In other words, by allowing manure to be applied at rates that supply more phosphorus than can be assimilated, causing additional phosphorus to accumulate in the soil, regulators could minimize the increase in compliance costs associated with shifting from nitrogen-based to phosphorus-based regulations. As we will see in the next chapter, this is precisely what the P Index, the dominant approach to phosphorus-based regulation, does.
Regulatory compliance costs tend to vary by region. There are two main reasons for this.
The first is variation in state and local regulations. The second is that the cost of complying with the same regulation can differ by region. Compliance costs can be especially high in regions with
73 surplus manure, low willingness to accept manure, and a large number of livestock and poultry operations competing for farmland to use as a waste sink (Ribaudo 2003; Ribaudo et al. 2003;
Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff 2003).
Some regions would generate surplus manure even if all the farms in the region were willing to accept manure. As a result of the vertical coordination of animal production with processing, the pursuit of agglomeration economies, and other factors, “production-processing” complexes have emerged in certain regions, with livestock and poultry operations clustered together near slaughterhouses and other processing facilities (Farm Foundation 2006:2, 31; see also Haley 2004:8-9; Hubbell and Welsh 1998; MacDonald and Korb 2008:15-16; Pagano and
Abdalla 1994; Ribaudo 2003; Roe, Irwin, and Sharp 2002; Welsh et al. 2003). By importing feed, some complexes have formed in regions with relatively little farmland. In some regions this has led to such high densities of animals to farmland that there are regional surpluses of manure
(Gollehon et al. 2001; Kellogg et al. 2000).
Not all farms that could use manure are willing to accept it. Because manure is so expensive to transport, especially when handled as a liquid, as swine manure is, operations cannot afford to transport it very far.50 There must be sufficient local demand for manure, which may not be the case in regions with little crop production, or where a significant number of farmers are unwilling to accept it. As Marc Ribaudo and his colleagues explained, “[e]ven if land
50 Research is being done on ways of processing swine manure into a solid fraction that would be less expensive to transport long distances (see, e.g., http://www.sweeta.illinois.edu/landapp.cfm, last visited on July 15, 2008). This kind of research is nothing new (see Martin and Zering 1997:51). It is possible that, some time in the future, swine manure could become a valuable commodity rather than a waste. If this happens, we might see some interesting changes in the industry, including changes in contractual relationships. Production contracts typically assign ownership of the manure to the growers and make them responsible for managing it in compliance with any applicable environmental regulations. But if swine manure becomes valuable, packers might decide that it belongs to them (cf. Parker 2004:15). We might even see the development of publicly subsidized manure processing plants owned and operated by the packers.
74 is available for spreading in a county, not all landowners will be willing to take animal manure” (Ribaudo et al. 2003:37).
In some regions competition for land can be stiff. In regions with relatively low demand for manure, but with many livestock and poultry operations that have at least some manure they may not apply on site, regulated swine operations could face a daunting challenge. As Ribaudo and his colleagues explained, these operations “might be faced with the prospect of competing with other each other, as well as with confined dairy, beef, and poultry operations,” for nearby land (Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff 2003:36; see also Aillery et al. 2005:16-17). To make matters worse, in some regions sewage sludge haulers are also competing for land (Elliott,
Brandt, and Shortle 2007:16), and some livestock and poultry operations voluntarily comply with nutrient management plans, even though they are not required to, further increasing the competition (Ribaudo et al. 2003).51 As a result of these factors, in some regions the competition for land could become so stiff that “[f]inding enough land for spreading manure may be virtually impossible . . .” (Ribaudo 2003:35).
Regions with excess manure phosphorus are the kinds of places where regulatory compliance costs are likely to be especially high (Ribaudo 2003:35). In 1997, 152 counties in the
U.S. produced more manure phosphorus than could be assimilated by all the cropland and pastureland in the county (Gollehon et al. 2001:27).52 The number of counties with excess
51 There are several reasons for “voluntary” compliance. To obtain certain forms of financial assistance, operations must comply, and compliance can also provide legal benefits such as protection from nuisance lawsuits.
52 Focusing on counties is problematic. The relevant area for a regulated operation is typically determined by the cost of hauling manure, not by political jurisdiction (Ribaudo et al. 2003; Aillery, Gollehon, and Breneman 2005). Depending upon the distances involved, it could be less expensive to haul manure across a county line than to haul it somewhere within a county. Nevertheless, county-level data do give us some indication of where regulated operations are likely to face relatively high compliance costs.
75 phosphorus might have been even greater had the researchers considered the amount of plant- available phosphorus in the soil.
Some of the counties that had excess manure phosphorus are located in the Chesapeake
Bay watershed, including Pennsylvania’s portion of it, which is depicted in Figure 4-3 (Aillery,
Gollehon, and Breneman 2005; Arrington et al. 2007; Lanyon et al. 2006; PA NMAB,
Alternative Manure Utilization and Treatment Committee 2007; Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff
2003; Ribaudo et al. 2003:45, 83). Figure 4-4 shows the twenty-two Pennsylvania counties where in 2002 more manure phosphorus was produced than the cropland could assimilate. As you can see from Figure 4-3, many of these counties are located in the Bay watershed. Figure 4-5 takes into account the level of plant-available phosphorus in the soil. In 2002, it shows, the average level of plant-available phosphorus in the soil of many of the counties in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Bay watershed exceeded the upper limit of the optimum range. Taken together,
Figures 4-4 and 4-5 suggest that some of the counties in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Bay watershed generate more manure phosphorus than is needed as fertilizer by all the cropland in these counties.53
53 Pastureland was not included in these figures.
76 Figure 4-3: Pennsylvania’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Source: http:// www.depweb.state.pa.us/chesapeake/cwp/view.asp?a=3&q=442893#map (last visited on September 7, 2008).
Figure 4-4: Manure P minus P removal capacity of crops for Pennsylvania counties in 2002. Source: http://www.mawaterquality.agecon.vt.edu/PA/county_trends/ PActy_ManureP_vs_CropP_2002.html (last visited on June 5, 2009).
77
Figure 4-5: Average levels of plant-available P in the soils of PA counties in 2002. Source: Arrington et al. (2007:4).
Sewage sludge is also applied to farmland in this region (Elliott, Brandt, and Shortle
2007:16). Karl Brown, Executive Secretary of the Pennsylvania State Conservation Commission, testified in 2005 about the possible competition for farmland between sludge haulers, on the one hand, and livestock and poultry operations on the other. He also noted that, as more farmland is lost to development, there is less for which to compete:
In many instances, a phosphorous-based plan for a high-density operation will increase the amount of land needed to properly apply manure nutrients. In the south central and southeastern portions of the state, where livestock and poultry operations are most prevalent, obtaining additional land for manure application is a very real challenge. In these areas, livestock and poultry farm operations have increased in both size and density. Available cropland acres are declining and farmers are in stiff competition with land developers and biosolids generators for available acreage to apply excess manure
78 nutrients. And finally, while many areas may appear to remain “available” for manure applications, they are often off limits due to potential conflicts with local residences and business that oppose various aspects that sometimes accompanies [sic] these land application practices, such as odor.54
Relatively high compliance costs (compared to other regions) can place a region at a competitive disadvantage with others as a location for industrial livestock or poultry production
(Farm Foundation 2006:29; Ribaudo 2003; Ribaudo et al. 2003; Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff
2003). Marc Ribaudo and his colleagues described one possible scenario:
Manure nutrient standards have been shown to affect regions differently, largely because of the availability of cropland for spreading manure. Animal feeding operations in regions with abundant cropland would generally have lower costs than other regions, giving them a competitive advantage. These regional differences can spur shifts in production between regions . . . Large animal feeding operations looking to expand would likely consider the availability of spreadable land when making a decision. (Ribaudo et al. 2003:85).
If regulations undermine the profitability of a region where the industry has become established, the farmers, agribusiness employees, and others who depend upon the industry for their livelihoods could be hurt (Farm Foundation 2006:108-109; McBride and Key 2003:iv).
Agribusinesses might leave such a region or, if they stay, slowly succumb to competition from producers located in regions with lower compliance costs. As a report by USDA economists
William McBride and Nigel Key put it, “the relative mobility of the hog industry means that regulations could result in changes in the location of hog production facilities, with ripple effects for local economies” (McBride and Key 2003:iv).
Of course, regulatory compliance costs are not necessarily more important than labor costs or any of the other costs that tend to vary by region. It is conceivable, however, that, at least
54 http://www.senatorwaugh.com/ff101705/Brown.pdf (last visited on June 5, 2009).
79 in some cases, relatively high compliance costs could place a region at a competitive disadvantage with others as a location for the regulated industry (Farm Foundation 2006:29).
And regardless of the reality of this threat, regulators have taken it seriously, a point I return to in the next chapter.
A few years ago, Ribaudo (2003) raised the issue of whether nutrient management regulations were likely to undermine the profitability of industrial livestock and poultry production. At the time, he suggested that the jury was still out on this question: “Whether the additional costs of managing manure will significantly alter the current concentrated and integrated structure of livestock and poultry production remains to be seen” (Ribaudo
2003:36-37). More recently, MacDonald and McBride expressed doubt that regulatory compliance costs would make large-scale, high-density livestock and poultry operations unprofitable. Citing the potential for a five percent increase in production costs, they suggested that even “a cost increase of this magnitude [would be] more than offset by the production cost advantages of large operations . . ., so it is unlikely that farm structure would be altered by compliance costs that fall in the range reported in Ribaudo et al.” (MacDonald and McBride
2009:31; see also MacDonald et al. 2009:41). Although the regulations that have been promulgated in the U.S. are unlikely to reverse the industrialization of swine production–– indeed, as I show in the next chapter, they have been designed to maintain the profitability of the regulated industry––they do have the potential to determine which regions are able to attract and retain the industry (Ribaudo et al. 2003:vi, 2, 85). Relatively high compliance costs could make a region an unprofitable location for industrial swine production.
80 VI. Conclusion
In his discussion of how the disintegration of animal feeding from feedstuff production had overcome the traditional agroecological constraint on scale, Les Lanyon referred to a “shift in the nature of the agroecological constraint” (Lanyon 2005:577). Like the traditional constraint, this new one was land-based. But instead of being constrained by the capacity of farmland to grow feed, the industry was now constrained by the capacity of farmland to absorb surplus manure (see also Boehlje 1995; Farm Foundation 2006:20, 31).
An examination of this capacity forces us to rethink the role of land in industrial livestock and poultry production. Unlike many other forms of production, agriculture is land-based. In agriculture, Marx wrote, land “functions as an instrument of production, which is not the case with a factory, where it functions only as the foundation, the site, the spatial basis of operations . . .” (Marx 1991:916; see also 1990:285). Beginning with Karl Kautsky, scholars have argued that farmland presents obstacles to the industrialization of agriculture (for reviews, see, Mann 1990:29-31; Prudham 2005:13-14). At first glance, agribusiness appears to have overcome any land-based obstacles that might have once stood in the way of industrializing livestock and poultry production. Indeed, writing in the 1980s, at a time when broiler and egg production had already been thoroughly industrialized and the industrialization of swine production was well underway, David Goodman and his colleagues suggested that the industry had transcended any land-based constraints. They wrote:
In these livestock activities, the importance of nature as an independent variable, whether as land or biological factors, is rapidly diminishing. Most crucially, it no longer constitutes a barrier to industrial methods of organization based on centralized production units. Once the constraint of extensive land use or ‘free-range’ is overcome, centralized
81 production facilities can readily be designed which incorporate the latest innovations in materials handling, feed formulation, ambient control, veterinary science and microelectronics. The factory farm becomes a reality, with ‘farm’ indicating little more than that an agricultural product is being produced. (Goodman et al. 1987:180).
Susan Mann (1990:31) went so far as to describe the cattle feedlot—and, by extension, the swine or poultry confinement operation—as a type of “landless production,” more like a factory than a farm.
The notion that industrial swine production is landless makes a certain amount of sense.
Pasture is not needed because the animals spend their lives indoors, warehoused by the thousands inside of confinement facilities, eating feed delivered by automated dispensers.
Because feed can be obtained as an input, rather than something grown on the operation, cropland is not needed either—or at least not as a source of feed. Land is needed for the confinement facility, and for a road leading to and from it so that trucks can deliver inputs (e.g., swine and feed) and haul away outputs (e.g., swine who have reached market weight and are trucked to the slaughterhouse). On some operations, there is also a waste lagoon or some other type of outdoor manure storage structure; on others, the storage structure is a pit located beneath the confinement facility that collects the feces and urine, among other things, that fall through the slatted floors. But land used for roads, confinement facilities, and manure storage structures is not farmland. It is part of the site for what amounts to an animal feeding or breeding “factory.”
A recent USDA-ERS report estimated that, in the United States, 68% of fed cattle production, 16% of dairy cow production, 22% of market hog production, 40% of broiler chicken production, and 45% percent of total poultry production occurred on operations with no cropland (MacDonald et al. 2009:5).55 Yet as these figures also suggest, most swine operations,
55 It is unclear from this study whether these operations had any pastureland or other types of farmland.
82 for example, do have at least some cropland. This does not mean that they grow the feedstuffs eaten by their animals. In the vertically coordinated swine sector, where much of the finishing is done under production contract, contractors typically supply feed to their growers. It is rare for swine growers to grow any of their own feed.
On mixed swine/crop operations, cropland clearly plays a role in the crop production side of the business. But what about the animal production side? Just because it is not a source of the animals’ feed does not mean that farmland plays no role in swine production. For many operations with surplus manure, particularly those run by indebted contract farmers, the only economically viable option is to dispose of at least some of this manure on site by applying it to farmland that does not need all the nutrients in it. For these operations, farmland is a crucial
“component of the waste disposal system” (Furuseth 1997:395; see also Haley, Jones, and
Southard 1998).
Writing in the journal Science, Stanford economist Rosamond Naylor and her colleagues argued that “[t]he industrial livestock [and poultry] sector[s] ha[d] become footloose—no longer tied to a local land base for feed inputs or to supply animal power or manure for crop production” (Naylor et al. 2005:1621). It is true that the industrial swine sector is no longer tied to a local land base for feed, and that this has given packers a certain degree of mobility. But given the cost of transporting liquid swine manure—or of processing it into a form that is less costly to transport—the industry is still tied to a local land base for waste disposal. In short, the industrialization of swine production has transformed the farmland on many swine operations from a source of the animals’ feed to a sink for their waste.
83 The uneven geographical distribution of manure “absorptive capacity” has the potential to influence the location of the industrial livestock and poultry sectors (Farm Foundation
2006:20, 31). It is important to realize, however, that this capacity is socionatural. It has to do with real material constraints, such as the density of animals to farmland in a region and the level of plant-available phosphorus in the soil, but it is also a legal construct defined by regulators.
One of the reasons it has the potential to influence the location of the regulated industry is that different jurisdictions have defined it differently. As with similar ideas, such as the capacity of surface waters to assimilate pollutants without becoming polluted, scientists have played a critical role in the process of defining this capacity. The next chapter examines this regulatory science.
If regulatory pressure had never emerged, the industrial swine sector could have continued disposing of excess phosphorus on farmland, depleting geological deposits of phosphate rock and accelerating the eutrophication of surface waters, without undermining its own profitability. Disposal would have begun to threaten profits only if the industry had increased its feed costs or contaminated its sources of inexpensive, clean drinking water for the animals. Now that the accelerated eutrophication of surface waters has been framed as an environmental problem requiring a regulatory solution, however, the threat of high compliance costs has transformed excess phosphorus into a potential obstacle to the profitability of the industry, and of regions as locations for it.
It therefore makes sense to think of excess phosphorus as a socioecological obstacle rather than one that is purely ecological. Comparing it with the traditional agroecological constraint will clarify what I mean. With the traditional constraint, a swine operation simply
84 could not feed a greater number of animals than it could grow feed for, regardless of what was said about the situation. This constraint operated automatically; it did not need to be framed as constraining. By contrast, the new socioecological constraint (i.e., phosphorus loading capacity) is constraining only because it is defined to be. In this case the scarcity in nature is legally induced.
In the next two chapters, I turn to various efforts to overcome this socioecological obstacle by keeping compliance costs in check. There are many possible approaches (see, e.g.,
Ribaudo et al. 2003:Ch. 4; McCann et al. 2005; PA NMAB, Alternative Manure Utilization and
Treatment Committee 2007), but they can be divided into four types. The goal of the first two is to maximize the amount of manure that may legally be applied on the operation where it was produced. This can be accomplished in at least two ways. The first is to craft regulations that set a high maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate, thereby minimizing the legally induced scarcity in phosphorus loading capacity. The second approach is to decrease the concentration of phosphorus in manure. The lower the concentration of phosphorus, the greater the amount of manure that may be applied per acre without exceeding the maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate (Hoag and Roka 1995:164; Ribaudo et al. 2003:19, 39,
47, 49-50, 53). The third strategy is to develop low-cost (or even profitable) ways of dealing with any manure that may not be applied on the operation where it was produced. Various efforts are currently underway to attempt to transform surplus manure from an unwanted waste into a valuable commodity (see, e.g., Ribaudo et al. 2003:45, 47, 49, 50; PA NMAB, Alternative
Manure Utilization and Treatment Committee 2007). The fourth and final approach, which can help with both the second and third, is to have taxpayers pay some of the industry’s compliance
85 costs, which is what the federal EQIP program does (Ribaudo, Cattaneo, and Agapoff 2004;
Starmer and Wise 2007).
In the remainder of this thesis, I focus on the first and the second approaches. In the next chapter, I suggest that public agricultural researchers laid the scientific foundation for an approach to phosphorus-based nutrient management regulation that maximized the amount of excess phosphorus that could legally be applied. In chapter six I describe three techno-fixes that are being used to reduce the phosphorus content of swine manure. Taken together, the two chapters demonstrate how agri-environmental technoscience helps keep compliance costs in check.
86 Chapter 5. AGRI-ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATORY SCIENCE
I. Introduction
Over the course of the past sixty years, regions of concentrated animal production have developed in Pennsylvania, particularly in the southeastern part of the Commonwealth. By importing feedstuffs from the Midwest, these regions have developed such high densities of animals to farmland that they generate surplus manure. A key to the profitability of the livestock and poultry sectors in these regions has been their ability to use farmland as a low-cost sink for the disposal of manure. For decades the industry had little trouble securing access to the farmland sink, but this began to change in the early 1980s, when scientists linked manure disposal to the ecological degradation of the Chesapeake Bay. The national campaign to save the
Bay led to calls for stringent nutrient management regulations restricting land application of manure. From this point on, access to the farmland sink was politicized, and on several occasions the industry confronted a looming manure disposal crisis—the possibility of having no affordable, legal options available for disposing of, or otherwise dealing with, some or all of its surplus manure. This chapter focuses on two of these moments when regulatory pressure precipitated an imminent crisis. Focusing on the second in particular, I argue that public agricultural scientists helped the regulated industry avert a full-blown crisis.
The chapter is organized as follows. The first section explains how efforts to save the Bay precipitated an imminent manure disposal crisis. The second section describes how the
Commonwealth’s initial, nitrogen-based regulations helped avert a full-blown crisis. The third
87 section explains how the emergence of “new science” about phosphorus undermined the scientific legitimacy of the nitrogen-based regulations, precipitating a second imminent manure disposal crisis. The fourth section explains how public agricultural scientists helped design regulations that addressed the phosphorus issue without undermining the profitability of the regulated industry. A concluding section discusses what these findings suggest about the role of public agricultural research institutions in the regulatory process.
II. The Bay and the first imminent manure disposal crisis
It was immediately apparent to leaders in Pennsylvania’s agricultural industry that saving the Bay might be bad for business, particularly for farmers and agribusinesses located in
Pennsylvania’s portion of the Bay watershed. In an article titled “Chesapeake Bay Study Points
Finger at Susquehanna River,” published in the November 1982 edition of Grist from the Mill, the journal of PennAg Industries, Pennsylvania’s major agribusiness trade association, executive vice president David Brubaker alerted readers to the soon-to-be released 1983 Chesapeake Bay
Program report on the ecological degradation of the Bay (Brubaker 1982). After flowing through the agricultural landscape of southeastern Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna empties into the Bay, supplying this estuary with more than half its freshwater (Brubaker 2002:xiii; Stranahan
1995:Ch.7). The Bay study suggested that the river was picking up nutrient-rich agricultural runoff along the way and depositing the nutrients in the Bay, accelerating its eutrophication.
The study highlighted the problem of surplus manure, particularly in southeastern
Pennsylvania, in the lower Susquehanna sub-basin (see also King 1970). The manure management challenge was especially pressing in Lancaster County, where decades of manure disposal had contaminated groundwater and polluted surface waters. A 1982 report by the
88 Lancaster County Conservation District described the situation along the Conestoga River, a tributary of the Susquehanna that has been described as “the Susquehanna’s foremost manure conveyor” (Brubaker 2002:213). By the early 1980s, the report explained, “[t]he majority of the
Conestoga River Watershed ha[d] reached the saturation level in regards to available land to spread manure without causing damage to the soil or water quality” (LCCD 1982:5). Beyond these local impacts, the Conestoga was carrying nutrients to the Susquehanna, which was transporting them downstream to the Bay (Abdalla, Beegle, and McSweeny 1987; Beegle 1983;
Conway 1984; LCCD 1982; Schueller 1983; Shortle 1984; Stranahan 1995:Ch.7; Weidner 1988;
Young et al. 1985; Young and Crowder 1986; Young and Magleby 1987). If the Bay was going to be saved, something would need to be done about the issue of surplus manure in places like
Lancaster County.
Pennsylvania started regulating land application of manure in the late 1970s. In June of
1977, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources promulgated regulations allowing operations to apply manure without a permit, so long they followed the Manure
Management for Environmental Protection manual (PA DER 1977).56 According to a report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, enforcement of these regulations was lax (Garber and Gardner
1989).
The Bay issue threatened to create a much less industry friendly regulatory environment.
Aware of this risk, Penn Ag’s Brubaker urged the agricultural industry to respond to the issue proactively rather than reactively. He warned of “environmentalists wanting to cripple agriculture through stringent regulation and legislation” (Brubaker 1985:23). Referring to the
56 PA Bulletin, 7(23), Saturday, June 4, 1977, p. 1478.
89 Bay study, he told readers that it was “our duty to respond to these findings with sound recommendations” (Brubaker 1982:15). “Too often,” he wrote, “such studies serve as springboards for the legislative designs of those with extreme views, providing them with ammunition to further a variety of hidden and overt interests” (Brubaker 1982:15).
Brubaker acknowledged that manure disposal was partly to blame for the influx of nutrients into the Bay. “Clearly, in animal-intensive Lancaster County, for example, the problem centers partially around the huge volume of manure which is applied to the soil each year” (Brubaker 1985:20). But a heavy-handed regulatory approach that banned or severely restricted high-density livestock and poultry operations was not the way to save the Bay. “There has been talk of limiting the number of animal units per acre, of limiting the quantity and timing of agricultural chemical and fertilizer application, and so on,” he warned (Brubaker 1985:23).
“To prevent such proposals from being seriously considered,” he wrote, “a positive industry approach is essential” (Brubaker 1985:23). One of the major challenges was to find ways of dealing with surplus manure. “How can we transport it economically? Are there other uses for manure which are now being ignored?” Brubaker asked (Brubaker 1985:25).
Brubaker’s advice to the industry—that it should deal with the Bay issue proactively rather than reactively, shaping the policy response as much as possible—was echoed by Penn
State agricultural economist Lou Moore, who at the time wrote a regular column in PennAg
Journal. In August of 1987, the journal published a summary of remarks he had made at
PennAg’s June 29, 1987 program on “Pennsylvania Agribusiness and the Bay” (Moore 1987).
Moore had offered this advice:
Agribusiness cannot afford to be defensive. There is probably no point in delaying involvement because the costs will increase with time. We must favor research which will
90 result in facts rather than guestimates. There will likely be payoffs for early innovators. You will need to develop legislation as individuals and through your trade association. You can help make legislation “less unreasonable than it might be otherwise.” It may become necessary in the future to tax yourselves for research and education, even though agriculture does not have the discretionary income it had in the 1970’s. (Moore 1987:33).
“Hopefully,” he concluded, “cooperative efforts will result in programs which will save the Bay without making farms and agribusiness firms noncompetitive” (Moore 1987:33). Instead of denying agriculture’s role in the degradation of the Bay, the industry should address the issue head on, Moore argued, shaping the policy response. If legislation could not be avoided, it could at least be made as industry friendly as possible, perhaps with the help of agricultural researchers.
During the 1980s, Pennsylvania became part of a national effort to save the Bay. The
1983 CBP study led to the signing of the 1983 Chesapeake Bay Agreement by the administrator of the US EPA, the mayor of Washington, DC, and the governors of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Maryland. In 1987 the parties signed another agreement, promising that by July of 1988 they would “develop, adopt and begin implementation of a basin-wide strategy to equitably achieve by the year 2000 at least a 40 percent reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus entering the main stem of the Chesapeake Bay.”57
It was the concrete nutrient reduction goals in the 1987 agreement that put regulatory pressure on Pennsylvania’s livestock and poultry sectors. In July of 1988, the Chesapeake
Executive Council published a “Baywide Nutrients Reduction Strategy,”58 which included as an appendix Pennsylvania’s “Chesapeake Bay Program Nutrient Reduction Strategy.” According to the Pennsylvania strategy, because “animal waste [was] a dominant source of nutrients,” “[a]
57 http://www.chesapeakebay.net/pubs/199.pdf (last visited on June 19, 2009).
58 http://www.chesapeakebay.net/content/publications/cbp_12114.pdf (last visited on June 19, 2009).
91 successful nutrient reduction program [would need to] place emphasis on manure nutrient management” (p. 6). From this point on, political pressure began to build for legal restrictions on manure disposal (Ernst 2003; Favero 1997). On July 5, 1988, Representative Jeffrey Coy introduced the first nutrient management bill, HB 2616, in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, but it was ultimately killed. A major turning point occurred in 1990, however, when a special committee appointed by Governor Robert P. Casey concluded that a voluntary approach would not do, and that the Commonwealth should enact nutrient management legislation (Governor
Casey’s Select Committee 1990). On May 20, 1993, after five years of often heated legislative debate, Governor Casey signed into law Act 6 of 1993, commonly known as the Pennsylvania
Nutrient Management Act (NMA),59 which required certain high-density livestock and poultry operations to implement nutrient management plans (NMPs). In a concession to the regulated industry, the NMA preempted the authority of local governments to regulate land application of manure more stringently than the state.
Over the course of the five-year debate, many issues were raised, far too many to discuss here, but one of the consistent themes was concern about compliance costs. Consider the testimony of John Zerbe, a representative of Purina Mills, who at an October 19, 1989 legislative hearing on a bill warned legislators that “House Bill 1838 or any significant effort to manage nutrient excess from commercial agriculture has the potential to inflict enormous financial impacts on the agricultural industry” (Tr., p.168). According to Zerbe, even a slight increase in manure disposal costs could put Pennsylvania’s livestock and poultry sectors at a competitive disadvantage. He cited the egg sector to make his point:
59 In 2006 Act 6 of 1993 was replaced by Act 38, commonly known as ACRE.
92 In the highly competitive egg industry, which Pennsylvania ranks among the leaders in the nation, [an] additional cost of two cents per dozen would result in the Pennsylvania egg producer becoming noncompetitive; and, in fact, would probably result in the end of that industry in some parts of the state.
To me, that is an economic reality and must be addressed with any piece of legislation managing nutrient resources. I could make a very similar analysis of other agricultural industries, whether it be the dairy, hog or meat, [sic] bird industry.
We must find ways through education and research to develop the necessary technologies to economically handle the nutrients produced from the agricultural industry of Pennsylvania. Without economic alternatives, we either will not solve the problem created by nutrient excess or we will bring an end to the thriving agricultural industry in some parts of this state. (Tr., pp. 170-171).
Penn State agricultural economists James Shortle and Wesley Musser (1992) expressed similar concerns.
Given that industries facing regulatory pressure have an incentive to make inflated claims about potential compliance costs, one should be skeptical of such claims. Whatever their validity, however, the industry’s concerns influenced the final legislation. The NMA included a provision providing financial assistance to existing operations to help them comply.60 Because taxpayers had to pick up the tab, however, the Commonwealth had an incentive to keep these expenditures to a minimum. In the next section I suggest that the need to keep compliance costs in check influenced the Commonwealth’s decision to use nitrogen rather than phosphorus to set the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate.
III. Nitrogen-based regulations help avert the crisis
Instead of regulating all agricultural operations, or even all livestock and poultry operations, the NMA targeted certain high-density livestock and poultry operations, which it
60 Act 6 of 1993, Section 9.
93 called concentrated animal operations (CAOs). The act defined CAOs as “agricultural operations where the animal density exceeds two AEU’s per acre on an annualized basis.”61 Concentrated animal operations were required to implement nutrient management plans (NMPs), which determined how much manure could be applied. Other operations were encouraged to implement
NMPs voluntarily, and doing so entitled them to various benefits, including protection from lawsuits.
The decision to target CAOs was based upon research by Penn State agronomist Les
Lanyon (Beegle 2007a; Dionis 1999). Shortly after the statute was enacted, he and fellow Penn
State agronomist Doug Beegle explained the rationale:
The criterion of two animal units per acre is a fairly high animal density. Farms with a higher density are likely to have more nutrients than can be utilized safely by crops on the farm. Thus nutrient management plans often will not only include detailed plans for on- farm manure utilization but also may require plans for moving some manure off the farm. (Beegle and Lanyon 1993:n.p.).
The act targeted operations with such high densities because they were likely to generate surplus manure.
The act required the SCC to promulgate regulations establishing minimum criteria that certified nutrient management specialists would be required to follow when developing NMPs for regulated and volunteer operations. These criteria were required to include, among other things, “procedures to determine proper application rates of nutrients to be applied to land based on conditions of soil and levels of existing nutrients in the soil and the type of agricultural,
61 Section 6(a). An AEU was defined as “One thousand pounds live weight of livestock or poultry animals, regardless of the actual number of individual animals comprising the unit” (Section 3). An AEU per acre was defined as “An animal equivalent unit per acre of crop land or acre of land suitable for application of animal manure” (Section 3). The act did not define suitable, but the regulations did (Meloy 2002).
94 horticultural or floricultural production to be conducted on the land.”62 Nutrient management specialists would be required to follow these criteria when calculating the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate for each field. While developing the regulations, the SCC was required to consult with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental Resources, and the Nutrient Management Advisory Board, which was created by the statute. The SCC was also required to review three technical documents—the first published by the DER, the second by Penn State, and the third by the USDA Soil
Conservation Service.63
One of the most important questions that had to be answered was which nutrient should be used to determine the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate. The legislators created a rebuttable presumption that nitrogen was the nutrient about which the SCC should be primarily concerned. The nitrogen presumption provision read as follows:
The criteria to be established pursuant to this section shall include the following:
An identification of nutrients as defined by this act. Unless otherwise appropriate pursuant to specific criteria which shall be established by the commission, there shall be a presumption that nitrogen is the nutrient of primary concern.64
The establishment of procedures to determine proper application rates of nutrients to be applied to land based on conditions of soil and levels of existing nutrients in the soil and the type of agricultural, horticultural or floricultural production to be conducted on the land.65
62 Section 4(1)(ii).
63 This agency is now called the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS).
64 Section 4(1)(i).
65Section 4(1)(ii).
95 The legislative history of this provision, along with retrospective comments by knowledgeable observers, suggests that it was included in the legislation to help keep compliance costs in check.
The N/P issue was discussed several times during the five-year legislative debate. At an
October 19, 1989 hearing on HB 1838, Mike Brubaker, proprietor of Brubaker Agronomic
Consulting Service, testified about the issue: “One of the things that changes nutrient management the most and what concerns me the most right now,” he told legislators, “would be the selection of the nutrient by which the maximum application rates are set” (Tr. pp. 69-70).
More manure could be applied if the rate were based upon nitrogen than if it were based upon phosphorus, he explained, adding that “I think we very much need to keep that in the back of our mind” (Tr. p. 70). This issue was especially critical in places like Lancaster County, where,
Brubaker explained, “the manure we produce generates more phosphorus than what the crops needs are” (Tr., p. 178).
The most extensive discussion of the N/P issue took place several years later, on
November 24, 1992, during a floor debate on SB 1444.66 This bill would have required the SCC to promulgate regulations providing minimum criteria for nutrient management plans, including,
“[u]nless otherwise appropriate, a presumption that nitrogen is the nutrient of primary concern.”67 This provision would have created a rebuttable presumption that the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate should be based upon the nitrogen content of the manure.
During the debate, Rep. Hershey offered an amendment that would have replaced the bill’s nitrogen presumption provision with one that read: “Unless otherwise specified, a
66 Legislative Journal—House November 24, 1992, pp. 2055-2073.
67 SB 1444, Session of 1991, Printer’s Number 2634, Section 503(1)(i).
96 presumption shall be that nitrogen is the sole nutrient of primary concern.”68 This provision would have precluded the SCC from promulgating regulatory criteria requiring that the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate be based upon a consideration of both the nitrogen and the phosphorus content of the manure.
When Rep. Coy expressed his opposition to the amendment, Rep. Strittmatter took issue with him, leading to a debate that raised the issue of scientific uncertainty.
Mr. STRITTMATTER. . . . [D]o you believe that there is a problem in this amendment because you believe that there are other nutrients that should be listed, and if so, what nutrients would you want to have listed so all our farmers would know beforehand how they would be policed?69
Mr. COY. The primary concern on the part of this legislation is on the nutrient nitrogen. That is the primary concern, but that is what we know now. That is what science tells us now. We do not know what science will tell us years from now, whether other chemicals, other identifications of that sort might come to the surface. The source that we are concerned about now is nitrogen. That is why we identify it in the legislation as a “primary concern.” There may be others that come and science brings to us in the future, but this is our primary concern. It is not, however, our sole concern, and that is what the amendment says, and that is the reason for my opposition to it.70
[. . .]
Mr. STRITTMATTER. . . . From what the previous speaker, Representative Coy, was explaining, this is an open-ended bill if we do not specify. You know, he is the one that is championing this bill; he is the one that is advocating defeat of this amendment, but yet he says he is not sure what science is going to prove in the future. I believe that we should have certainty if we are going to be writing this legislation and that farmers should know ahead of time what they need to put in these plans and not wait until later to find out what they are going to be required to perform.
I would ask that we support the Hershey amendment so in that way we can have some certainty and understand what we are supposed to be measuring. I believe that having it open-ended is going to be a disservice to agriculture and also a disservice to the
68 Legislative Journal—House, November 24, 1992, p. 2057 (italics added).
69 Legislative Journal—House, November 24, 1992, p. 2058.
70 Legislative Journal—House, November 24, 1992, p. 2058.
97 environmental interest of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation by having a bill that is not workable. If there are problems that are scientifically found, as Representative Coy was talking about, in the future, then that would be the time to address that, at that time . . . 71
After the amendment was rejected, Rep. Barley expressed concern that a technician developing a NMP could decide to base it on phosphorus or some other nutrient besides nitrogen.
Rep. Barley asked Rep. Coy to clarify his position on this matter:
Mr. BARLEY. . . . At what point would it be appropriate and who would be making the decision that it is appropriate to deal with a nutrient other than nitrogen? We as elected members of this Commonwealth are making laws today, and my concern is the vagueness of this particular paragraph. So I am asking, in your opinion, what is your legislative intent, what is your purpose, and at what point would it be appropriate and for whom would it be appropriate to make a decision that a nutrient should be included other than just nitrogen?72
Rep. Coy responded that only the SCC would have the authority to decide that NMPs should address other nutrients. To do this, the SCC would need to promulgate new regulatory criteria, which would then have to be followed by the technicians developing NMPs in the field.73 This discussion made it clear that, without regulatory authority, a technician developing a NMP could not use phosphorus to set the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate. Ultimately, however, this bill did not become law.
During the 1993 session, Rep. Coy introduced HB 100, the second version of which became the NMA.74 The first version contained the same nitrogen presumption provision that SB
1444 had had.75 During a debate on the floor of the House, Representatives Coy and Barley
71 Legislative Journal—House, November 24, 1992, p. 2058.
72 Legislative Journal—House, November 24, 1992, p. 2068.
73 Legislative Journal—House, November 24, 1992, p. 2068.
74 The first version was HB 100, Session of 1993, Printer’s Number 109. The second was HB 100, Session of 1993, Printer’s Number 178.
75 HB 100, Session of 1993, Printer’s Number 109.
98 introduced a co-sponsored amendment that changed the provision.76 The original provision required the regulatory criteria to include, “[u]nless otherwise appropriate, a presumption that nitrogen is the nutrient of primary concern.”77 The amendment changed it to read: “Unless otherwise appropriate pursuant to specific criteria which shall be established by the commission, there shall be a presumption that nitrogen is the nutrient of primary concern.”78 This made it clear that only the SCC could rebut the nitrogen presumption, and that it could do so only by establishing specific criteria, presumably by promulgating regulations. The amendment was approved, and on May 20, 1993, Governor Casey signed the amended bill into law.79
Looking back on the legislative debate, several observers have suggested that the nitrogen presumption provision was inserted into the legislation to avert a manure disposal crisis.
Consider a 1998 report by the Chesapeake Bay Commission (CBC), a legislative commission serving Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (CBC 1998).80 According to the report, the provision
was inserted by design [into the statute] to address the technical and political debate prevalent at the time of the act’s passage. Of concern was the threat that manure application rates based on crop needs for phosphorus, rather than nitrogen, would significantly limit, or altogether eliminate, such applications on farms in areas with high concentrations of animal production facilities. To the extent that applications based on nitrogen resulted in excess phosphorus levels in the soil, it was believed that established soil conservation and erosion practices would be incorporated into the planning criteria, thus minimizing phosphorus loss to the environment. (CBC 1998:7).
76 Legislative Journal—House, February 2, 1993, p. 118.
77 HB 100, PN 109, Section 4(1)(i).
78 Legislative Journal—House, February 2, 1993, p. 118 (italics added).
79 Legislative Journal, May 24, 1993.
80 Similar retrospective analyses were offered by officials from the CBC, the SCC, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation during an April 26, 2001 legislative oversight hearing on Pennsylvania’s regulatory system (Tr., pp. 22-23, 131-133, 147-148).
99 The report suggests that the legislative preference for nitrogen-based NMPs was motivated, at least in part, by the need to keep manure disposal costs in check. Maintaining the economic viability of CAOs—and the profitability of the industries that depended upon them—required that they be able to continue to use farmland as a low-cost sink for the disposal of surplus manure. By setting a relatively generous maximum legally acceptable manure application rate, nitrogen-based NMPs would enable them to do that.
But applying manure at a nitrogen-based rate would cause excess phosphorus to accumulate in the soil, increasing the risk of phosphorus runoff. According to the CBC report, the legislators relied upon the “conventional wisdom” at the time, which held that controlling soil erosion was sufficient to control phosphorus runoff (CBC 1998:7). The conventional wisdom offered a plausible scientific justification for the Commonwealth’s nitrogen-based regulatory approach: phosphorus could be allowed to accumulate in the soil, so long as erosion was controlled.
After the legislation was enacted, the N/P issue entered the regulatory realm. Working in consultation with the NMAB, as required by the act,81 the SCC started developing the regulations. The act created the NMAB and specified the interests that would be represented on it.82 It was to have fifteen members, appointed by the chairman of the SCC and approved by a two-thirds vote of the SCC. There were to be “five active commercial farm owners or operators representing the livestock, swine, meat poultry, egg poultry and dairy industry nominated by
Statewide general farm organizations, one veterinary nutrition specialist, one representative from the feed industry, one representative from the fertilizer industry, one representative of
81 Act 6 of 1993, Section 4(6) and Section 8.
82Act 6 of 1993, Section 8(a).
100 commercial agricultural lenders, one representative of local government, one representative of academia who shall be an agronomist or plant scientist faculty member of the school of agriculture of a Pennsylvania college or university, one hydrologist, two citizen representatives who are not farmers and one environmental representative . . .”83 The first meeting was held on
September 29, 1993.
By consulting with the NMAB and reviewing the three technical documents it was required to consult, the SCC presumably obtained scientific advice about the issue of phosphorus runoff. To appreciate the significance of this advice, one needs some scientific background on phosphorus runoff. What follows is a brief discussion of what scientists currently know. Of course, what they know now is not necessarily what they knew back when the SCC was developing the regulations. Indeed, the next section describes the emergence in the late 1990s of
“new” science about phosphorus runoff. Even so, a review of what is currently known will provide the background information the reader needs to understand the significance of the scientific advice that was available to the SCC.
It is essential to have a clear understanding of what phosphorus runoff is. The first step is to define agricultural runoff. One should not equate agricultural runoff with surface runoff; surface runoff is just one component of agricultural runoff. As Andrew Sharpley and his colleagues explained, “[a]gricultural runoff is all water draining from an area (field or watershed) including surface runoff, subsurface flow, leaching, and tile drainage processes” (Sharpley et al.
2003:4). The phrase phosphorus runoff refers to “[t]he loss of [phosphorus] in agricultural
83 Act 6 of 1993, Section 8(a).
101 runoff . . .” (Sharpley et al. 2003:10). In most agricultural watersheds, surface runoff accounts for most of the phosphorus runoff (Sharpley et al. 2003:11).
It is also crucial to understand that phosphorus can be lost from a particular field or other area of a farm without ending up in a surface water. For example, phosphorus might flow from one field to another but stay on the farm. The main ecological objective of phosphorus-based nutrient management is to reduce the risk of phosphorus loss to surface waters. Unless otherwise specified, when I use the phrase phosphorus runoff I mean the loss of phosphorus from farmland to a surface water.
One also needs to understand the forms of phosphorus that can be found in agricultural runoff, along with the processes that generate those forms. There are two main forms: (1) sediment-bound phosphorus (often called particulate phosphorus) and (2) dissolved phosphorus
(often called soluble phosphorus) (Sharpley et al. 2003:10). Sharpley and his colleagues explained the difference between the two, including the different processes that generate them:
Sediment P includes P associated with soil particles and organic material eroded during flow events and constitutes about 80 percent of P transported in surface runoff from most cultivated land . . . [The] dissolved form comes from the release of P from soil and plant material . . . This release occurs when rainfall or irrigation water interacts with a thin layer of surface soil (1 to 2 inches) and plant material before leaving the field as surface runoff . . . Most dissolved P is immediately available for biological uptake [by algae and other aquatic organisms]. Sediment P is not readily available, but it can be a long-term source of P for aquatic biota . . . (Sharpley et al. 2003:10-11, citations and other text omitted).
Figure 5-1 illustrates the various ways in which phosphorus can flow from farmland to a surface water.
102
Figure 5-1: Phosphorus runof. Source: Sharpley (2006:16).
As mentioned above, the SCC was statutorily required to consult three technical documents. The first was the PA DER’s Manure Management for Environmental Protection manual. Originally published in 1977 and updated in 1986, the manual was developed with the help of specialists at the USDA Soil Conservation Service and the Penn State Cooperative
Extension Service (PA DER 1986a:1). Its Field Application of Manure supplement discussed phosphorus runoff in the following passage:
Because the soluble forms of phosphorus are rapidly converted to insoluble forms, phosphorus is not often leached from the soil, though some may be lost in runoff and so contribute to water pollution. Most phosphorus loss is due to erosion, and the phosphorus carried into surface waters by erosion can eventually dissolve and be a source of water pollution. (PA DER 1986b:3).
Although it stressed the importance of sediment-bound phosphorus, this passage did not rule out the possibility that dissolved phosphorus might be released from the soil or from plant material and be carried by surface runoff into an aquatic ecosystem.
103 The second document was the USDA Soil Conservation Service’s Pennsylvania
Technical Guide for Soil and Water Conservation. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a copy.
The third was the Penn State Agronomy Guide. Doug Beegle, who served as a scientific advisor to the NMAB while the regulations were being developed, wrote the relevant section, which dealt with soil fertility management. The 1993-1994 edition, published in July of 1992, was the most recent one available when the act was signed into law.84 Like the manure manual, this edition stressed erosion and sediment-bound phosphorus, suggesting that “about the only way that phosphorus is lost is if the soil itself is lost through erosion” (PSU College of
Agricultural Sciences 1992:22). In the subsequent edition (1995-1996), however, which was published in July of 1994, the discussion changed significantly. After noting that “the major”––as opposed to about the only––“way that phosphorus is lost is if the soil itself is lost through erosion” (PSU College of Agricultural Sciences 1994:24), it added this important caveat:
There is some recent evidence that, in spite of its low solubility, significant amounts of soluble phosphorus can be lost in runoff from fields with very high or excessive soil test phosphorus levels. Therefore, from an environmental perspective, it is best to manage phosphorus to avoid excessive soil test phosphorus levels if possible. (PSU College of Agricultural Sciences 1994:24).
The term excessive is a soil test category derived from agronomic soil testing.85 Soils with this level of soil test phosphorus, a measure of plant-available phosphorus, already have more than enough phosphorus as fertilizer, and an agronomist would typically recommend that
84 The cover says it is the 1993-1994 edition, but the pages say 1992-1993. The back cover says it was published in July of 1992.
85 The phrase very high is not a soil test category, but high is. Perhaps very high means the high end of the high category.
104 no additional phosphorus be applied. In fact, even soils in the lower category of high typically need no additional phosphorus. Beegle implied that the ecological risks associated with allowing soil test phosphorus to reach excessive levels outweigh any agronomic benefits. He recommended that excessive levels be avoided, but only if possible. Although banning the dumping of phosphorus on soils that already have excessive levels of it might make ecological sense, especially when one also considers the benefits of conserving phosphate rock for future generations, it remained to be seen whether the SCC would adopt this approach.
The big issue was whether the SCC, after consulting the Agronomy Guide and consulting with the NMAB and Beegle, would promulgate regulations that banned (or at least restricted) the application of manure to farmland at rates that supplied more phosphorus than was needed as fertilizer. The answer came on March 13, 1997, when the SCC approved the final regulations, which were published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin on June 28, 1997 and went into effect on
October 1, 1997.86 Instead of banning the application of excess phosphorus, the regulations legalized it. The relevant section read as follows:
§ 83.293. Determination of nutrient application rates. (a) Nitrogen shall be applied only in the amounts necessary to achieve realistic expected crop yields or at a rate not exceeding what the crop will utilize for an individual crop year. (b) The planned manure application rate shall be recorded in the plan. The planned manure application rate may be any rate equal to or less than the balanced manure application rate based on nitrogen. The balanced manure application rate based on nitrogen shall be determined by first subtracting the amount of available residual nitrogen and any other applied nitrogen, such as nitrogen applied in the starter fertilizer, from the amount of nitrogen necessary for realistic expected crop yields and then dividing this by the available nitrogen content of the manure as determined by standard methods. (c) The plan shall include calculations indicating the difference between the recommended nitrogen necessary for realistic expected crop yields and nitrogen applied
86 http://www.pabulletin.com/secure/data/vol27/27-26/1068.html (last visited on July 13, 2009).
105 including, but not limited to, manure, sludge, starter fertilizer and other fertilizer. A deficit may be made up with supplemental nitrogen applications. A nitrogen availability test may also be used to determine supplemental nitrogen needs.87
According to this section, the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate would be based upon the nitrogen content of the manure, allowing excess phosphorus to be applied. And because the NMA preempted the authority of local governments to regulate land application of manure more stringently than the state,88 local governments would not be allowed to stop the accumulation of phosphorus in the soil.
A particular phrase in subsection (b)—“available nitrogen content of the manure”—is important for understanding the extent to which the regulations legalized phosphorus dumping.
Nitrogen that volatilizes into the atmosphere is unavailable as fertilizer. “If manure is simply applied to the surface of the soil,” PA DER’s field application supplement explained, “most of the available nitrogen will be lost through the volatilization of ammonia gas” (PA DER 1986b:4).
The regulations allowed a CAO to reduce the nitrogen content of its manure by applying it to the surface and not incorporating it into the soil.89 This practice increased the amount of manure that could be applied per acre without exceeding the maximum legally acceptable nitrogen application rate. It did not, however, reduce the amount of phosphorus in the manure. Nitrogen- based regulations always legalize some phosphorus dumping, but by allowing CAOs to use volatilization to increase the manure application rate, the regulations legalized the dumping of
87 25 Pa. Code Section 83.293.
88 Act 6 of 1993, Section 17.
89 Incorporating manure has ecological consequences. Depending upon how it is done, it can increase soil erosion and the loss of particulate phosphorus. As Beegle explained, “incorporating manure is recommended to reduce N loss by volatilization; however, incorporating manure [can] also incorporates crop residues, which are critical to soil conservation” (Beegle 1997b:4).
106 more excess P than it would have been acceptable to dump if volatilization had not been encouraged.
The available minutes from the meetings of the NMAB and the SCC during the time when the regulations were being developed show no sign that the SCC ever seriously entertained the possibility of exercising its statutory authority to rebut the nitrogen presumption and require that the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate take account of both nitrogen and phosphorus. It should be noted, however, that I am missing some minutes.90
In any event, soon after they went into effect in October of 1997, Pennsylvania’s nitrogen-based regulations lost their scientific legitimacy, leading to calls for the regulations to be amended to take account of phosphorus as well as nitrogen. At the time, the perception in the industry was that such a shift would result in a ban on applying excess phosphorus. The existing, nitrogen-based regulations required that manure be spread at a rate that supplied no more nitrogen than was needed as fertilizer. The industry feared that, with the shift to phosphorus- based regulation, manure would need to be applied at a rate that supplied no more phosphorus than was needed, drastically reducing the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate and increasing the need for alternatives to on site disposal of surplus manure. In areas such as
Lancaster County, where much of the soil already had more than enough phosphorus, compliance costs threatened to be especially high, perhaps undermining the profitability of these regions as locations for the regulated industry. In the next section I describe precisely how this second imminent manure disposal crisis arose.
90 As noted in chapter three, I have been unable to obtain some of the NMAB minutes, but I do appear to have all the SCC minutes. It was the SCC, not the NMAB, that ultimately had the authority to decide whether to rebut the presumption. The SCC’s response to public comments includes no discussion of the phosphorus issue, suggesting that it did not come up during the public comment period on the draft regulations (27 Pa.B 3161, June 28, 1997; Nutrient Management Regulations Comment/Response Document (Feb. 13, 1997 Draft)).
107 IV. “New” science on phosphorus causes a second imminent manure disposal crisis
The second imminent manure disposal crisis was precipitated by a complex assemblage of factors, but a few in particular stand out as especially important. One was the “media frenzy” generated by a 1997 outbreak of the fish-killing dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida in the
Chesapeake Bay (Fincham 2007:4). The outbreak was linked to manure disposal, and to phosphorus runoff in particular. Partly in response to the Pfiesteria issue, Maryland considered promulgating regulations requiring all farms to implement phosphorus-based NMPs (Simpson
1998; University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources 1997), which created regulatory pressure in Pennsylvania as well.
Another important factor was the release of the USDA/EPA joint strategy on animal feeding operations in March of 1999 (USDA-EPA 1999). The strategy announced that concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), as defined by the federal Clean Water Act, would soon be required to implement phosphorus-based NMPs, and that other animal feeding operations (AFOs) would be encouraged to do so. In response to this strategy, the USDA-NRCS proposed requiring farms receiving certain federal technical or financial assistance to implement
NMPs as well. A final factor—the one I focus on here—was the emergence of new science about phosphorus. Taken together, these factors made phosphorus an issue that demanded some kind of regulatory response.
The emergence of new scientific ideas about phosphorus has often been cited as one of the main factors that led to the shift from a nitrogen-based to a phosphorus-based regulatory system in Pennsylvania. For example, the CBC’s 1998 report, which I discussed above, suggested that the emergence of “new science,” as the report described it, had recently
108 undermined what the report described as the “conventional wisdom” that had prevailed among regulators and their scientific advisors about the ecological risks associated with allowing excess phosphorus to accumulate in the soil (CBC 1998:2, 1; see also Blankenship 1998). During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the report explained, the conventional wisdom had influenced the development of nutrient management policy throughout the Bay watershed, including in
Pennsylvania, where it had provided the scientific foundation for the Commonwealth’s nitrogen- based regulations. By 1998, however, new science had called the conventional wisdom into question, undermining the scientific foundation of Pennsylvania’s regulations and precipitating both a legitimacy crisis for regulators and a looming manure disposal crisis for the regulated industry.
According to the conventional wisdom, controlling soil erosion—and thus the loss of sediment-bound phosphorus—was sufficient to deal with the problem of phosphorus runoff. The conventional wisdom provided a scientific justification for allowing manure to be applied at nitrogen-based rates, even though this causes phosphorus to accumulate in the soil. The idea was that phosphorus could be allowed to accumulate, even to levels deemed excessive from an agronomic perspective, so long as erosion was controlled. To put it simply, the conventional wisdom held that keeping soil out of the water would keep the phosphorus out, too (Beegle 2000;
1998; CBC 1998).
Because soil erosion cannot be completely prevented, especially during extreme storms
(NRC 1993:311), allowing phosphorus to accumulate in the soil was a somewhat risky approach.
A more precautionary approach was suggested in a 1993 report by the National Research Council
109 (NRC), a report which also challenged the conventional wisdom that only sediment-bound phosphorus mattered. According to the report,
[t]here are two primary ways to reduce the amount of phosphorus lost from agricultural production: reduce phosphorus levels in the soil and reduce erosion and runoff from croplands . . . Higher soil-P levels lead to increased losses of both soluble and particulate phosphorus. Phosphorus management to reduce unnecessarily high soil-P levels should be part of efforts to reduce phosphorus losses from cropping systems. (NRC 1993:302).
As explained above, Doug Beegle offered similar advice in the 1995-1996 edition of the
Agronomy Guide. The SCC could have taken this advice. In addition to requiring CAOs to control soil erosion, the agency could have required them to keep soil phosphorus levels in check, reducing the amount of sediment-bound phosphorus that could be lost as a result of any erosion that could not be prevented.
In the end, however, the SCC went with the riskier regulatory approach. By allowing
CAOs to apply manure at a nitrogen-based rate, and by encouraging volatilization, the regulations gave these operations permission to cause excess phosphorus to accumulate in the soil. And as a result of the NMA’s preemption provision, local governments could not stop the accumulation. Pennsylvania’s regulatory system therefore legalized the creation of a preventable ecological risk. It is true that the regulations restricted manure disposal to some extent, resulting in less phosphorus accumulating in the soil than would have if disposal had remained essentially unregulated. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania’s nitrogen-based regulatory system allowed more phosphorus to accumulate than would have if the Commonwealth had chosen a phosphorus- based rate, particularly one based on crop needs. As the CBC report explains (see previous section), the choice to go with nitrogen rather than phosphorus was influenced by the need to keep compliance costs in check.
110 The new science undermined the conventional wisdom, and along with it the scientific foundation of Pennsylvania’s regulations. It suggested that the capacity of the soil to fix phosphorus is finite rather than infinite (Sharpley 1996). Applying excess phosphorus to the surface of the soil can overwhelm this capacity, causing the soil to release dissolved phosphorus, which runoff can carry away even if the soil stays put (Beegle 2000; 1998; CBC 1998; Sharpley
1996). According to the new science, agricultural runoff contains two ecologically significant forms of phosphorus (sediment-bound and dissolved), and both must be controlled to deal with the problem of phosphorus runoff.
If the take-home message of the conventional wisdom was that controlling soil erosion was sufficient to control phosphorus runoff, the main message of the new science, which is still the dominant scientific view today, is that controlling soil erosion is necessary but not sufficient.
Although it is effective at dealing with the loss of sediment-bound phosphorus, controlling soil erosion is thought to be ineffective at dealing with the loss of dissolved phosphorus. In fact, the current scientific consensus suggests that some of the practices that are most effective at controlling soil erosion can actually increase the loss of dissolved phosphorus. Take no-till, a practice in which manure is applied to the surface of the soil and is not incorporated. No-till causes phosphorus to accumulate at the surface, where it can overwhelm the soil’s capacity to fix phosphorus, leading to the release of dissolved phosphorus (Beegle 2000; 1998; CBC 1998;
NRC 1993:Ch. 7; Sharpley 1996). What the new science revealed was that regulations like
Pennsylvania’s, which were based upon the conventional wisdom, were inadequate to deal with the problem of phosphorus runoff.
111 But was the new science really all that new by the late 1990s? To leading scientists such as Andrew Sharpley, it was nothing new, and had been understood since the 1980s. Indeed, in
1996 Sharpley presented a conference paper in which he dismissed the conventional wisdom as a myth (Sharpley 1996).
The CBC report suggested that the SCC had become aware of the science late in the regulatory process:
Just as the Act 6 regulatory program was being finalized and CAOs began developing nitrogen-based plans, the new science began to emerge and enter the policy arena. Given that the regulatory program took four years to develop (two years longer then [sic] the statutory deadline) and a restructuring of it would add yet more years of additional delay, and because elements of the new science raised as many questions as answers, the commission and the advisory board elected to move forward with the program. (CBC 1998:7-8).
Unfortunately, the report cites no evidence to support this timeline. The new science is not discussed in any of the available minutes of the SCC and NMAB meetings that took place between the time when the NMA was enacted and the time when the SCC approved the final regulations (i.e., between May 20, 1993 and March 13, 1997). According to the available minutes, the first time the phosphorus issue came up was at a May 20, 1999 meeting, at which
Doug Beegle, along with Sharpley and fellow USDA-ARS scientist William Gburek, briefed the
SCC “on recent scientific developments with plant nutrient utilization particularly around the issue of phosphorus.”91 At that meeting the SCC was also told that a recent NRCS policy had given the NRCS two years to work with the states to “decide on the best way to address phosphorus concerns.”92 Without all the minutes, I cannot fully evaluate the CBC report’s
91 SCC, Minutes of May 20, 1999 meeting, p.1. The minutes provide no details about the briefing.
92 SCC, Minutes of May 20, 1999 meeting, p.2.
112 assertion that the SCC decided to promulgate regulations that were based upon the conventional wisdom in spite of knowing about the new science. Nor can I evaluate the report’s account of why the SCC allegedly chose this route. From a legal perspective, however, the question of when the SCC knew is not the relevant one. The question is when it should have known.
The SCC should have become aware of the new science relatively early in the regulatory process. Recall that the NMA required the SCC to consult with the NMAB while developing the regulations. The SCC was also required to consult three technical documents, including the Penn
State Agronomy Guide. As I explained above, the edition of the Agronomy Guide published in
July of 1994 included a discussion of the new science, as did all subsequent editions. Given that the SCC was statutorily required to consult the Agronomy Guide, and given that one of the SCC’s scientific advisors wrote the relevant chapter, the new science should have been nothing new to the SCC when it approved the final regulations on March 13, 1997. And by December of 1998, when the CBC report was published, what was new was not the science but the increased pressure for a regulatory response to the phosphorus issue.
By this time, there had been calls for Pennsylvania to amend its regulations, and the regulated industry feared that a shift to phosphorus-based NMPs would lead to greater restrictions on land application of surplus manure, creating what the CBC report described as
“manure disposal capacity problems” in certain regions, particularly those with a high density of animals to farmland and soils that already had more phosphorus than they needed (CBC 1998:6).
“In those areas where soil phosphorus levels are running excessively high because of years of overapplication, and where the new science is telling us phosphorus should be the limiting nutrient from a planning standpoint,” the report explained, “the disposal capacity problem has
113 become magnified” (CBC 1998:6). In Lancaster County, for example, the regulated industry was facing a potential manure disposal crisis.
One gets a sense of the nature of this looming crisis from what Doug Beegle was writing at the time. In 1998 he helped bring the phosphorus issue to the attention of regulators and the regulated industry. In April he presented a paper at a conference on agriculture and phosphorus management in the Bay watershed (Beegle 2000). Around this time, he also briefed at least two
Pennsylvania advisory committees about the phosphorus issue.93 Finally, he published an article on phosphorus in the July 1998 issue of PennAg Journal (Beegle 1998).
Echoing the advice Lou Moore had given more than a decade earlier, in the PennAg
Journal article Beegle told the industry that there was no avoiding the phosphorus issue.
Some people are very uncomfortable with even raising the phosphorus issue because they are afraid of the possible consequences. However, the issue has already been raised and if we choose to ignore the problem we will not have the opportunity to participate in developing reasonable and practical solutions to the problem before we are forced to deal reactively to outside mandates. We don’t have to look far to see that there are people ready to impose solutions on agriculture. (Beegle 1998:19, emphasis in original).
Instead of attempting to avoid the issue, the industry should attempt to shape the policy response as much as possible. Doing so was essential, Beegle argued, because some had already proposed an immediate ban on applying excess phosphorus—a proposal which he characterized as an
“extreme approach” (Beegle 1998:19; see also 2000:167). As he put it,
[s]ome people want to take a black and white view of the issue and propose a zero tolerance position that no excess phosphorus be applied. However, the implications of this approach could have very serious consequences for animal agriculture. Because we believe that there are effective and practical alternatives to this zero tolerance approach,
93 See, e.g., http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/chesbay/min0604.html (last visited on July 10, 2009); see also http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/ag/APR98AAB.html (last visited on July 10, 2009). Beegle is also reported to have briefed the CBC (Blankenship 1998), whose report contains a reference to Beegle’s article in the PennAg Journal (CBC 1998).
114 research has continued on agricultural phosphorus, its potential impact on the environment and possible management strategies. (Beegle 1998:18).
In a June 4, 1998 presentation to SCC’s Chesapeake Bay Advisory Committee, Beegle used the example of Lancaster County to illustrate the potential socioeconomic impacts of an immediate ban on phosphorus dumping. In Lancaster, he wrote, “83% of the soils are high in phosphorus and would therefore be unsuitable for manure application,”94 forcing livestock and poultry operations to seek alternatives to land application of surplus manure. In an interview with the
Bay Journal, Beegle framed the issue is stark terms:
“What I’m afraid of is if we put a strict limit across-the-board, [on phosphorus] we’re going to wipe out a lot of the ag industry,” Beegle said. “That will solve the problem, but I’m not sure that is the way we want to solve it. . . .” (quoted in Blankenship 1998, bracketed text in original).
These kinds of socioeconomic concerns were repeatedly expressed by the public agricultural scientists who helped develop Pennsylvania’s regulatory response to the phosphorus issue. In an interview with Penn State Agriculture, a publication of the College of Agricultural
Sciences, Les Lanyon warned of the potential for stringent regulations to disrupt rural communities:
. . . “If a nutrient management plan requires farmers to spread manure over larger acreages, it can result in higher application costs, decreasing their competitiveness. Farms and the businesses that depend on them could go out of business because of these requirements. This could change the character of our rural communities.” (Lanyon, quoted in Dionis 1999:34).
Or consider these comments by Beegle and Sharpley:
[T]he economic implications of establishing soil test P levels which limit the applications of animal manures, or other “biosolids” to agricultural lands are far-reaching. In many areas dominated by animal-based agriculture, there is simply no economically viable
94 http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/chesbay/min0604.html (last visited on July 10, 2009); see also http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/ag/APR98AAB.html (last visited on July 10, 2009).
115 alternative to land application. Because of this, it is essential for long-term sustainable management of agricultural P that workable water quality criteria be proposed initially. The phasing-in of environmental controls to meet these criteria, such as changes in fertilizer or animal manure management, should promote wider acceptance and compliance of these practices by farmers without creating severe economic hardships within rural communities. Establishing interim goals for soil and runoff P allows time to develop the more comprehensive solutions to the problems of P management common to animal-based agriculture (Beegle, Sharpley, and Graetz 1998:36).
[E]stablishing soil test P levels that could limit manure applications has serious economic implications for growers. The future resale value of land with high-P soils could decrease with such rigid limits, and the possibility exists that the number of animals allowed in an area could be limited by the area’s ability to absorb the P in the manure produced. Such limits would be unacceptable in many areas dominated by animal-based agriculture, where at present there simply is no economically viable alternative to land-applying manure. (Sharpley and Beegle 2001:12).
Although these scientists were responsive to the regulated industry’s concerns, they also acknowledged that phosphorus dumping would eventually have to stop if the ecological problem was to be solved. “The ultimate goal of nutrient management is to balance phosphorus so that no excess is applied,” Beegle (2000:165) wrote. What needed to be changed over time, he and
Lanyon repeatedly argued, was the agri-food system that had developed in southeastern
Pennsylvania since World War II (Beegle 2000; Lanyon 2000). This system generated a regional surplus of nutrients, particularly phosphorus, and to solve this problem, the system would need to be transformed. From Beegle’s perspective, however, an immediate ban on phosphorus dumping was not the best way of encouraging the necessary change. There was a better regulatory approach, he argued, one that could buy some time, providing short-term environmental protection while long-term, systemic solutions were being developed.
By the late 1990s, then, the call for stringent phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations had precipitated an imminent manure disposal crisis in Pennsylvania. Over the course
116 of several decades, an industry had developed in the southeastern part of the state based on the assumption that high-density livestock and poultry operaitons would be able to use their farmland as a low-cost sink for the disposal of surplus manure. Decades of legalized disposal, in combination with other factors, had caused excess phosphorus to accumulate in the soil. Now this high-phosphorus soil was being cited as a reason why an immediate ban on phosphorus dumping would be unrealistic. Because an immediate ban would undermine the profitability of the regulated industry, the dumping would have to continue until an economically viable alternative could be developed. As I explain in the next section, Beegle and other public agricultural researchers laid the scientific foundation for regulations that promised to reduce the short-term risk of phosphorus runoff while those alternatives were being sought.
V. Averting another regulatory crisis: the role of agri-environmental regulatory science
Pennsylvania had already begun reassessing its regulations by the time the CBC published its 1998 report. According to the report, the NMAB had recently created a phosphorus subcommittee to examine possible regulatory responses to the phosphorus issue (CBC 1998:8).95
The regulatory debate in Pennsylvania was framed by federal policy. In response to the 1999
USDA-EPA joint strategy, the NRCS proposed three options for phosphorus-based nutrient management regulation: the agronomic approach, the environmental threshold approach, and the
P Index approach. With funding from the SCC, agricultural scientists at Penn State and the
USDA-ARS developed the Pennsylvania P Index and helped the SCC evaluate these three options. The researchers carried out two projects, each with two phases, resulting in four reports
95 Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain the minutes of the NMAB meetings that took place during this crucial time.
117 to the SCC and three journal articles (Beegle et al. 2001a; 2001b; Kogelmann et al. 2002; 2004a;
2004b; 2006; Weld et al. 2002). The phosphorus subcommittee’s work was closely connected to these projects. On March 28, 2001, the subcommittee issued its final report to the NMAB, recommending the P Index approach (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001). The SCC adopted this recommendation, and several years later, on June 3, 2006, it published P Index- based regulations in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, with an effective date of October 1, 2006 (for some of the regulatory history, see Abdalla and Dodd 2005; for a discussion of the final regulations, see Beegle 2007).
In this section I examine the role of public agricultural researchers in the development of the Pennsylvania P Index and in its selection as Pennsylvania’s regulatory approach. The scientific effort in Pennsylvania was part of a much broader, national effort to address the phosphorus issue, one involving soil scientists, agronomists, and other agricultural scientists from various public agricultural research institutions, including land-grant colleges of agriculture, the USDA-ARS, and the USDA-NRCS. Two groups—SERA-17 and the National
Phosphorus Project—helped organize this national effort (Lemunyon and Daniel 1998; Sharpley et al. 2002; 1999). Several scientists who were instrumental in the national effort—most notably
Sharpley and Beegle—also advised the SCC (Beegle 2007a).
Unlike the P Index approach, which involves a relatively complicated risk assessment, the other approaches––the agronomic approach and the environmental threshold approach––have the benefit of simplicity. With these approaches, soil test phosphorus (a measure of plant- available phosphorus in the soil) is the only variable needed to calculate the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate.
118 With the agronomic approach, the rate is based on agronomic soil test categories, which are designed to tell farmers how much fertilizer to add, not to estimate the risk of nutrient runoff.
Two versions of the agronomic approach were discussed during the Pennsylvania debate. In the more restrictive version, no more phosphorus could be applied than was needed as fertilizer. In the less restrictive version (the one proposed by the NRCS), at least some excess phosphorus could be applied to certain fields (McDowell et al. 2001). Table 5-1 shows how the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate was calculated using each version.
Table 5-1: Maximum legally acceptable manure application rate with each version of the agronomic approach. Source: McDowell et al. (2001:307).
With the strict version (“Soil Test Program”), no additional phosphorus could be applied to a field with a high or excessive level of plant available phosphorus. In places like Lancaster
County, where in 1997 83% of tested soils were either high or excessive (Sharpley and Beegle
2001), this version of the agronomic approach would have drastically restricted land application of manure.
119 The environmental threshold approach is based upon research examining the relationship between the level of plant-available phosphorus in the soil and the level of dissolved phosphorus in any runoff that interacts with the soil. The threshold is the level of soil test phosphorus above which runoff becomes unacceptably enriched with dissolved phosphorus. This threshold tends to differ by region. The scientists who advised the SCC selected 200 ppm (Mehlich-3 P) as
Pennsylvania’s environmental threshold (Weld et al. 2002).96 Table 5-2 describes how the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate was calculated using the environmental threshold approach.
Table 5-2: Maximum legally acceptable manure application rates with environmental threshold of 200 ppm Mehlich-3 P. Source: Weld et al. (2002:450).
By comparing the previous two tables, we see that the agronomic approach tended to be more restrictive than the environmental threshold approach (McDowell et al. 2001; Weld et al.
2002). One example is especially telling. With the environmental threshold approach, manure could be applied at a nitrogen-based rate even when the level of soil test phosphorus was between 101 and 149 ppm Mehlich-3 P (or mg kg-1 Mehlich-3 P),97 a range which called for no additional phosphorus under both versions of the agronomic approach.
96 They initially selected 300 ppm (Beegle et al. 2001a), but switched to 200 ppm after further research (Beegle et al. 2001b).
97 One ppm equals 1 mg kg-1.
120 The P Index was the third regulatory approach. Initially developed in the early 1990s by researchers at the USDA-NRCS, it is a field-level tool for estimating the risk of phosphorus runoff (for a brief history, see Lemunyon and Daniel 1998). The P Index is based upon the fact that not all fields have the same risk.
In an influential 1999 USDA-ARS publication (Sharpley et al. 1999), a second edition of which was published in 2003 (Sharpley et al. 2003), Sharpley and his colleagues argued that regulators should target their efforts to areas with the highest risk of phosphorus runoff, which they called critical source areas (CSAs). They explained the CSA concept in terms of the source and transport factors that determine the risk:
When looking at management to minimize the environmental impact of P, there are several important factors that must be considered. To cause an environmental problem, there must be a source of P (that is, high soil levels, manure or fertilizer applications, etc.) and it must be transported to a sensitive location (that is, [a potential] for leaching, runoff, erosion, etc.). Problems occur where these two come together. A high P source with little opportunity for transport may not constitute an environmental threat. Likewise, a situation where there is a high potential for transport but no source of P to move is also of little threat. Management should focus on the areas where these two conditions intersect. These areas are called “critical source areas” . . . (Sharpley et al. 1999:14).
They offered the following Venn diagram to illustrate the CSA concept:
Figure 5-2: The Critical Source Area Concept. Source: Sharpley et al. (1999:14).
121 Starting from the normative premise that nutrient management regulation ought to be risk-based, Sharpley and his colleagues highlighted two main shortcomings of the other two approaches. First, these other approaches focused solely on source factors; they assumed that every field with the same level of phosphorus in the soil had the same risk. Second, they considered only a single source factor (i.e., the level of plant available phosphorus in the soil), even though recently applied manure can, in some cases, be a more important source of phosphorus than the phosphorus already in the soil. Invoking the CSA concept, with its consideration of multiple source and transport factors, Sharpley and his colleagues argued that knowing how much phosphorus is in the soil is not enough information to estimate the risk of phosphorus runoff. Although the other approaches were simple, Sharpley and his colleagues argued,
it is too simplistic to use threshold soil P levels as the sole criterion to guide P management and P applications. For example, adjacent fields having similar soil test P levels but differing susceptibilities to surface runoff and erosion, due to contrasting topography and management, should not have similar P management recommendations. Also, it has been shown that in some agricultural watersheds, 90 percent of annual algal- available P export from watersheds comes from only 10 percent of the land area during a few relatively large storms . . . Therefore, threshold soil P values will have little meaning unless they are used in conjunction with an estimate of a site’s potential for surface runoff and erosion. (Sharpley et al. 1999:23).
From the perspective of those who think nutrient management regulation should be risk- based, the other two approaches could lead to two problems if used to determine the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate. In some cases they could be too stringent, banning the application of excess phosphorus to a field, even though the risk of phosphorus runoff would be low. In other cases they could be too lax, allowing manure to be applied to fields with low
122 levels of phosphorus in the soil, but with a high risk of surface runoff or some other transport mechanism. The P Index approach helped avoid these problems because it was based on a much more detailed estimate of the risk. Sharpley and his colleagues argued that nutrient management regulation should be guided by the CSA concept. Instead of basing the manure application rate solely on the level of phosphorus in the soil, regulators should base it on a much more thorough, nuanced assessment of risk, one combining multiple source and transport factors. As Sharpley and his colleagues put it,
[a] sounder approach advocated by researchers and an increasing number of advisers is to link areas of surface runoff and high soil P content in a watershed . . . Preventing P loss is now taking on the added dimension of defining, targeting, and remediating source areas of P where high soil P levels coincide with high surface runoff and erosion potentials . . . (Sharpley et al. 1999:23).
Although different states have different P Indexes, all are based on the idea of targeting CSAs
(Sharpley et al. 2003; Weld and Sharpley 2007).
Regulators could, of course, combine approaches. For example, they could ban the application of excess phosphorus to all fields and then use the P Index to ensure that legitimate fertilization does not create an unacceptable risk of phosphorus runoff in critical source areas.
Sharpley and his colleagues acknowledged that this would be the most effective approach for protecting aquatic ecosystems. For example, in a Penn State extension publication, Sharpley and
Beegle (2001:14) suggested that “[t]he most effective P strategy . . . would be to apply not only simple measures to the whole watershed to avoid excessive P buildup, but also more stringent measures to the most vulnerable sites to minimize losses of P in surface runoff.” But because this approach would be even more restrictive than the more restrictive version of the agronomic approach, it could undermine the profitability of the regulated industry. The scientists did not
123 advocate it. Instead, they touted the P Index as the approach that could minimize the need for restrictions on land application of surplus manure. As Sharpley and Beegle put it,
[i]t is often assumed that basing manure management on soil P will limit manure applications to large areas. But because not all soils and fields have the same potential to transfer P to surface runoff, management recommendations will have to account for site vulnerability to surface runoff and erosion as well as soil P content. Threshold soil P levels should be indexed against P transport potential, with higher values for source areas than for areas not contributing to surface runoff. (Sharpley and Beegle 2001:14; see also Beegle 2000; 1998; Beegle and Sharpley 1999).
The scientists advocated the P Index as the approach that was best able to balance the goal of protecting the environment with the goal of maintaining the profitability of the regulated industry. In what follows, I offer a detailed discussion of their argument.
The Pennsylvania Phosphorus Index (Version One) was developed by Doug Beegle and several scientists at the USDA-ARS research station on Penn State’s University Park campus, including hydrologist William Gburek and soil scientists Peter Kleinman, Andrew Sharpley, and
Jennifer Weld (Weld et al. 2003). These were some of the same scientists who advised the SCC about its regulatory options. The P Index was under development while the SCC-funded research projects were underway. In 2003 Penn State extension published a fact sheet on the P index
(Weld et al. 2003). At this time, Pennsylvania’s regulations had not yet been amended to require that NMPs include the P Index, but the USDA-NRCS had amended its nutrient management practice standard, and livestock and poultry operations seeking certain financial and technical assistance were required to comply with the standard. Before discussing the reports that recommended that the SCC adopt the P Index approach, I will offer some background information about the Pennsylvania P Index.
124 It is important to understand that a full risk assessment was not required for every field
(or other management unit). The P Index had a screening tool that determined whether a full risk assessment was required. If a field had a soil test phosphorus level higher than 200 ppm
(Mehlich-3), or if the field was closer than 150 feet to a surface water, then a full risk assessment was required. If neither condition existed, manure could be applied at the nitrogen-based rate
(Weld et al. 2003). A full risk assessment can be expensive, and the screening tool helped keep these costs in check.
When required for a field, a full risk assessment was designed to determine whether the risk of phosphorus runoff was low, medium, high, or very high. The assessment was based upon the following source and transport factors:
The P source indicators used in the Pennsylvania P Index are the Mehlich-3 soil test P, fertilizer application rate and method, and manure application rate, method, and P availability. The transport indicators used are erosion, runoff potential, subsurface drainage, distance to a water body, and an evaluation of management practices that impact how P is potentially lost from a field. (Weld et al. 2003:n.p.).
The assessment generated a P Index value, which was an estimate of the risk. The degree of risk determined what actions, if any, needed to be taken (see Figure 5-3).
125 Table 5-3: PA P Index (Version 1) and the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate. Source: Weld et al. (2003:n.p.).
If the risk was low or medium, manure could be applied at the nitrogen-based rate, just as it could under the nitrogen-based regulations. If the risk was high, the maximum legally acceptable manure application rate was reduced to the rate that would supply only as much phosphorus as the crops could remove from the soil. If the risk was very high, no manure could be applied, unless all the phosphorus could be removed, which was not (and still is not) an economically viable option.
Notice how much less restrictive than the other two approaches the P Index approach was. Consider the less restrictive version of the agronomic approach. With this approach, land application began to be reduced below the nitrogen-based rate when the level of soil test phosphorus exceeded 30 ppm, the lower limit of the optimum range for crop production. With
126 the phosphorus index approach, however, a field with this level of soil test phosphorus would not even require a full risk assessment, unless it was closer than 150 feet to a surface water. Now consider the environmental threshold approach, which, as I explained above, tended to be less restrictive than the agronomic approach. With this approach, land application began to be restricted once the level of soil test phosphorus exceeded 150 ppm. But with the P Index approach, a field with a level between 150 and 200 ppm would not even require a full risk assessment, so long as it was at least 150 feet away from a surface water. In short, soil levels that were of sufficient ecological concern under the other two approaches to warrant restrictions on land application of manure did not even warrant a full risk assessment under the P Index approach.
Moreover, the P Index was even less restrictive than Figure 5-3 suggests. A regulated operation did not necessarily have to reduce the amount of manure it applied just because the first run of the risk assessment suggested it should. Instead, the operation could make other management changes to decrease the P index value, and along with it, presumably, the risk of phosphorus runoff. Weld and her colleagues stressed the importance of this management flexibility:
[I]t is important to not only look at the final index rating, but if the rating is High or Very High, to go back to the P Index and determine why. Often management changes other than simply limited or no manure application can lower the P Index to an acceptable level that would allow manure application and provide water quality protection. Examples may include establishing best management practices (BMPs) to reduce soil erosion, or changing the timing or method of manure or fertilizer application. (Weld et al. 2003:n.p.).
As Beegle and his colleagues described it, the P Index approach allowed a regulated operation to undertake an “iterative process of changing planned management and re-evaluating the field . . .” (Beegle et al. 2001:n.p.). One of the regulated industry’s greatest concerns about
127 phosphorus-based regulations was that they would block access to large swaths of farmland. A position paper by the SERA-17 Phosphorus Management and Policy Workgroup explains how the flexibility of the P Index approach can help the regulated industry maintain access to the farmland sink:
Phosphorus-Indices generally identify only relatively small numbers of fields within watersheds as needing improved management of P, allowing producers to continue with their normal practices outside of these critical source areas. . . Flexibility in management is a key asset to implementation of P-Indices. With the soil test P threshold approach, P application would be restricted once soil test P values reach the threshold. However, P- Indices allow producers or other land users to select from many strategies that will reduce the risk for P loss, including changing the method and/or timing of fertilizer or manure application, changing crop rotations and tillage practices to reduce erosion, or installing vegetated buffers or application setbacks to increase flow distances. This flexibility will help the producers search for the best methods to maintain profitability while protecting the environment. (Maguire et al. n.d:n.p, citation omitted).
From the perspective of the regulated industry, the main benefit of the P Index was that it promised lower compliance costs than the other approaches. One of the SCC-funded research projects found that the P Index would be the least costly option for the regulated industry in
Pennsylvania (Beegle et al. 2001a; 2001b; Weld et al. 2002). In a study of ten operations, USDA-
ARS scientist Jennifer Weld and her colleagues compared the potential farm-level financial and management impacts of the three approaches. They found that the agronomic approach tended to result in the highest overall regulatory compliance costs, followed by the environmental threshold approach, with the P Index approach resulting in the lowest (Weld et al. 2002).
Although the researchers found that a NMP based upon the P index would typically cost more to develop than one based upon either of the other two approaches, the cost of implementing a P index-based NMP would tend to be the lowest (Weld et al. 2002). Plan development costs would be so high with the P Index approach because of the need for a
128 thorough risk assessment for some fields. But implementation costs would tend to be the lowest with the P Index approach because, for most operations, more surplus manure could legally be applied on site with this approach than with either of the other two. As Beegle put it, with the P
Index, “[t]he emphasis is on identifying critical source areas for phosphorus loss to surface waters and then applying application restrictions/BMPs to those critical areas while allowing flexibility to apply manure based on nitrogen in noncritical areas” (Beegle 2000:166). Because implementation costs would tend to be higher than plan development costs, the P Index approach would tend to have the lowest total compliance costs of the three approaches.
Once it became clear that the P Index was the approach that could best balance the competing goals of addressing phosphorus runoff and maintaining the profitability of the regulated industry, the scientists turned their attention to the potential costs of implementing this approach in Pennsylvania. This was the focus of the second SCC-funded research project
(Kogelman et al. 2006; 2004a; 2004b; 2002). The researchers understood that regulatory compliance costs were likely to differ by region because of regional differences in numerous factors, including the level of phosphorus in the soil; the proximity of farmland to surface waters; the competition for farmland among CAOs, volunteers, sludge haulers, and others; the density of animals to farmland available for manure application; and the willingness of farmers to accept manure. The main purpose of the study, according to one of the reports submitted to the SCC, was “to identify agricultural production areas where phosphorus (P) based nutrient management regulations [based on the P Index] may affect the economic viability of existing agricultural systems in Pennsylvania” (Kogelmann et al. 2002:1). The researchers set out to identify these “P-
Index ‘hot spots’” (Kogelmann et al. 2004a:8; see also 2006:24). The hope was that, once these
129 areas were identified, CAOs in them could be targeted for technical and financial assistance
(Kogelmann et al. 2004b).
The researchers did not study actual compliance costs. Rather, they defined a P Index hot spot as a region “where a relatively high proportion of agricultural lands” requires a full risk assessment because at least one of the two criteria in the screening tool is met (Kogelmann et al.
2004b:11). They acknowledged that just because a full risk assessment must be run does not mean that the cost of implementing the NMP will be high. Nevertheless, having to do a full risk assessment for one or more fields will, at the very least, increase the cost of developing a NMP
(Kogelmann et al. 2006), and for some operations land application of manure will have to be reduced for one or more fields.
On March 13, 2002, USDA-ARS scientist Ray Bryant gave the SCC an update on the first phase of the P Index study. “The P Index puts a light tap on the breaks,” he explained. “It targets areas that are most in need of some measures of conservation, something to improve water quality, reduce risk of nutrient loss[,] but I do not see it as something that is really going to have disastrous impacts on agriculture across the state.”98 In some parts of the state, however,
Bryant and his colleagues later explained, the P Index probably would result in relatively high compliance costs, particularly in “[a]reas with high animal densities, mostly in southeast
Pennsylvania. . .” (Kogelmann et al. 2004b:18). They cited Lancaster County as a region where the costs could be especially high (Kogelmann et al. 2004b).
On March 28, 2001, the Phosphorus Subcommittee presented its final report to the full
NMAB.99 The NMAB had requested that the subcommittee evaluate the SCC’s regulatory
98 Minutes of the March 13, 2002 meeting of the SCC, p. 4.
99 Minutes of the March 28, 2001 meeting of the NMAB.
130 options, including the potential economic impacts of each, and then make recommendations about which option, if any, the SCC should adopt (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee
2001:1). The report made several recommendations to the NMAB, with the expectation that the
NMAB would decide whether to forward any of them to the SCC. The recommendations were divided into long-term solutions and short-term fixes for the problem of phosphorus runoff. The report offered this summary of its main recommendations:
Overall, the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Advisory Board’s Phosphorus Sub- Committee recommends that P management in Pennsylvania be considered in terms of long and short-term goals. Long-term goals need to address the cycling of P into and within Pennsylvania and its impact on the long-term viability of Pennsylvania agriculture. These issues are complex. In the short-term there is a need to develop and implement an effective and flexible process, to address those areas that are at high risk for P loss, namely the P index. Farmers will need this process to help abate the loss of P from their operations while issues of regional P cycling and sustainability can be further examined. (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:62).
The short-term fixes were designed to buy regulators and the regulated industry some time, providing environmental protection during the time it would take to develop and implement the long-term solutions (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:54).
The ultimate, long-term solution, according to the report, was to eliminate phosphorus imbalances at the operational and regional scales (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee
2001:54-56). This would require systemic changes, perhaps even the development of a whole new regional agri-food system. Over the course of the previous six decades, regions of high- density livestock and poultry production had developed in Pennsylvania by importing feedstuffs from the Midwest. Now these regions were generating surplus manure, and the profitability of the regions as locations for the regulated industry had come to depend upon the use of farmland as a low-cost sink for the disposal of this manure. As a result of decades of disposal, excess
131 phosphorus had accumulated in the soil. Given that the livelihoods of so many people—farmers, agribusiness employees, and others—now depended upon a regional agri-food system that generated phosphorus imbalances, achieving nutrient balance was going to “require time and some flexibility to allow for the economic viability of Pennsylvania’s agricultural industry and water quality goals” (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:56). To address these long- term issues, the subcommittee recommended that another committee be created, which would
“examine regional cycling of P and other nutrients, long-term on-farm nutrient balances, and their effect upon long-term viability of Pennsylvania agriculture, and identify environmentally effective and economic options and recommendations to bring Pennsylvania agriculture into a P balance” (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:57). In the meantime, it was hoped, short- term fixes would reduce the ecological risks associated with the phosphorus imbalances that would continue to be generated.
One of the subcommittee’s main short-term recommendations involved the nutrient management regulations. After reviewing the first phase of the SCC-funded study evaluating the three regulatory options (Beegle et al. 2001a), the subcommittee recommended that the SCC amend the nutrient management regulations to include the Phosphorus Index (PA NMAB,
Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:58).100 The subcommittee explained the basis for this recommendation, suggesting that “[i]f we can identify, prioritize, and highly manage these areas that are most sensitive to P loss, P management efforts in Pennsylvania can be directed to areas where they will be most effective” (Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:59). The report also touted the flexibility of the P Index approach:
100 Around the same time, the Agriculture Nutrient Management Workgroup of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Nutrient Subcommittee made a similar recommendation to the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP 2002).
132 The P index tool allows for flexibility in developing P management options. This flexibility and targeting of resources will be especially essential to appropriately address P losses from animal intensive areas of Pennsylvania . . . (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:60).
Finally, the report recommended that a screening tool be developed so that a full risk assessment would be required only for fields where the risk of phosphorus runoff was likely to be high enough to be of ecological concern (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:59-60). Like the P Index approach more generally, the screening tool would help “prioritiz[e] and targe[t] fields that need P management” (PA NMAB, Phosphorus Subcommittee 2001:59). For fields not requiring a full risk assessment, the risk would be deemed acceptable. “While full P Index assessment might be desirable in all situations,” Beegle and his colleagues later explained, “the use of a pre-screening tool has been viewed as an acceptable compromise, at least in the short term, to target resources to areas most likely to require P based management” (Beegle et al.
2005:5).
On August 21, 2001, the NMAB adopted the subcommittee’s recommendation that the
SCC amend the regulations to include the Phosphorus Index.101 Attending the meeting was the
SCC’s director for nutrient management, Doug Goodlander, who told the board that the SCC would “take the recommendations of the Nutrient Management Advisory Board into consideration as [the SCC] decide[d] how to address phosphorus management in
Pennsylvania.”102 The SCC discussed the NMAB’s recommendations at its October 26, 2001 meeting.103 Finally, on September 9, 2003, the SCC approved proposed amendments to the
101 Minutes of the August 21, 2001 meeting of the NMAB.
102 Minutes of the August 21, 2001 meeting of the NMAB, p. 4.
103 Minutes of the October 26, 2001 meeting of the SCC.
133 regulations that included the P Index. One year later, on August 7, 2004, the SCC published the proposed regulations in the Pennsylvania Bulletin for public comment.104
On May 12, 2004, while the SCC was developing the new regulations, the Pennsylvania
Environmental Hearing Board held that the initial, nitrogen-based regulations failed to comply with the statute.105 During the litigation, Beegle and Goodlander served as expert witnesses for the SCC. According to the court, the regulations “fail[ed] to identify phosphorus as a nutrient under the Act and fail[ed] to provide any procedures to determine proper application rates for phosphorus in the application of manure.” (pp. 31-32). The court did not say how the maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate should be determined. All it said was that the regulatory criteria had to include procedures for determining the rate. Because the existing regulations lacked such procedures, they violated the statute.
In response to the court’s ruling, the SCC issued an interim policy requiring new NMPs to include a phosphorus component.106 New NMPs would need to be based upon this policy until the final regulations were promulgated. The policy recommended, but did not require, that NMPs be based upon the P Index. Soon after the interim policy was published, Beegle and two of his colleagues published a Penn State fact sheet on it, in which they touted the benefits of the P
Index: “By targeting, the P Index has the potential for reducing costs to farmers and government agencies by focusing their management and financial resources on areas most likely to contribute phosphorus to surface waters” (Beegle, Dodd, and Abdalla 2004:n.p.). They also explained that the Pennsylvania P Index was “the outcome of a major state and regional effort as part of an
104 34 Pa.B. 4361 (August 7, 2004).
105 Adam v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, EHB Docket No. 2002-189-MG (May 12, 2004).
106 SCC, Interim Guidance Addressing Phosphorus and other Nutrients in Nutrient Management Plans (May 25, 2004).
134 international research and development endeavor to produce a management approach that protects water quality from phosphorus pollution and enables sustainable, economic animal agricultural production” (Beegle et al. 2004:n.p.). Finally, the fact sheet noted that state financial assistance was being made available to cover the costs of developing (but not necessarily implementing) phosphorus-based NMPs.
During the public comment period on the draft regulations, the issue of compliance costs came up several times. On May 14, 2004, shortly before the proposed regulations were published for public comment, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (PA DEP)
Policy Office sent a regulatory analysis form to the Governor’s Policy Office and to the Office of the Budget.107 By restricting manure application on fields with a high risk of phosphorus runoff, and by banning application on fields with a very high risk, the analysis suggested, the P Index would force some CAOs to find alternatives to on site disposal for at least some of their surplus manure. The analysis offered this estimate of the potential impact on the regulated industry:
The proposed revisions will require an estimated 60% of our existing CAOs (504 CAOs) to export some increased portion of their generated manure due to the phosphorus index element of the revised regulations identifying certain fields as a high risk of phosphorus loss to surface water bodies. Approximately 40% of these CAOs (202 CAOs) will be able to recoup the cost of transportation of the manure from those operations receiving the manure. The remaining farmers needing to transport additional manure from their farm sites (302 CAOs) will have to pay manure transportation costs to export the additional excess manure to appropriate sites. The cost per operation needing to export additional excess manure is estimated to be $1,500 annually, with a total annual cost to the regulated community of $453,000. The Commission is proposing to assist the existing regulated community to meet this financial burden by funding alternative manure processing and utilization technologies and industries to effectively and economically utilize the manure in an environmentally sound manner. (Memorandum, pp. 4-5).
107 May 14, 2004 Memorandum from Marjorie L. Hughes, Regulatory Coordinator, DEP to Joanne Denworth, Senior Policy Manager, Governor’s Policy office and M. Lois Hein, Director, Bureau of Legislative and Regulatory Analysis, Office of the Budget. SUBJECT: Review of Proposed Nutrient Management Regulations (#7-390). (on file with author).
135 Regardless of whether these figures were accurate, they demonstrate that regulators took the issue of compliance costs quite seriously.
The issue was also raised by the SCC in the introductory material that ran alongside the proposed regulations in the August 7, 2004 Pennsylvania Bulletin. With help from the NMAB, the SCC explained, it had taken compliance costs into account when developing the regulations:
The Commission, in cooperation and coordination with its program partners, has developed the proposed rulemaking after much deliberation and scientific study. The proposed rulemaking is scientifically based and developed to maximize water quality improvement while minimizing possible negative impact on the regulated community. . . The proposed rulemaking is developed to ensure the maximum benefit with minimum expense to the regulated community and the public sector.108
Projected public sector costs included, among other things, the cost of running the regulatory program, along with the cost of subsidies to defray the industry’s compliance costs. The SCC made it clear that the industry would have to pay at least some of its costs itself, and that for some operations the costs could be high:
The proposed rulemaking may require some farmers to begin exporting manure, or increase manure exports under the proposed rulemaking as a result of the phosphorus indexing which may determine some lands as not suitable for manure applications because of a high likelihood of phosphorus applied to those areas reaching surface water. The impact of this requirement is difficult at best to quantify at this time because exporting the manure may result in increased operational costs for the producer, or the exporting of manure may not impose any increased costs on the producer due to their ability to market the manure. There are operations from which the exported manure serves as an additional revenue source for the farm due to its marketable qualities.109
The agency planned to offer financial assistance. Money would be available to help
CAOs develop and implement NMPs, and the SCC also planned to roll out an “initiative to fund technological advances on farm sites, or combinations of farm sites, to assist farmers in installing
108 34 Pa.B. 4361 (August 7, 2004).
109 34 Pa.B. 4361 (August 7, 2004).
136 practices to further process manure for those farmers challenged to find conventional application sites for their manure.” 110 It was hoped that, by subsidizing these kinds of technologies, the SCC would help the regulated industry reduce manure hauling costs and, perhaps, transform at least some surplus manure from an unwanted waste into a valuable commodity.
During the public comment period, environmental and industry groups offered different perspectives on the phosphorus issue. In its response to public comments, the SCC summarized the two general positions:
. . . Some commentators stated that [the phosphorus provisions of the regulations] would impose a severe financial burden on farms in this Commonwealth because of the lack of options for use of the manure. Some commentators, including the Advisory Board and the House and Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committees, requested additional flexibility in the provision for existing operations, such as a phase-in period. Other commentators asserted that the phosphorus provisions were not stringent enough to protect water quality and suggested use of “phosphorus balancing” . . . 111
On the environmental side, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future suggested, among other things, that Pennsylvania’s P Index approach would allow too much phosphorus dumping.
Instead of legalizing phosphorus dumping, as the P Index approach does, the regulations should require that manure be applied at rates that meet but do not exceed fertilizer needs, the group argued, an approach they called phosphorus balancing (PennFuture comments, November 1,
2004; PennFuture testimony October 13, 2004). Other environmental groups made similar arguments (PA Sierra Club Comments, November 5, 2004; Clean Water Action comments,
November 5, 2004; Waterkeeper Alliance comments, November 5, 2004). The Chesapeake Bay
Foundation made a slightly more industry friendly version of the argument, supporting the P
110 34 Pa.B. 4361 (August 7, 2004).
111 36 Pa.B. 2636 (June 3, 2006).
137 Index as a short-term fix, but expressing the need to move toward phosphorus balancing eventually (CBF testimony, October 13, 2004; CBF comments, November 5, 2004).
On the other side of the issue, representatives of the regulated industry, including PennAg
Industries, the PA Farm Bureau, the PA DEP’s Agricultural Advisory Board, along with the chairpersons of the state House and Senate Agricultural and Rural Affairs committees, were concerned that the P Index would increase manure disposal costs (Letter from Agricultural
Advisory Board, November 1, 2004). A representative of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau put it this way:
The end result [of phosphorus indexing] will likely be that some farmers will have nowhere to go with their manure, or that some farmers will not reasonably be able to bear the costs associated with moving the manure to areas where it may be applied. We have heard from several farmers who, after consultation with their nutrient management specialists, have indicated to us that a blanket application of the phosphorus standard could put them out of business. (Testimony of PA Farm Bureau, October 13, 2004, p. 7).
The industry urged the SCC to phase in the P Index requirement over time and offer public subsidies to help defray the industry’s compliance costs (Testimony of PA Farm Bureau, October
13, 2004; Testimony of PA Farm Bureau, October 14, 2004; PA State Grange comments,
November 4, 2004; Letter from PA Senate and House Agriculture & Rural Affairs Committees,
November 4, 2004; PennAg Industries Association comments, October 27, 2004; PennAg
Industries Association testimony, October 13, 2004; Letter from Agricultural Advisory Board,
November 1, 2004).
The regulated industry ultimately got a phase-in period. The final regulations, which the
SCC promulgated on June 3, 2006, with an effective date of October 1, 2006, included a five- year phase-in period for existing operations. According to the SCC, this phase-in period would
“give the industry time to find alternative means of addressing the excess nutrients generated by
138 NMP operations while still imposing new restrictions on phosphorus application that are protective of surface waters.”112 The phase-in period is scheduled to end on December 31, 2010.
The details of the phase-in period are provided in the user’s guide for the most recent version of the Pennsylvania P Index (Version Two) (Beegle et al. 2007). Except in certain cases, operations that were in existence on October 1, 2006 may treat their very high risk fields as if they were merely high risk. Typically, no additional phosphorus may be applied to fields that have a P index value of 100 or above, a range that indicates a very high risk of phosphorus runoff. For fields with a value between 80 and 99, indicating a high rather than a very high risk, manure may be applied to meet the crop’s P removal rate (see Table 5-4).
112 36 Pa.B. 2636 (June 3, 2006).
139
Table 5-4: PA P Index (Version 2) management guidance. Source: Weld et al. (2007:n.p.).
During the phase-in period, certain operations are permitted to apply manure at the phosphorus removal rate on both their high and very high risk fields. There is, however, an upper ceiling on the risk: no phosphorus may be applied to any field with a P index value that exceeds 150.
Even with the phase-in period, the regulations were expected to force some operations to export manure. To help keep the costs of transporting manure in check, the SCC pledged to
“suppor[t] alternative manure processing or utilization technologies which will economically utilize the manure onsite or at a manure processing facility in an environmentally sound manner.”113 In addition, the NMAB’s Alternative Manure Utilization and Treatment Committee developed an Alternative Manure Utilization and Treatment Strategy describing options for
113 36 Pa.B. 2636 (June 3, 2006).
140 dealing with any manure that may not legally be applied on the operation where it was produced.
The guiding principle of the strategy is that Pennsylvania will attempt to ensure that compliance costs do not undermine the profitability of the regulated industry:
Vision Statement: Pennsylvania’s livestock operations will continue to maintain their economic viability while facing increasing regulatory challenges to the on-site land application of manure through the innovative management and treatment of manure. This will result in a reduction of the amount of manure and associated nutrients generated on Pennsylvania livestock operations that require on-site land application. (PA NMAB, Alternative Manure Utilization and Treatment Committee 2007:3).
Financial assistance has also been offered to help cover some of the costs of developing, maintaining, and implementing NMPs (Beegle 2007b).
Not all the changes to the proposed regulations benefited the regulated industry. For example, in response to comments it had received from environmental groups, the SCC added another factor to the screening tool that is used to determine whether a full risk assessment must be run. If a field or other crop management unit is located in a special protection watershed, a full risk assessment must be run (Beegle et al. 2007; Weld et al. 2007). Special protection waters are surface waters that are relatively pristine; they are entitled to special legal protections designed to keep them that way.
VI. Conclusion
When the phosphorus issue could no longer be avoided, the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania had no choice but to amend its regulations. As I explained in this chapter, public agricultural scientists at Penn State and the USDA-ARS helped the Commonwealth develop regulations that would reduce the short-term risk of phosphorus runoff without undermining the profitability of the regulated industry. Over the years, several Penn State publications have
141 chronicled this research effort, suggesting that regulatory science has become an important part of the research agenda of the College of Agricultural Sciences (Beegle 2007a; Dionis 1999;
Mulhollem 2007; PSU College of Agricultural Sciences 2007; 1999; Steele 1999). For example, in his introduction to a Penn State Agriculture article on the phosphorus research being done in the College, Robert D. Steele, then Dean of the College, suggested that the College had responsed to the regulatory pressure facing one of its key industry clients. As he put it, “[w]ith continually tightening legislation at the state and federal levels, the College has had its work cut out for it to help Pennsylvania’s farmers maintain profitability while meeting changing circumstances and public expectations (Steele 1999:n.p.). Like the California extension scientists studied by Henke (2008:153), these public agricultural scientists helped “shepher[d] the industry through a period of turbulent political change.”
It would be a mistake, however, to see these scientists as merely responding to regulatory pressure, for in some ways they actually helped to create the pressure in the first place. Research by Sharpley and others helped undermine the conventional wisdom about phosphorus, precipitating an imminent regulatory crisis (see, e.g., Sharpley 1996). Yet after helping create this regulatory problem, some of these scientists helped the industry solve it. For example, in his paper characterizing the conventional wisdom as a myth, Sharpley suggested that he and his fellow researchers “must convince the agricultural communty that management practices can be developed that sustain productivity and profitability as well as water quality” (Sharpley
1996:63).
It is also important to recognize that Sharpley, Beegle, and their colleagues have long acknowledged the ecological shortcomings of the P Index. They have made it clear that it was
142 never meant to be a final solution to the problem of ecologically unsustainable phopshorus flows.
USDA-ARS scientist Richard McDowell and his colleagues put it this way:
The ultimate goal of P management is to balance P inputs to farm with outputs in primary production such that no excess P is applied and soil P concentrations are kept at an optimum level for agronomic performance and minimal environmental impact. However, because of the potential for major changes in agricultural management and negative economic impacts, it is necessary to explore short-term or temporary fixes and methods while the longer term issues related to nutrient balance are addressed . . . (McDowell et al. 2001:306).
The P Index was one of these short-term fixes. In a report to the SCC, Beegle and his colleagues reminded the agency that, “while short term solutions such as P-based nutrient management are immediately beneficial, there is a need to address and consider regional nutrient cycling patterns to address nutrient related issues over the long term” (Beegle et al. 2001b:32). More recently, a
Penn State extension publication clearly acknowledged the limitations of the P Index:
. . . Pennsylvania has developed a P Index, which is a tool for estimating the risk of P loss in runoff from agricultural fields. Under the Pennsylvania Nutrient Management Act, P Index calculations are required as part of nutrient management plans. The P Index allows users to determine when manure can be applied—based on N levels—with minimal potential for P loss in runoff even though excess P will be applied with this approach. The P Index is a useful tool for managing the immediate environmental risk from excess P application on a field. However, it does not address the underlying nutrient imbalance and often allows the imbalance to increase as long as it does not result in an unacceptable risk of P loss to the environment. At some point in the future, though, because of the accumulated excess of nutrients, it will become more and more difficult to land-apply manure in ways that do not negatively impact water quality. This will increase the number of acres where manure application is either restricted or prohibited based on P Index management guidelines. Therefore, the P Index alone will not solve the nutrient problems. However, if this approach is coupled with an understanding of the root cause of the problem—nutrient imbalance—it can provide environmental protection during the time we will need to develop better solutions for and transition to a more sustainable nutrient balance on farms. (Arrington et al. 2007:9; see also Lanyon et al. 2006; Maguire et al. n.d.).
143 As Beegle explained early in the regulatory debate, the P Index is only a temporary fix that, at most, can “bu[y] . . . some time,” providing short-term environmental protection during the time it takes to develop systemic solutions to the problem of ecologically unsustainable phosphorus flows (quoted in Blankenship 1998).114 Those solutions might involve a radical social transformation, perhaps even the creation of a new agri-food system in Pennsylvania, or they might involve a less radical transformation, in which the existing system is retained and technological fixes are found for the surplus manure problem.Whichever type of solution one may prefer, the point to understand about the scientists’ work is this: they did not claim that the P
Index would solve the surplus manure problem. All they claimed was that the P Index could buy regulators and the regulated industry some time while solutions to this problem were being developed.
If there is a critique of the scientists’ work, it is this: by helping regulators develop a regulatory approach that would minimize compliance costs, they reduced the regulatory pressure on the industry to develop systemic solutions. Pennsylvania could have promulgated regulations requiring systemic change immediately, and the scientists could have offered a sound scientific foundation for that approach. For example, as an agronomist, Beegle could have offered a scientific justification for the strict version of the agronomic approach, arguing that any increased ecological risk associated with phosphorus dumping, however slight, outweighed the nonexistent, or at most trivial, agronomic benefits, and that this approach would also help conserve phosphate rock, an argument recently made by retired University of Maryland soil scientist Tom Simpson and his colleagues (Kovzelove, Simpson, and Korcak 2010). Instead, with
114 See also http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/subject/advcoun/ag/APR98AAB.html (last visited on July 10, 2009).
144 the help of Beegle and his colleagues, the Commonwealth promulgated regulations with a delayed day of regulatory reckoning.
Given the way the Pennsylvania P Index works, legalized phosphorus dumping will eventually result in all fields being classified as having a high risk of phosphorus runoff. Land application will then be restricted to the phosphorus removal rate, requiring that at least some excess manure be exported from the operation where it was produced. The resulting increase in disposal costs will, at some point, force the industry to seek alternatives to on site disposal. This is what I mean by a delayed day of reckoning. What remains to be seen is whether systemic solutions will be developed before the time runs out on the ability of the regulations to provide adequate environmental protection. One possibility, though it constitutes little more than informed speculation at this point, is that climate change will undermine the effectiveness of the
P Index approach in certain regions of the state by increasing soil erosion, decreasing the effectiveness of best management practices designed to reduce the risk of phosphorus runoff, or both (for a discussion of climate change, phosphorus runoff, and the Bay, see CBP, STAC
2008:22-23).
In recent months, serious questions have been raised about whether the P Index approach provides adequate environmental protection (Blankenship 2010; Horton 2010; Kobell 2010;
Kovzelove et al. 2010). A report by Tom Simpson’s group advocates a more stringent approach that combines the P Index with an environmental threshold. The report suggests that this approach will better protect the environment and will prepare farmers for the even more stringent regulations that are bound to be promulgated some day, as the federal government ratchets up its efforts to save the Bay (Blankenship 2010; Kovzelove et al. 2010). The report acknowledges,
145 however, that this approach would leave regulated operations with manure that they could not apply on site. Indeed, even Pennsylvania’s less stringent regulatory has apparently had this result
(PA NMAB, Alternative Manure Utilization and Treatment Committee 2007:5). The report recommends alternative uses for mnaure, rather than, say, an alternative agri-food system for the
Bay watershed––a technological fix rather than a social transformation.
According to a recent article in the Bay Journal, in the summer of 2009 the NRCS was considering proposing a national environmental threshold (Kobell 2010). Industry groups and scientists affiliated with SERA-17, including Sharpley and Beegle, reportedly opposed the proposal. In response to this opposition, the agency dropped the proposal and agreed to support an effort by SERA-17 to make the P Index more protective of the environment. This led Tom
Horton, a writer and former journalist who has long covered the effort to save the Bay, to argue that the SERA-17 scientists are concerned more about maintaining the profitability of the regulated industry than about maintaining the ecological integrity of aquatic ecosystems, accusing them, unfairly in my view, of trying to hide the problem of excess manure phosphorus
(Horton 2010).
If this recent conflict is any indication, we may be heading toward another legitimacy crisis for the regulatory system. Interestingly, past research by the very scientists Horton criticized could help bring such a crisis about. Although these scientists laid the scientific foundation for regulations that were designed to address the risk of phosphorus runoff without undermining the profitability of the regulated industry, and although the need to keep compliance costs in check limited the ecological effectiveness of the regulations, the only reason I know this is because these scientists have gone out of their way to make it so clear. They have not hidden
146 the true magnitude of the excess phosphorus problem. To the contrary, they have helped keep it on the public agenda (see, e.g., Arrington et al. 2007; Lanyon et al. 2006). Through this work they have created a political opportunity for activists whose goal is to undermine the legitimacy of the regulations.
147 Chapter 6. AGRI-ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNO-FIXES
I. Introduction
Several observers have stressed the need for technological fixes for the industrial livestock and poultry sectors’ regulatory problems. According to a Farm Foundation report on the future of livestock and poultry production in North America, “[u]ntil and unless technological fixes to environmental and odor problems occur, this challenge will continue to dramatically affect the size, location and structure of the livestock [and poultry] industr[ies]” (Farm
Foundation 2006:31; see also pp. 5, 20, 33, 101). Technological fixes are especially important for producers located in regions where compliance costs are relatively high. As Ribaudo and his colleagues explained,
[i]n some regions the concentration of animals is such that there may not be adequate land suitable for spreading manure, even if all landowners are willing to use it. Some changes in cropping patterns on livestock farms could be made to increase nutrient uptake. Alternative uses of manure, such as a feedstock or commercial fertilizer, energy production and composting may enable high concentrations of animals to exist on a regional level and still meet clean water regulations. New manure management methods and alternative feed rations might also help. Otherwise, operations in “saturated” counties may have to reconsider livestock numbers or their location. (Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff 2003:38).
Some of these regions are located in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed:
In areas of the Chesapeake Bay watershed where confined animal production is concentrated, implementation of EPA and USDA manure policies poses tremendous challenges. If the manure produced exceeds potential local use, producers may choose to: (1) transport the manure ever-greater distances until enough land can be found for application, (2) alter feed management to reduce nutrient output, or (3) apply technologies that transform the manure to a value-added product that is more readily transportable and usable. Beyond this, the only recourse is to reduce the number of animals in the watershed. (Ribaudo et al. 2003:36).
148 Unless cost-effective technological fixes are developed, such regions could become unprofitable locations for the regulated industry.
With the help of land-grant universities such as Penn State, the industry is pursuing various techno-fixes for its regulatory problems (Mulhollem 2007). Private companies are also involved in this effort. Indeed, the creation of regulatory friendly agri-environmental technologies promises to become a lucrative business opportunity.
Two main types of technologies can minimize the cost of complying with nutrient management regulations: “‘supply-reducing’” and “‘output-using’” technologies (Ribaudo et al.
2003:45). Output-using technologies find uses for surplus manure other than on site disposal
(Kovzelove et al. 2010; PA NMAB, Alternative Manure Utilization and Treatment Committee
2007; Ribaudo et al. 2003:45-49). A good example is hauling manure to another farm or processing it into a fertilizer that can be used on golf courses or in landscaping or home gardening (Ribaudo et al. 2003:50). Given its relatively low moisture content, poultry litter is much more amenable to these alternatives than swine manure, which in the industrial swine sector is managed as a liquid slurry (Ribaudo et al. 2003:47). Unlike output-using technologies, which take the volume of manure and its nutrient content as given, supply-reducing technologies
“reduc[e] the amount of nutrients excreted per unit of animal output, resulting in fewer pounds of nutrients needing disposition” (Ribaudo et al. 2003:47, see also 49).115 An example of a unit of animal output (often called a unit of production) is pound of weight gain. Examples of supply-
115 They can also reduce the overall volume of manure produced per unit of production.
149 reducing technologies include phase feeding116 ; split-sex feeding117 ; formulating diets that meet, but do not exceed, the amount of nutrients needed to produce a certain output; feeding for less than maximum performance; genetically selecting (or engineering) animals for increased productive efficiency;118 and using metabolic modifiers to increase productive efficiency (CAST
2006; 2005; 2002; Ribaudo et al. 2003:19, 47, 49; Sutton and Lander 2003a).
This chapter focuses on supply-reducing technologies that reduce nutrient excretion per unit of production. In this new biotechnological project, the animal body is represented as the source of pollution, and the goal is to reduce pollution at the source. The technologies examined in this chapter are designed to reduce the amount of phosphorus excreted by swine fed the typical industrial diet consisting largely of corn and soybeans (CAST 2006; 2002:6-7; Cromwell 2005; van Heugten and van Kempen 2001; Honeyman 1993; Kornegay and Harper 1997; NRC
1998:Ch.8; Sutton and Lander 2003b). In addition to the supply-reducing technologies listed above, these include several environmental applications of biotechnology, including corn and soybeans that have been genetically engineered to be low in phytate; microbes that have been genetically engineered to secrete phytases with certain useful qualities; and the Enviropig™, a transgenic breed genetically engineered to secrete its own phytase. Instead of discussing all the various technologies that have been developed, this chapter focuses on three: (1) “environmental nutrition”—in this case, feeding swine no more phosphorus than is needed for profitable pork
116 Phase feeding involves “[c]hanging the nutrient concentrations in a series of diets formulated to meet an animal’s nutrient requirements more precisely at a particular stage of growth or production” (Sutton and Lander 2003a:5). Increasing the number of stages or phases can decrease nutrient excretion per unit of production.
117 Split-sex feeding is “[a] feeding and housing program that divides animals by gender [sic] and formulates diets to meet the specific nutrient requirements of each sex more precisely” (Sutton and Lander 2003a:6).
118 Productive efficiency (also known as feed use efficiency or feed conversion efficiency) is “[t]he amount of live weight gain, milk production, or egg production per unit of feed consumed” (Sutton and Lander 2003a:5; see also CAST 2003:10). Increasing productive efficiency decreases the amount of manure, and thus nutrients, generated per unit of production.
150 production; (2) adding microbial phytase to swine feed; and (3) raising Enviropigs™. I chose the
Enviropig™ because it is on the cutting-edge of environmental applications of animal biotechnology. I chose the other two approaches because, unlike the Enviropig™, they are already being used in the industrial swine sector.
The chapter has two main purposes. First, it explains how these three technologies reduce phosphorus excretion, and how this might help keep compliance costs in check. By lowering the phosphorus content of manure, they increase the amount that can be applied per acre without exceeding the maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate. This maximizes the amount of manure that can be applied on site, minimizing the amount that must be managed in some other, potentially more expensive way (Ribaudo 2003; Ribaudo, Gollehon, and Agapoff
2003; Ribaudo et al. 2003:iv, 18, 19, 21, 39, 49-53, 85). Second, the chapter assesses the notion that these technologies are “environmentally friendly,” as their proponents have sometimes described them, most notably in the case of the Enviropig™. I argue that technologies are not inherently friendly to the environment, as the phrase “environmentally friendly” implies. As with all technologies, the environmental impact of so-called environmentally friendly technologies depends upon how they are used.
All three technologies increase the efficiency of phosphorus use per unit of production.
They reduce the amount of phosphorus needed to bring each animal to market weight, and they decrease the amount of phosphorus excreted per animal. As explained below, most comprehensively in the discussion of the Enviropig™, increasing efficiency per unit of production does not necessarily make swine operations, or the industry as a whole, more
151 environmentally friendly. So although calling these technologies “environmentally friendly” might be good marketing, it is bad science.
II. Environmental Nutrition
Phosphorus is essential for life. Without it, no organism can live. Swine require it in their diets, in digestible forms, because it plays so many anatomical and physiological roles in the body. To cite just a few examples, phosphorus is involved in skeletal formation and is also an integral component of the nucleic acids RNA and DNA. If the diet contains too little, swine experience various symptoms of deficiency. As noted swine nutritionist Gary Cromwell explains,
“[a] deficiency of P not only leads to poor bone mineralization, but also reduces growth rate, efficiency of feed utilization, carcass leanness, and other production traits” (Cromwell 2005:610; see also NRC 1998:49). If, on the other hand, the diet contains more than is needed, the excess is excreted into the urine and feces, which together constitute the excreta, one component of the heterogeneous mixture that is swine manure.119 Typically, most phosphorus is excreted into the feces. Fecal phosphorus is derived not only from dietary sources, but also from digestive tract secretions and intestinal cells that have sloughed off (Cromwell 2005). Urinary phosphorus tends to be relatively insignificant unless the diet contains excess phosphorus (Cromwell 2005). Unlike fecal phosphorus, urinary phosphorus tends to be in soluble forms—a point that will become significant below, in the discussion of the environmental consequences of adding phytase to swine feed (Cromwell 2005).
The swine digestive system is used as a biological machine for converting feedstuffs into flesh. As with all machines, however, this feed conversion machine is not perfectly efficient.
119 In the industrial pork sector, swine manure consists of the excreta along with other materials, including anything that falls through the slats in the floor of a confinement facility, from uneaten feed to testicles and other “[u]nwanted bits of pig anatomy” (Stull and Broadway 2004:53; see also Honeyman 1993).
152 Manure, which is mainly feed that has not become flesh, is an inevitable byproduct of the production process. Although manure cannot be eliminated, the total volume of manure and the concentration of nutrients in it can, to some extent, be controlled. “Although it is not possible to make pigs 100% efficient in utilization of nutrients,” an article by animal scientists E.T.
Kornegay and A.F. Harper (1997:99) explained, “it is possible to reduce the amount of nutrients excreted through careful nutrient management.”
Kornegay and Harper coined the phrase “environmental nutrition” to describe dietary strategies for reducing nutrient excretion (Kornegay and Harper 1997:100). They defined it as
“the concept of formulating cost-effective diets and feeding animals to meet their minimum mineral needs for acceptable performance, reproduction, and carcass quality with minimal excretion of minerals” (Kornegay and Harper 1997:100). As they explained, feeding swine excess phosphorus is like throwing money away. Because of the “principle of diminishing returns in response to nutrient input,” at some point the cost of adding additional phosphorus as an input outweighs the economic benefits of increased output (Kornegay and Harper 1997:104).
And because any excess will be excreted, increasing the phosphorus content of the manure, feeding swine excess phosphorus can also increase regulatory compliance costs. To keep feed costs and regulatory compliance costs in check, the industry therefore has an incentive to feed swine no more phosphorus than is needed.
Instead of assuming that swine nutrition––in either its conventional or its environmental version––is about meeting the animal’s needs, we should examine whose needs are being met.
The National Research Council (NRC) publishes a handbook for the pork industry titled Nutrient
Requirements of Swine (NRC 1998). The most recent edition (the 10th) was published in 1998,
153 and work on an eleventh edition began on December 1, 2009.120 The title of the handbook suggests that it is designed to help meet the animal’s needs. Yet as Richard Lewontin and Jean-
Pierre Berlan once wrote, we should not confuse the needs of livestock and poultry with “the needs of capital” (Lewontin and Berlan 1986:28). Indeed, a more accurate title for the handbook would be Nutrient Requirements of the Pork Industry, for it is designed primarily to help the industry formulate diets that maximize profits.
The issue of bone strength provides a striking example of how the needs of capital influence the formulation of livestock and poultry diets. The handbook describes the minimum amount of phosphorus needed to maximize growth rate and feed conversion efficiency, two important production traits that are about maximizing profits (NRC 1998:2, 48).121 According to
Gary Cromwell, who chaired the Subcommittee that developed the handbook, providing the minimum amount of phosphorus and calcium “will not result in maximum bone mineralization” (Cromwell 2005:611; see also NRC 1998:48). To maximize bone strength, more than the minimum would have to be supplied (NRC 1998:48). Yet maximizing bone strength is economically irrational. Because swine can profitably transform feedstuffs into flesh even if the bones on which all of that pork is hung are not as strong as they could be, maximizing bone strength would result in unnecessarily high feed costs. There are, of course, exceptions. For example, in one study cited by the NRC, “[f]eeding of dietary levels of calcium and phosphorus sufficient to maximize bone mineralization in gilts during early growth and development was
120 http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49161 (last visited on January 4, 2010).
121 The requirements vary by the age, sex, and intended use of the animal.
154 shown to improve reproductive longevity. . .” (NRC 1998:48).122 In general, however, maximizing bone strength is not necessary for profitable pork production.
There are, however, anatomical limits on how much the industry can skimp on skeletal strength before undermining profits. “Although maximizing bone development is not necessary for the production of a market pig,”123 Kornegay and Harper explained, “a more difficult question is how much bone development is required to prevent damage to the carcass during mechanical processing that occurs during slaughter” (Kornegay and Harper 1997:104). In other words, bones that are too fragile can break during the mechanized disassembly of the body.
Presumably, a damaged carcass could slow down the disassembly line, cutting into profits.124
The challenge for animal scientists is to pinpoint the profitable degree of bone strength—not too weak, not too strong—a striking example of what Dinesh Wadiwel (2002:n.p.) described as the
“shrewd and calculating management of life” that characterizes industrial meat, milk, and egg production.
That capitalism’s cold and calculating logic results in the production of deliberately weakened skeletons is hardly surprising. What is perhaps somewhat surprising is that skimping
122 A gilt is a young female pig.
123 By market pig they meant a pig raised for no other purpose than to be slaughtered and transformed into pork products—as opposed to a breeding sow, whose reproductive system is used as a “piglet [producing] machin [e]” (Scully 2002:268). Sows are eventually killed, too. When they are no longer producing piglets at a profitable rate, or when a producer needs to thin the herd, sows are slaughtered for pork (sausages in particular). Indeed, in 2009 sows were culled in the U.S. to increase profits. One of the barriers to culling one’s way to profits, according to an article on the National Hog Farmer website, is that only so much sausage can sold at a profit. Writing in August of 2009, the author predicted that “[c]ooler weather, the beginning of school (and more breakfast eating), and football season tailgate parties will all help, but there is still a limit to just how many sausage patties and bratwursts can be moved at profitable prices.” http://nationalhogfarmer.com/weekly-preview/0831-sow-slaughter-upward-path/ index.html (last visited on January 4, 2010).
124 In the broiler sector, food safety is another issue. According to an article in the Chesapeake Bay Journal, some efforts to reduce phosphorus excretion from broiler chickens can increase “the risk of broken bones in the birds, which could result in bone chips in the meat, a major concern of the poultry industry.” http://www.bayjournal.com/ article.cfm?article=1200 (downloaded on January 3, 2010). I do not know whether bone chips are a significant risk in the pork sector as well.
155 on skeletal strength is now being done in the name of environmental protection. Animal scientists suggest that making bones too strong can be bad not only for the bottom line, but also for the environment. Kornegay and Harper:
It is well known that the amount of P required to maximize growth is less than the amount required to maximize bone integrity. Perhaps, from the perspective of animal well-being, attempts to maximize bone integrity are most important. But from an environmental perspective, attempts to maximize bone integrity results [sic] in excessive excretion of P. (Kornegay and Harper 1997:104, citations omitted, italics added).
Kornegay and Harper predicted that, “[a]s the cost of disposing of P increase[d],” partly as a result of environmental regulations, the industry would begin to “feed below rather than above the nutrient requirements of animals to maximize growth and bone development” (Kornegay and
Harper 1997:104-105).125 In other words, partly in response to regulatory pressure, the industry might begin producing swine with deliberately weakened skeletons.
The extent to which the industry is skimping on skeletal strength is unclear, but what is clear is that some experts have advised the industry to skimp. Consider, for example, Penn
State’s Environmental Standards of Production for Larger Pork Producers in Pennsylvania.
Published in 1999, but still the most current version, it provides the following advice to the industry:
Phosphorus has traditionally been added to swine diets at levels 20 to 30% above the animals’ requirements. This practice has been generally accepted to provide a margin of safety for adequate bone formation.
With improved genetics resulting in much shorter grow-out periods, it is becoming less important to develop long-term skeletal strength. Current feeding trials indicate that a 20% dietary phosphorus reduction (from the concentrations typically fed) is possible
125 The reference to growth is important. The authors suggested that the industry can reduce phosphorus excretion not only by feeding less phosphorus than needed to maximize bone development, but also by feeding less than needed to maximize growth (Kornegay and Harper 1997:104-105).
156 without any negative effect to finishing pigs. Producers are encouraged to follow recommendations of the National Research Council for dietary phosphorus needs. (Mikesell and Kephart 1999:9, italics added).
Swine are typically slaughtered when they are approximately six months old. With their lives so foreshortened, Mikesell and Kephart explained, the animals do not require “long-term skeletal strength.” Breeding sows are another matter. According to the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), “[s]mall overages [of phosphorus] for safety purposes and to enhance bone development for growing animals kept for breeding purposes may be justified . . .” (CAST
2002:6).
By highlighting the shrewd and calculating logic brought to bear on the skeletons of swine, I do not mean to imply that this logic has led to animal suffering. Failing to maximize bone strength does not necessarily have adverse effects on the health or welfare of the animals.
According to the NRC, “maximization of bone strength by feeding large amounts of calcium and phosphorus to growing pigs does not necessarily improve structural soundness . . ., nor has it been shown to be necessary for good health or longevity . . .” (NRC 1998:48, citations omitted).
Yet the example of the deliberately weakened skeleton does alert us to the possibility that animal welfare might, in some cases, be sacrificed in the name of the environment. It also reminds us that just because a technology is “environmentally friendly” does not necessarily mean that it is
“animal welfare friendly.”
Several influential organizations have advocated environmental nutrition. CAST was an early proponent. In a 1996 report titled Integrated Animal Waste Management, it called for additional research on “changing animal diets to decrease nutrient outputs and odorous compounds” (CAST 1996:1). One of the benefits of reducing nutrient excretion, the report
157 explained, is that it “lower[s] requirements for a sustainable landbase for manure application” (CAST 1996:10). In other words, less land is needed to apply a given volume of manure without exceeding the maximum legally acceptable nutrient application rate. When the report was written, reducing nutrient excretion was still a relatively new area of research, and
“continued research [was] needed to develop technologies that [could] be implemented by production agriculture” (CAST 1996:10). Defining the nutrient requirements for profitable meat, milk, and egg production was one of the areas where more research was thought to be needed.
“Research must continue to define nutrient requirements for optimal economic production potential of the animal without excess nutrient excretion,” the report argued, making it clear whose needs mattered most (CAST 1996:10).
Six years later, CAST published a follow-up report, Animal Diet Modification to
Decrease the Potential for Nitrogen and Phosphorus Pollution (CAST 2002). “In the past,” the report explained, “there ha[d] been little pressure to decrease excretion, so livestock and poultry producers ha[d] typically overfed protein (N) and P” (CAST 2002:2). Since the publication of the
1996 report, however, regulatory pressure had been building. Some states had promulgated nutrient management regulations, and in 2001 the United States Environmental Protection
Agency (US EPA) had released draft regulations for public comment. This increased regulatory pressure created what Ribaudo and his colleagues described as a “regulatory . . . incentive” to reduce nutrient excretion (Ribaudo et al. 2003:19).
Referring to its earlier call for additional research, CAST reported that “[p]rogress ha[d] been made since 1996 to decrease nutrient outputs by animals through diet modification and nutrition” (CAST 2002:1). And even greater progress appeared on the horizon. In the case of
158 phosphorus, the report predicted that, “[b]y implementing today’s technologies and continuing research and development, it is reasonable to expect . . . a 50 to 60% decrease in P excretion in swine operations in the next five years” (CAST 2002:7). Drawing on the CAST report, Ribaudo and his colleagues explained that modifying the diets of livestock and poultry could help keep regulatory compliance costs in check: “Animal diet modification to reduce the nitrogen and phosphorous content of excreted manure offers an additional way of helping producers to meet nutrient standards for land application” (Ribaudo et al. 2003:19).
The NRC has been another prominent proponent of environmental nutrition. The most recent edition of its Nutrient Requirements of Swine handbook includes a new chapter titled
“Minimizing Nutrient Excretion” (NRC 1998:Ch.8). As the handbook explains, “[t]his chapter discusses the potential environmental impact of excessive excretion of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, and addresses means of reducing excretion of these potential environmental pollutants by dietary manipulation” (NRC 1998:2). In the preface, Cromwell makes the case for an environmental nutrition approach: “A better understanding of the nutrient requirements and nutrient sources allows one to accurately formulate diets to meet the pig’s dietary requirements without producing overages of nutrients that are excreted into the environment” (NRC 1998:vii).
The NRC report suggested that regulatory pressure had encouraged this new focus on reducing phosphorus excretion. It noted that the industrial pork sector was facing the possibility of stringent, phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations restricting the amount of manure that could be applied per acre.
In some areas, nitrogen is used as the basis to regulate the amount of manure that can be applied to the land. However, evidence is accumulating which suggests that phosphorus
159 will be the nutrient that limits land application of manure in the more intensive swine producing areas. (NRC 1998:103).
Because “the efficiency of animal performance follows the principle of diminishing returns in response to nutrient input,” the report argued, echoing the Kornegay and Harper article, “[a]s the cost of disposing of nitrogen and phosphorus increases, the nutrient levels fed to pigs will probably decrease” (NRC 1998:105). “The need for more careful nutrient management planning probably will increase in the future,” the report predicted, “as the intensity of the industry increases and as the concerns of the public increase” (NRC 1998:105). More recently, Cromwell described the role of regulatory pressure even more clearly:
Traditionally, universities and feed companies have recommended Ca and P allowances for swine that were higher than the NRC levels to account for variability among animals, feedstuffs, and environments. The general approach was to use NRC standards as the base, then add extra amounts of these minerals (as well as most other nutrients) as safety factors. Little attention was paid to “over-supplementing” diets with nutrients as long as it was not overly expensive. The rationale was that the nutrients in excess of the animal’s requirements were simply stored in the body tissues or excreted in the manure.
However, that situation has changed recently especially with respect to N and P. Environmental issues relating to water quality have forced livestock and poultry producers to pay much closer attention to their feeding programs so as to limit the amount of N and P in the manure produced by their animals. In many areas, P-based regulations have been enacted (or are pending) that limit the amount of P that can be applied to crop land. Because of the impact these regulations have on swine production, there is now a strong incentive in the swine industry to reduce P excretion. As a result, nutritionists now are formulating diets that more closely match the animal’s requirements such that lesser amounts of nutrients that can potentially damage the environment will be excreted. (Cromwell 2005:611, italics added).
If Cromwell’s comments are any indication, regulatory pressure has probably encouraged the adoption of swine diets that more closely approximate the minimum phosphorus requirements developed by the NRC. Unfortunately, I have found no systematic data on this issue. A recent USDA-ERS report on changes in manure management practices in the swine
160 sector between 1998 and 2004 does not examine the amount of phosphorus added to the feed
(Key et al. 2009).
III. Adding Microbial Phytase to Feed
For physiological reasons, swine fed the typical industrial diet of corn and soybeans excrete high-phosphorus manure. While corn and soybean plants are growing, they absorb phosphorus from the soil, but much of this phosphorus becomes bound up in an organic chemical compound called phytic acid (also known as phytate). This phosphorus is unavailable to animals unless the enzyme phytase releases it from the compound. Like human beings, poultry, and other non-ruminant animals, swine lack sufficient phytase to do the job. Digestible, inorganic phosphate can be added to swine feed to meet dietary requirements, but when this is done the undigested phytic acid still flows through the digestive system, resulting in high-phosphorus feces (Cromwell 2005:608).
In the U.S., the swine and poultry sectors have begun to address the phytic acid issue by adding microbial phytase to feed. Phytase is produced by various microbes, including certain fungi and bacteria. The original phytase research used the fungus Aspergillus ficuum. By the late
1960s, scientists had demonstrated that adding phytase to chicken feed released inorganic phosphate from phytic acid, making it available to the birds. Initially the enzyme was too expensive for the livestock and poultry sectors to adopt. Eventually, however, technological advances reduced production costs, making phytase a more economically viable option, especially at times when regulatory compliance costs and the price of inorganic phosphate are high (Cromwell 2005).
161 In January of 2010, several phytases were on the market. An internet search turned up nine enzymes, produced by seven different companies: NatuPhos®;126 Allzyme® SSF;127
Phyzyme® XP;128 Ronozyme® P;129 Finase®130 and Finase® EC (for poultry);131 Quantum
Phytase132 and Quantum Phytase XT;133 and, finally, OptiPhos®.134 Phytase was available for use in the swine, poultry, and aquaculture135 sectors. Some of these enzymes were produced using genetic engineering. For example, Natuphos® is produced by a genetically engineered strain of
Aspergillus niger. Approved by the FDA in 1995, it was the first phytase on the market.136
The companies involved in phytase production are competitors, and each has an incentive to advertise its enzyme as the best. The websites reflect this competition. For example, BASF advertises NatuPhos® as “The original Phytase;”137 Enzyvia advertises OptiPhos® as “The
Advanced Phytase” because, the company claims, it is “the most technologically advanced and most active phytase product available for livestock,” more advanced than “first-generation
126 http://www.natuphos.com/ (last visited on January 7, 2010).
127 http://www.alltech.com/en_US/brands/Pages/AllzymeSSF.aspx (last visited on January 7, 2010).
128 http://www.danisco.com/wps/wcm/connect/danisco/corporate/products%20and%20services/agri%20and %20animal/animal%20nutrition/products/phyzyme/phyzyme_en.htm (last visited on January 10, 2010).
129 http://www.dsm.com/en_US/downloads/dnp/51456_RONOZYME_P.pdf (downloaded on January 7, 2010).
130 http://www.abvista.com/products/enzymes/phylase/finase/finase/ (last visited on January 7, 2010).
131 http://www.abvista.com/products/enzymes/phylase/finase/finase-ec/ (last visited on January 7, 2010).
132 http://www.abvista.com/products/enzymes/phylase/quantum/ (last visited on January 7, 2010).
133 http://www.abvista.com/products/enzymes/phylase/quantum/quantum-phytase-xt/ (last visited on January 7, 2010).
134 http://www.optiphos.net/ (last visited on January 7, 2010).
135 Some aquaculture producers feed grains to fish, and these grains contain phytic acid. http://www.dsm.com/ en_US/downloads/dnp/51642_aqua.pdf (downloaded on January 17, 2010).
136 http://www.uky.edu/Ag/AnimalSciences/pubs/twonewproductsapprovedforswine.pdf (downloaded on January 7, 2010).
137 http://www.natuphos.com/natuphos.aspx?GrpID=1 (last visited on January 7, 2010).
162 phytases (all other phytases). . .;”138 and ABVista advertises Quantum Phytase XT as “a third- generation product” that “surpasses first- and second-generation products to improve the consistency and predictability of the response seen in the field.”139 These claims are difficult to evaluate. The main problem is that it is unclear when they were made, which means some could be outdated. For example, Enzyvia’s website claims that all other phytases are first-generation enzymes, but ABVista’s claims that Quantum Phytase XT is the only third-generation phytase on the market, implying that OptiPhos® is now an outdated, second-generation enzyme. From my review of the websites, OptiPhos® and Quantum Phytase XT appear to be the most advanced enzymes on the market. Yet despite my best efforts, I have found no study comparing all the enzymes. Although I am reluctant to accept the companies’ self-serving claims at face value, it does seem clear that the enzymes are not equally effective. This fact will become important later on this chapter, when we examine claims made by the Enviropig’s™ developers, who have asserted that raising genetically engineered, phytase-secreting swine would be more effective than adding microbial phytase to the feed of ordinary swine. Unfortunately, I explain below, the developers do not specify which phytase they are comparing the Enviropig™ to.
The phytase companies tout what they regard as this enzyme’s benefits. Although they disagree about whose version of the enzyme is best able to provide these benefits, they largely agree about what the benefits are. The benefits fall into two broad categories: benefits to society
138 http://www.optiphos.net/index.html (last visited on January 7, 2010).
139 http://www.abvista.com/products/enzymes/phylase/quantum/quantum-phytase-xt/ (last visited on January 17, 2010).
163 at large and benefits to the swine and poultry sectors.140 Phytase benefits society, the companies argue, by conserving phosphate rock and by reducing the risk of eutrophication. The enzyme benefits the swine and poultry sectors by reducing both feed and regulatory compliance costs.
Researchers at Cornell University developed OptiPhos®. An article about their work provides a summary of this argument. By reducing production costs, the article argues, phytase increases the profitability of the livestock and poultry sectors, all while benefiting the broader public by protecting aquatic ecosystems and conserving a crucial natural resource.141
The companies’ advertising touts these benefits. A brochure for Ronozyme® puts it this way: “By increasing the utilisation of nutrients in the feed and reducing phosphorus output,
RONOZYME® P helps to protect both your profits and the environment.”142 Danisco claims that
Phyzyme® XP offers “more profit, better environment,”143 and BASF informs the swine and poultry sectors that “the effect of Natuphos® is not only beneficial for the environment but also increases your profit.”144 In these particular claims about increased profits, the companies are referring to reduced feed costs not reduced regulatory compliance costs. As I explain below, however, several companies claim to be able to reduce compliance costs as well.
Let’s consider the companies’ claims in greater detail. Take the claim that phytase can mitigate the environmental impact of livestock and poultry production. The enzyme reduces
140 Although phytase is available for the aquaculture sector as well, the companies tend to focus on the livestock and poultry sectors, as do I. The only brochure specifically on aquaculture makes some of the same claims about the potential benefits of phytase that the other documents make. http://www.dsm.com/en_US/downloads/dnp/ 51642_aqua.pdf (downloaded on January 21, 2010).
141 http://www.research.cornell.edu/VPR/CWC181-05/pdfs/progress_3.pdf (downloaded on January 20, 2010).
142 http://www.dsm.com/en_US/downloads/dnp/51456_RONOZYME_P.pdf (downloaded on January 17, 2010).
143 http://www.danisco.com/wps/wcm/connect/danisco/corporate/products%20and%20services/agri%20and %20animal/animal%20nutrition/products/phyzyme/phyzyme_en.htm (last visited on January 17, 2010).
144 http://www.natuphos.com/pdf/Natuphos_higher-yields.pdf (downloaded on January 20, 2010).
164 phosphorus excretion per animal, and the companies assume that this will result in a reduction in the environmental impact of swine and poultry production. For example, Danisco asserts that
“Phyzyme XP improves the environment by reducing the amount of phosphorus excreted by the animal.”145 According to ABVista, “[u]sing Finase® in your diet will increase the availability of some phytate-bound nutrients, and it will also reduce the environmental impact of phosphorous being excreted by the animals.”146 Enzyvia makes a similar claim, asserting that “OptiPhos benefits the environment as substantially less phosphorus is released onto the land.”147
Unfortunately, the companies do not consider the possibility that reducing phosphorus excretion per unit of production might not reduce environmental impact per operation, let alone the overall environmental impact of the industry all along the commodity chain. I return to this issue in the section on the Enviropig™, where I assess the environmental claims that have been made about all three of the techno-fixes examined in this chapter.
The second claim is that phytase helps conserve phosphate rock, the raw material from which inorganic phosphate feed supplements and phosphorus fertilizers are made. The best example of this claim is found in the Cornell article on OptiPhos®. The article invokes the specter of peak phosphorus and then offers phytase as a way of extending the life of existing deposits of phosphate rock.148 The most effective phytases enable swine at certain stages of production to obtain all (or almost all) of the phosphorus they need from the phytic acid in their feed, eliminating (or greatly reducing) the need to add inorganic phosphate supplements to their
145 http://www.danisco.com/wps/wcm/connect/danisco/corporate/products%20and%20services/agri%20and %20animal/animal%20nutrition/products/phyzyme/phyzyme_en.htm (last visited on January 20, 2010).
146 http://www.abvista.com/products/enzymes/phylase/finase/finase/ (last visited on January 20, 2010).
147 http://www.optiphos.net/ (last visited on January 20, 2010).
148 http://www.research.cornell.edu/VPR/CWC181-05/pdfs/progress_3.pdf (downloaded on January 20, 2010).
165 feed. Let’s presume that phytase can enable swine to obtain all of their phosphorus from phytic acid, eliminating the need for inorganic phosphate supplements. Because less phosphate rock would need to be mined to produce feed-grade phosphorus, phytase would help conserve it. In the best case scenario (if phytase could eliminate the need for inorganic phosphate supplements at all stages of production), the only phosphate rock that would be needed for swine production would be the rock used to make fertilizer for the feedstuffs. Phytase would therefore reduce the amount of phosphate rock needed per unit of production (e.g., per animal or per pound of live weight gain). Unfortunately, the Cornell article fails to consider the possibility that increasing the efficiency of phosphate rock use per unit of production could accelerate the depletion of this resource. Like industry claims about environmental protection, I return to the claims about natural resource conservation in the Enviropig™ section.
The third claim is that phytase helps keep feed costs in check. The price of feed is an important economic issue for the livestock and poultry sectors, for it typically constitutes the largest component of overall production costs. The price of feed is affected by numerous factors, but in recent years an increase in the price of inorganic phosphate has become important. Like fertilizer-grade phosphate, feed-grade phosphate is derived from phosphate rock, the price of which has increased in recent years. The United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) 2009 commodity summary documented the rising price of phosphate rock:
Beginning in late 2007 and continuing into 2008, the price of phosphate rock jumped dramatically worldwide owing to increased agricultural demand and tight supplies of phosphate rock. The average U.S. price was more than double that of 2007. Average spot prices from North Africa and other exporting regions approached $500 per ton, which
166 was more than five times the average price in 2007. Prices for nitrogen, potash, and sulfur also increased, thus causing the price of fertilizers to reach record highs.149
The most recent USGS summary, published in January of 2010, tells a different story. In the
U.S., the price of phosphate rock fell in 2009 as a result of the economic crisis.150 For purposes of this analysis, however, I focus on the period when the price was increasing, and how this increase might have affected the market for phytase.
The price increase was driven by both supply and demand factors. Increased demand for fertilizer was a major factor. In a typical year, approximately 80% of the phosphate rock unearthed worldwide is used for fertilizer, 12% is used for detergents, 5% for animal feed, and
3% for other applications (Smil 2000:66; Stewart et al. 2005:17). Demand for fertilizer increased as a result of two main factors: (1) an increase in corn-based ethanol production and (2) an increase in global demand for animal products, which led, in turn, to increased demand for fertilizer to grow all the corn, soybeans, and other feedstuffs (Cordell et al. 2009). The increase in corn production, for both ethanol and animal feed, was especially significant because corn requires twice the amount of phosphorus per acre required by soybeans and wheat. The increased demand for animal products might have also led to an increase in demand for feed-grade phosphate. On the supply side, an increase in the price of sulfuric acid, a key ingredient used in the production of both fertilizer- and feed-grade phosphate, increased production costs.151 Supply
149 http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/phosphate_rock/mcs-2009-phosp.pdf (downloaded on January 17, 2010).
150 http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/phosphate_rock/mcs-2010-phosp.pdf (downloaded on February 9, 2010).
151 http://www.optiphos.net/OptiPhos_White_Paper.pdf (downloaded on January 17, 2010).
167 might have also been constrained by other factors, including local opposition to the expansion of phosphate mines in Florida.152
As a result of these supply and demand factors, the price of inorganic phosphate supplements increased significantly. An undated analysis available on Enzyvia’s website notes a
400% increase “in the last few years.”153 Whatever the exact magnitude and timeline of this increase in the price of a key feed ingredient, it was significant enough to give the livestock and poultry sectors an economic incentive to attempt to reduce or eliminate the need for supplemental phosphate.
Sensing a business opportunity, the phytase companies seized on this turn of events. If the cost of adding the enzyme to the feed is less than the cost of adding inorganic phosphate, using phytase can reduce feed costs. Enzyvia claims that Optiphos® can eliminate the need for supplemental phosphate, at least for swine at the finishing stage. As Enzyvia’s website puts it,
“OptiPhos is so potent, you could eliminate all inorganic phosphate in grow-finish swine diets, if desired.”154 Citing the then soaring price of inorganic phosphate, the website touted the enzyme’s ability to reduce feed costs:
Surviving the increasing cost of phosphorus has become a significant problem for swine and poultry producers. OptiPhos can solve this problem by creating a total cost savings of over $5.50 per ton of feed consumed. A top performing phytase enzyme like OptiPhos, when used in varying concentrations for swine in the 50-280 lbs range, can allow for a total replacement of all inorganic supplemental phosphorus. OptiPhos can accomplish all this while maintaining growth rates and bone mineralization, improving feed efficiency, and substantially reducing phosphorus excretions.155
152 http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/phosphate_rock/phospmcs06.pdf (downloaded on January 21, 2010).
153 http://www.optiphos.net/OptiPhos_Overview.pdf (downloaded on January 17, 2010).
154 http://www.optiphos.net/swine.html (last visited on January 17, 2010).
155 http://www.optiphos.net/research.html (last visited on January 17, 2010).
168 In short, when phosphate prices are high, phytase can help keep feed costs in check.156 As an added benefit, the phytase companies explain, the enzyme can also free other nutrients that are bound to phytic acid, reducing the need to supplement them as well.157 Of course, if phosphate prices continue to fall, there will be less incentive to replace inorganic phosphate supplements with phytase, though, as mentioned, phytase also has other potential economic benefits.
The final benefit cited by the companies is the ability of phytase to help keep regulatory compliance costs in check. Shortly after the US FDA approved Nautophos™ in November of
1995, at a time when phytase was not a profitable option for the U.S. swine sector because it was more expensive than inorganic phosphate supplements, Gary Cromwell suggested that the enzyme’s ability to help keep compliance costs in check might someday change the economic calculus.
The cost of adding the recommended amount of phytase . . . will be more than the $1.35 savings from the dicalcium phosphate and ground limestone adjustments. In fact, the cost will probably be in the range of $2.50 to $3.00 per ton of feed to add the phytase. This added cost will have to be weighed against the benefits derived from the reduction of phosphorus in manure. While this may not be an important economic factor right now, it likely will be in the future, especially in areas where regulations may restrict the amount of manure that can be spread on cropland, based on its phosphorus content.158
At least one state has required certain producers to adopt phytase; Maryland’s Water Quality
Improvement Act of 1998 required that phytase be added to chicken feed.159 In addition, the
156 http://www.optiphos.net/OptiPhos_White_Paper.pdf (downloaded on January 17, 2010); see also http:// www.optiphos.net/OptiPhos_Overview.pdf (downloaded on January 17, 2010).
157 See, e.g., http://www.natuphos.com/pdf/Natuphos_pig.pdf (downloaded on January 20, 2010).
158 http://www.uky.edu/Ag/AnimalSciences/pubs/twonewproductsapprovedforswine.pdf (downloaded on December 30, 2009).
159 http://www.agnr.umd.edu/waterquality/CitizWQ.html#anchor123866 (last visited on January 22, 2010).
169 current NRCS Conservation Practice Standard for Feed Management encourages (but does not require) the swine sector to adopt phytase and other technologies that reduce phosphorus excretion. Even if a regulation does not require the regulated industry to adopt phytase, increased compliance costs could encourage it to do so.
The phytase companies have highlighted the potential regulatory benefits of their enzymes. Consider, for example, this Natuphos® brochure:
Thus pig and poultry feeds with Natuphos® are better for the environment and offer economic advantages to the farmer: Natuphos® lowers the amount of land required for manure disposal, and disposal costs are reduced when manure application is limited by phosphorus content.160
In other words, by reducing the phosphorus content of manure, phytase increases the amount that can be applied per acre without exceeding the maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate. To take another example, the Cornell article on the development of OptiPhos® suggests that this enzyme might help swine and poultry operations “comply with the Clean Water
Act.”161 Similarly, a paper available on Enzyvia’s website suggests that, by reducing phosphorus excretion per animal, OptiPhos® “is a much better solution for the environment and can eliminate potential fines or legal actions aimed at producers as the mandates on controlling phosphorus excretions become more strict.”162 The clearest discussion of the issue of compliance costs appears on the website of the British company ABVista, which discusses the role of regulatory pressure in the widespread adoption of phytase in the European Union.
Phytase enzymes were originally employed in the 1990’s in response to severe penalties for P pollution imposed on pig and poultry producers in certain geographical areas. They degrade plant phytate P which would otherwise pass through to the manure intact, and as
160 http://www.natuphos.com/pdf/Natuphos_higher-yields.pdf (downloaded on January 20, 2010).
161 http://www.research.cornell.edu/VPR/CWC181-05/pdfs/progress_3.pdf (downloaded on January 20, 2010).
162 http://www.optiphos.net/OptiPhos_Overview.pdf (downloaded on January 20, 2010).
170 a result of their activity less inorganic phosphorus was required in the diet. Without the economic penalties for waste disposal, the use of phytase would not have been established at this time since the cost savings in inorganic phosphate were offset by the cost of the enzyme. With time, however, the cost of the enzyme reduced and that of the nutrients spared by use of this enzyme increased such that its use spread through much of the EU in the mid and late 1990’s. As understanding of its mode of action improved, and with the realisation that this enzyme may spare more than P and Ca, its use spread further, and at the present day it is now the most commonly used feed enzyme in the world.163
Of course, just because phytase can help keep compliance costs in check, and just because regulatory pressure appears to have encouraged the adoption of the enzyme in the EU, does not mean that regulatory pressure encouraged the U.S. swine sector to adopt the enzyme.
Nevertheless, there is some evidence to suggest that this did, in fact, occur. A USDA-ERS report suggests that the use of microbial phytase in the U.S. swine sector increased between 1998 and
2004, a period during which regulatory pressure was also increasing (Key et al. 2009:15-17).
USDA economists James MacDonald and William McBride summarized the report’s findings:
“In 1998, 4 percent of hog producers, accounting for 12 percent of production, added phytase to their feed. By 2004, 13 percent of producers, accounting for 30 percent of production, were doing so” (MacDonald and McBride 2009:32). By reducing phosphorus excretion, USDA economists Marc Ribaudo and his colleagues have explained, phytase can help swine operations comply with phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations (Ribaudo 2003:36; Ribaudo,
Gollehon, and Agapoff 2003:34, 36; Ribaudo et al. 2003:vi, 18, 19, 49-50, 53, 85). However, just because increased phytase adoption coincided with increased regulatory pressure does not mean that the industry adopted the enzyme in response to regulatory pressure as a deliberate strategy for cutting compliance costs. Nevertheless, the USDA-ERS report speculates that regulatory
163 http://www.abvista.com/products/enzymes/phylase/ (italics added) (last visited on January 7, 2010).
171 pressure might have contributed to the observed increase in phytase adoption: “Nutrient application restrictions and the desire to avoid future liabilities and lawsuits could help explain the increasing share of operations moving manure off the farm, testing manure for nutrients, and using microbial phytase in feed” (Key et al. 2009:21, italics added; see also MacDonald and
McBride 2009:32; MacDonald et al. 2009:24; Farm Foundation 2006:29). It is important to acknowledge, however, that the report does not prove that regulatory pressure led to increased adoption. In fact, some of the observed increase in phytase use might have been due to regulations that required that it be used, though I am not aware of the extent to which the swine sector, as opposed to the poultry sector, is legally required to adopt the enzyme in the United
States. Phytase is not required by federal law, but the laws of certain states might require it. This is an issue that requires additional research.
What is clear is that phytase has the potential to help keep regulatory compliance costs in check. It is also clear that these potential regulatory benefits have been touted by the phytase companies and mentioned by USDA economists. But even if regulatory pressure did contribute to increased adoption of phytase, it was probably not the only factor at work. As explained above, in addition to reducing regulatory compliance costs, phytase can also provide other economic benefits as well, including reduced feed costs. These other economic benefits might have also encouraged adoption.
Indeed, in Pennsylvania a major feed mill began adding phytase to feed long before the federal government and the Commonwealth promulgated phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations. The company, Wenger Feeds,164 supplies feed to swine and poultry
164 http://www.wengerfeeds.com/ (last visited on January 3, 2010).
172 producers in Pennsylvania and other parts of the Mid-Atlantic region. It cites its early adoption of phytase as evidence of its commitment to environmental protection.
Wenger’s has had a history of nutrient management awareness as it was the first feed mill to incorporate the use of phytase in all its commercial diet formulations in the Mid- Atlantic. For this achievement, Wenger’s received the Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence in 1999, well before phosphorus management became the law of the land.165
The previously mentioned Penn State publication, Environmental Standards of Production for
Larger Pork Producers in Pennsylvania, notes that the Pennsylvania industry was “a leader in the use of phytase supplements” (Mikesell and Kephart 1999:9).
Research sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and PennAg Industries, a trade association, led to the first commercial use of this enzyme in the United States. Currently, more than 19 million layer chickens are being fed phytase. (Mikesell and Kephart 1999:9).
Wenger reportedly began adding phytase to its layer hen feed in May of 1995 (Dionis 1999). The heat involved in the process of pelletizing feed rendered this particular enzyme (most likely
NatuPhos®) ineffective. Unlike its broiler, turkey, and swine feeds, however, Wenger’s layer hen feed was not pelletized, which is why it was the first to receive the enzyme. Subsequently, a technological advance made it possible to add phytase to the other feeds as well (Dionis 1999).
Why Wenger started using phytase prior to the promulgation of phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations is not entirely clear, though it does seem likely that, at some point, adding phytase to feed became less expensive for the feed mill than adding inorganic phosphate supplements. In a 1999 Penn State Agriculture article, Joe Garber, who was then
165 http://www.wengerfeeds.com/press/2006_11_release_businessbayaward.pdf (last visited on May 29, 2009); see also http://www.wengerfeeds.com/press/1999_11_release_governorsaward.pdf (last visited on March 10, 2009).
173 Wenger’s Nutrition and Analytical Services Coordinator, noted that adding phytase to poultry feed had lowered production costs. The reporter wrote:
Except for the initial equipment costs, Wenger’s savings from buying less inorganic phosphorus compensate for the price of the phytase. “The product pays for itself,” Garber says. “That’s the tangible benefit. But there’s also the intangible benefit of being environmentally friendly and proactive, which is valuable beyond dollars and cents.” (Dionis 1999:27).
By 2004 many Pennsylvania poultry producers had begun to use phytase voluntarily, and the
Chesapeake Bay Commission concluded that, “[b]y far, the most cost-effective way to minimize the environmental impact of the large volumes of manure generated within the watershed is through adjusting feed formulation for poultry and livestock” (CBC 2004:8).
There is another possible reason why Pennsylvania producers began to voluntarily adopt phytase. As I explained in the previous chapter, by 1999 the conventional wisdom about phosphorus runoff had been undermined, and the promulgation of phosphorus-based regulations seemed imminent. Adopting phytase might have been seen as a proactive response to this looming regulatory threat. This, however, is little more than speculation.
The two techno-fixes for the phytic acid problem that we have examined thus far target the diet. There is, however, a more direct approach: instead of reformulating the diet, redesign the animal. In their 1999 best environmental practices manual, Penn State swine experts Rob
Mikesell and Ken Kephart speculated that “[s]wine geneticists may someday produce a pig that is more efficient at capturing feed nutrients of environmental concern” (Mikesell and Kephart
1999:10). This is precisely what scientists at the University of Guelph were able to do with transgenic Enviropig™. “The approach was to change the pig, rather than the diet,” as a recent
174 Guelph report explains (Mistry and Castle 2006:8). It is to this genetically engineered animal, the first one ever designed to be more “environmentally friendly,” that we now turn.
IV. Enviropig™!
!A. Introduction On April 14, 1999, in Ontario, Canada, in a research facility at the University of Guelph, a transgenic Yorkshire piglet named Wayne was born. Wayne was soon joined by Jacques,
Gordie, and Cassie.166 Named after hockey players, these piglets were the first animals ever genetically engineered to solve an agri-environmental problem––or, as the University of
Guelph’s Business Development office recently put it, “[t]he Enviropig™ [was] the first genetically engineered animal primarily designed to make modern animal production more environmentally friendly.”167 To highlight the potential environmental benefits of the breed,
Ontario Pork, an industry group that provided some of the financial support for the research, gave it the trademarked name Enviropig™.168
166 The University of Guelph’s current Enviropig™ website provides a useful chronology. http://www.uoguelph.ca/ enviropig/technology.shtml (last visited on December 31, 2009). For contemporary press coverage of the birth of the first Enviropigs™, see Robert Irwin, “Meet the Enviro pig.” Farm & Country, June 21, 1999: available at http:// www.agpub.on.ca/iss/99/june/cover21.htm (last visited on March 13, 2009); Robert Irwin, “Will pig be cash cow?” Farm & Country, June 21, 1999: available at http://www.agpub.on.ca/iss/99/june/cover21.htm (last visited on March 13, 2009); Editorial, “Reaping research reward.” Farm & Country, June 21, 1999: available at http:// www.agpub.on.ca/iss/99/june/edflue21.htm#ed (last visited on March 14, 2009); Kim Honey, “These little piggies are a scientific marvel: Canadian scientists’ ‘Enviropigs’ cause less pollution.” Globe and Mail, June 23, 1999: available at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~pubconf/Media/piggies.htm (last visited on March 13, 2009); Reuters, “And This Little Piggy Was Environmentally Friendly,” June 23, 1999; Colin Nickerson, “Making a silk purse from a sow’s droppings: ‘Transgenic pig’s manure hoped to ease environmental harm.” The Boston Globe, June 24, 1999.
167 See http://www.flintbox.com/technology.asp?page=586 (last visited on January 2, 2010); see also “U of G’s ‘enviropig’ a success, new study reveals.” University of Guelph, News Release, July 31, 2001. Available at: http:// www.uoguelph.ca/news/archives/000404.html (last visited on January 2, 2010). Note that research on phytase- secreting fish and chicken is currently underway (CAST 2009:9).
168 Ontario Pork holds the trademark (Forsberg et al. 2003a). The current Enviropig website lists all the financial supporters of the research: Ontario Pork; the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs; the Rural Economic Development Program of the Ontario Government; the Advanced Food Materials Network; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; and the University of Guelph. http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/technology.shtml (last visited on December 29, 2009).
175 The main scientists involved in the research—the “inventors,” as the Enviropig™ website describes them—were Cecil Forsberg, John Phillips, and Serguei Golovan.169 Officials from the
University of Guelph Business Development Office have been involved in efforts to commercialize the technology. In the rest of this section, I will use the term developers to refer to the scientists, the Business Office officials, and Ontario Pork.
Figure 6-1: Enviropigs™. This photograph appeared in a July 20, 2007 New York Times article (Pollack 2007). The man pictured on your left is John Kelly, then executive director of MaRS Landing, an Ontario organization that was “dedicated to facilitating the commercialization of innovation in the agriculture and food sectors.” http:// www.marslanding.ca/about.aspx (last visited on May 31, 2009). MaRS Landing no longer exists, having “reached the end of its six-year term” in 2009. http://www.uoguelph.ca/ news/2009/04/mars_landing_mi.html (last visited on January 23, 2010). According to the Times, Kelly was “trying to find a corporate partner for the pig” (Pollack 2007). On your right, petting an Enviropig™, is Cecil Forsberg, one of the University of Guelph scientists who created the breed. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/30/ business/30animal_CA0.ready.html (last visited on October 13, 2008).
On the outside, Enviropigs™ look like ordinary Yorkshire swine (Figure 6-1), but on the inside they are anything but ordinary. Unlike ordinary swine, they are able to secrete their own phytase. Neither inorganic phosphate nor microbial phytase must be added to their feed, and
169 See http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/contact_us.shtml (last visited on February 16, 2010).
176 phosphorus excretion is reduced. According to the developers, this trait (the ability secrete phytase) has environmental benefits. By reducing phosphorus excretion per animal, they imply, the trait reduces the risk of water pollution associated with swine production. What the scientists developed, in essence, was a biotechnological fix for an agri-environmental problem (excess phosphorus) associated with some forms of swine production, most notably high-density, industrial production. At a recent forum on genetically engineered (GE) animals, John Phillips used an automobile analogy to explain what he and his colleagues had done: “Basically, what we have done is installed a pollution control device, a catalytic converter in our animals.”170 Just as installing a catalytic converter in a vehicle reduces emissions from its tailpipe, so installing a phytase gene in pigs reduces emissions from their tail ends (Figure 6-2).
Figure 6-2: How the Enviropig™ works. Source: Source: http://www.uoguelph.ca/ enviropig/index.shtml (last visited on December 29, 2009).
170 Comments made at a forum with industry groups titled “How Should the Next Administration Address Genetically Engineered Food Animals,” cosponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Center for American Progress, held on November 10, 2008 in Washington, DC. (Transcript, page 70). Available online at: http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/ge_panel_transcript.pdf (downloaded on December 31, 2009).
177 As of mid-February of 2010, the Enviropig™ had not been commercialized anywhere in the world.171 Patents had been issued by the United States and China, a patent application was under review in Canada,172 and the University of Guelph’s Business Development Office was seeking to license the Enviropig™ technology.173 Regulatory approval to sell pork products derived from Enviropigs™ had not been granted in any country. The regulatory review process had advanced furthest in the United States. In 2007, an application was submitted to the United
States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency in charge of regulating GE animals, requesting approval to sell pork products from the Cassie line of Enviropigs™.174 At some point in 2009, a similar regulatory process was initiated in Canada.175 On July 23, 2009, the University
171 Enviropigs™ had accidentally entered the food system, without regulatory approval. In February of 2002, the Guelph Mercury reported that 11 dead “Enviropiglets,” as an article on Salon.com called them, had been “mistakenly taken to a rendering plant” and cooked along with other animal carcasses. See http://www.salon.com/ news/feature/2008/03/04/animal_cloning/index.html (last visited on January 2, 2010); http://www.crt-online.org/ 20020219.html (last visited on January 2, 2010). This batch of cooked carcasses was sold to feed mills, which used it to make feed for laying hens, broiler chickens, and turkeys. When the mishap was revealed, officials from the Canadian government attempted to assuage consumer concerns, asserting that anyone who had eaten eggs or flesh derived from birds who had eaten the contaminated feed had nothing to worry about––a remarkable claim given that regulators had not, and still have not, declared that edible commodities derived from the bodies of GE animals are safe to eat. This lapse in biosecurity did not put a stop to the Enviropig™ research. University of Guelph research vice president Alan Wildeman told the Mercury that the “enviropig research [would] continue, despite the breach. ‘It is an important research project and is addressing a very serious environmental problem in the agricultural industry.’” http://www.crt-online.org/20020219.html (last visited on January 2, 2010). A version of the Enviropig™ website from 2004 describes the biosecurity precautions that the researchers followed to attempt to prevent such an incident from happening again: “At present, to ensure that meat from these animals does not enter the food chain, carcasses and any collected samples analyzed are either composted or incinerated.” http://web.archive.org/web/ 20040225193119/www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/ (last visited on February 14, 2010).
172 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/technology.shtml (last visited on January 2, 2010); http://www.flintbox.com/ technology.asp?page=586 (last visited on January 2, 2010).
173 http://www.flintbox.com/technology.asp?page=586 (last visited on December 29, 2009).
174 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/technology.shtml (last visited on January 2, 2010).
175 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/technology.shtml (last visited on December 31, 2009).
178 of Guelph Business Development reported that it was “[s]eeking partners to obtain regulatory approval in China.”176
According to the developers, the Enviropig™ provides the same benefits provided by microbial phytase, its closest competitor on the market for biotechnological fixes for the phosphorus problem. This section of the chapter discusses these benefits, as described by the developers. It is important to recognize that the benefits are potential rather than actual—and potential in two senses. First, at this point the benefits are promissory; the Enviropig™ has yet to be approved for commercial use, and it is possible that it never will be. Second, and more importantly, as with all technologies, the environmental effects of this biotechnology, both positive and negative, depend upon how it is used. This second point will be crucial below, where I explain that, despite its name, and despite the claim that is more “environmentally friendly” than ordinary swine, the Enviropig™ breed will not necessarily reduce the environmental impact of swine production or conserve phosphate rock. Finally, the section examines whether the Enviropig™ is likely to be adopted in the U.S., given the potential for significant public opposition and the availability of less controversial alternatives such as microbial phytase. Before examining these issues, however, we first need to understand how the
Enviropig™ works.
!B. Technical Background on the Enviropig™ While developing the Enviropig™, the Guelph scientists first tested their transgenic method on mice, who are also non-ruminant animals. In a 2001 article in Nature Biotechnology, they reported that they had successfully created transgenic mice with phytase-secreting salivary glands (Golovan et al. 2001a). The scientists also highlighted the potential agricultural
176 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/technology.shtml (last visited on January 2, 2010); http://www.flintbox.com/ technology.asp?page=586 (last visited on January 2, 2010).
179 applications of their research: “These results suggest that the introduction of salivary phytase transgenes into monogastric177 farm animals offers a promising biological approach to relieving the requirement for dietary phosphate supplements and to reducing phosphorus pollution from animal agriculture” (Golovan et al. 2001a:429). Indeed, the scientists noted that they had already moved beyond the mouse model, and had produced phytase-secreting swine as well (Golovan et al. 2001a:432).
A commentary accompanying the article, written by Australian scientist Kevin Ward and titled “Phosphorus-friendly transgenics,” explained how the pork sector might take advantage of this new biotechnological breakthrough. In an illustration reproduced here as Figure 6-3, Ward depicted what he described as “[a] transgenic approach to reducing environmental phosphate pollution” (Ward 2001:415).
177 Monogastric is another name for non-ruminant.
180
Figure 6-3: Raising Enviropigs™ Might Lead to Less Environmental Damage. Source: Ward (2001).
Here is how Ward envisioned the approach working in the pork sector. A salivary phytase transgene would be created by combining the appA gene (a phytase gene from E. coli bacteria) with a promoter gene that directs the salivary gland—and, it was hoped, only the salivary gland
—to express the gene. In their mouse research, the scientists tested two promoter genes––one from rats and the other from mice (Golovan et al. 2001a). This transgene would then be introduced into a pig, creating a transgenic pig with phytase-secreting salivary glands. Using traditional breeding, artificial insemination, cloning, or some other reproductive method, herds of these Enviropigs™ would then be developed for use in pork production. The illustration
181 suggested that reducing the amount of phosphorus excreted per animal would result in “[l]ess environmental damage” to aquatic ecosystems (Ward 2001:415). In other words, stocking swine operations with Enviropigs™ would reduce the environmental impact of swine production—a problematic assumption shared by the Enviropig’s™ developers, and one we will examine below.
Three months after publishing the mouse article, Nature Biotechnology published another article by the Guelph scientists, this one reporting the results of the research that had led to the development of the Enviropig™ (Golovan et al. 2001b; 2001c). Titled “Pigs expressing salivary phytase produce low-phosphorus manure,” the article noted that these transgenic pigs had been genetically engineered “[t]o address the problem of manure-based environmental pollution in the pork industry. . .” (Golovan et al. 200b:741). An illustration published in a recent newspaper article describes the method the scientists used to produce the Enviropigs™ (See Figure 6-4).
182 Figure 6-4: How the Enviropigs™ were created. Source: http://multimedia.thestar.com/ acrobat/70/99/f7869954427e934f25786fae5cd.pdf (downloaded on January 2, 2010). For an interactive version, see http://www3.thestar.com/static/Flash/pig/pig-news.html (last visited on February 14, 2010).
The particular transgene (also known as an rDNA construct, or as the figure calls it, a
“DNA construct”) that the scientists introduced into the pig was the PSP/APPA transgene, which consists of the appA phytase gene and the mouse version of the promoter gene (Golovan et al.
2001b:741; 2001a:429). As Figure 6-4 explains, the promoter gene directs the pig’s salivary glands to express the phytase gene and secrete the enzyme. In the mouth, phytase-rich saliva
183 mixes with the feed, but phytase is most active in the acidic conditions of the stomach, where it frees digestible, inorganic orthophosphate from the phytic acid compound. This orthophosphate then passes into the small intestine, where it is absorbed into the bloodstream and becomes available to the animal. As Figure 6-2 suggests, any excess orthophosphate is excreted into the urine. After doing its job, the phytase is destroyed by other enzymes in the small intestine. The
Guelph scientists have bred a line of Enviropigs™ that, as of mid-February of 2010, was in its eighth generation.178
!C. The Alleged Benefits of the Enviropig™ 1. It’s simple. According to the developers, one potential benefit of raising Enviropigs™ is the simplicity of this approach to the phytic acid problem. As the Guelph website puts it, “the technology is simple, if you know how to raise pigs, you know how to raise Enviropigs!”179 This point is repeated in a news release by the Guelph Business Development Office, which suggests that raising Enviropigs™ would require “no change in production methods or machinery compared to ordinary pigs.”180 According to Forsberg and his colleagues, this simplicity would be especially advantageous in the so-called developing world, where, they claim, the expertise and infrastructure needed for more complex approaches are lacking (Forsberg et al. 2005). They have even gone so far as to claim that “[g]enetically modified animals are probably the most promising tools in creating environment-friendly agriculture in developing countries” (Forsberg et al. 2005:433).
178 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/technology.shtml (last visited on January 26, 2010).
179 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/index.shtml (last visited on January 26, 2010).
180 http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/bdo/news/WBT_Enviropig.shtml (italics added) (last visited on March 21, 2009).
184 It is possible, however, that raising Enviropigs™ would be a more complicated (and expensive) undertaking than the developers suggest. For one thing, Forsberg and his colleagues have acknowledged that swine producers might need to “test each animal for phytase, which likely would entail a simple immunological test” (Forsberg et al. 2003b:7). Another potential complication is containment. As discussed in more detail below, there is a risk that Enviropigs™ will escape, become feral, and cause environmental damage. To reduce the risk of escape, the pork industry might need to implement containment measures all along the commodity chain, including the breeding and feeding operations, the trucks that transport the animals, and the slaughterhouses where they are killed. Indeed, the FDA’s guidance document on regulation of
GE animals mentions containment several times,181 as do the guidelines for transgenic research that the Guelph scientists must currently follow.182
Traceability is another potential complication. To sell pork from Enviropigs™ in a country, the industry would need to comply with any rules governing GE animals. Across the globe there is currently a patchwork of rules. If this situation continues, companies will be required to ensure that transgenic meat stays out of countries where it has not been approved.
Consequently, Forsberg and his colleagues have acknowledged, meat from GE animals might need to be kept separate from ordinary meat: “At the processing stage transgenic pork products may have to be kept separate from non-transgenic pork to satisfy any labeling requirements, and to avoid mixing with non-transgenic products going to countries where regulatory approval has not been obtained” (Forsberg et al. 2003b:7). Issues such as containment and traceability raise
181 See http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AnimalVeterinary/GuidanceComplianceEnforcement/GuidanceforIndustry/ UCM113903.pdf (downloaded on January 26, 2010).
182 See http://www.ccac.ca/en/CCAC_Programs/Guidelines_Policies/GDLINES/TRANSGEN/g_transgenic.pdf (downloaded on February 1, 2010).
185 questions about whether replacing ordinary pigs with Enviropigs™ would be as simple as the developers have suggested.
2. Feed friendly Another potential benefit of the Enviropig™, according to the Guelph website, is that it could help keep feed costs in check.183 By secreting their own phytase, Enviropigs™ are able to obtain all the phosphorus they need from the phytic acid in their feed, so neither inorganic phosphate nor microbial phytase must be added. Given that Enviropigs™ would not require any special feed ingredients, the Guelph website concludes that raising them would reduce feed costs. Whether overall production costs would be reduced depends upon whether raising
Enviropigs™ would be less expensive than raising ordinary pigs and adding either inorganic phosphate or phytase to their feed.184 We cannot say for certain how these costs will compare should the Enviropig™ ever receive regulatory approval.
3. Regulatory friendly A third potential benefit of the Enviropig™ is its ability to help keep compliance costs in check. As explained in chapters four and five, phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations set a maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate, and by setting this rate, they place a cap on the amount of manure produced by an operation that may legally be applied on site. Any manure that may not be applied on site must be managed in some other way, such as hauling it to another farm. Alternatives to on site disposal tend to be more costly for regulated operations, particularly in areas where there are many operations in need of such
183 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/index.shtml (last visited on January 26, 2010).
184 The Guelph website suggests that one of the features of the Enviropig™ is “Reduced Production Costs,” a phrase that implies a reduction in overall production costs, not just the cost of feed. But the context suggests that by production costs they meant feed costs. See http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/features_performance_pictures.shtml (last visited on January 30, 2010).
186 alternatives, where there is little farmland, and where not all the farmland is available because of low willingness to accept manure. One way of maximizing the amount of manure that may be applied per acre is to reduce its phosphorus content. That is what environmental nutrition, microbial phytase, and the Enviropig™ do. The Guelph website claims that Enviropig™ manure is lower in phosphorus than that of ordinary pigs, which means that more Enviropig™ manure could be applied per acre before exceeding the maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate. By adopting Enviropigs™, more of the manure generated by an operation could be applied to farmland on that operation, thereby helping to keep compliance costs in check.185
The Enviropig’s™ developers have often touted these potential regulatory benefits (see, e.g., Forsberg et al. 2003a, 2003b; Phillips et al. 2002:33). Indeed, the Guelph website describes the Enviropig™ as “Nutrient Management Friendly,” not just “Environment Friendly.”186 What makes the breed regulatory friendly, the website explains, is that it would enable “producers to effectively meet government nutrient management regulations head on,” and would be “[e] ffective at reducing the impact of swine manure on land requirements.”187 In a 2002 letter to
Ontario Farmer, Cecil Forsberg explained how the Enviropig™ might “help the pork producer satisfy the proposed Nutrient Management Act . . . and still remain profitable . . .”188 By raising
Enviropigs™, he explained, “the phosphorus content of the manure will be reduced by 60 to 80 per cent, which will allow manure to be spread on land at the same or greater rate than before
185 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/environmental_benefits.shtml (last visited on December 29, 2009).
186 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/features_performance_pictures.shtml (last visited on January 28, 2010).
187 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/features_performance_pictures.shtml (last visited on January 28, 2010).
188 This is a Canadian statute, not Pennsylvania’s. Cecil W. Forsberg, “The Enviropig will reach the meat counter, but when?” Ontario Farmer, January 1, 2002.
187 and still meet stringent nutrient management requirements.”189 By raising Enviropigs™,
Forsberg and his colleagues explained in an article in the Journal of Animal Science, more manure could be applied per acre, which means less land would be required to apply manure in compliance with a phosphorus-based nutrient management regulation (Forsberg et al. 2003a).
In chapters four and five, I suggested that stringent phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations can become an obstacle to the profitability of high-density swine production, and of regions as locations for the industry. With their low-phosphorus manure,
Enviropigs™ could help the pork industry overcome this regulatory obstacle. The higher the density of animals to farmland available for manure application, the greater the likelihood that an operation will produce more manure than it may legally apply on site. To comply with a nutrient management regulation, an operation might be forced to reduce its density, either by reducing the number of animals or by increasing the number of acres of farmland available for manure application, both of which can be costly options. This is where the Enviropig™ and the other two techno-fixes comes into play. Because Enviropig™ manure is lower in phosphorus than that of ordinary pigs, Enviropigs™ can be stocked at a higher density than ordinary pigs can before the population of pigs on an operation generates more manure phosphorus than may legally be applied on site. One of the main regulatory benefits of the Enviropig™, according to the Guelph scientists, is that “[i]f there was a dramatic increase in the stringency of nutrient management guidelines, raising these pigs would allow the producers to maintain his [sic] operation without a decrease in the number of pigs permitted per unit of land” (Forsberg et al. 2003b:7, italics
189 Cecil W. Forsberg, “The Enviropig will reach the meat counter, but when?” Ontario Farmer, January 1, 2002.
188 added). Indeed, John Phillips touted this potential regulatory benefit in a Reuters article that was published in 1999, shortly after the birth of the first Enviropig™. The journalist wrote:
This is likely the first time animals have been engineered to solve environmental problems, but the researchers admitted it was the profit motive that prompted pork producers to fund the project through the Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board. “Pork producers live under very stringent environmental regulations and can only raise so many hogs per hectare,” said John Phillips, molecular biologist at Guelph University. If the phosphorous found in a pig’s manure is reduced by 50 percent, then theoretically farmers can raise 50 percent more pigs and still meet environmental restrictions. In North America, Europe and in some parts of Asia, the only thing holding back a farmer’s hog output is the restrictions on phosphorous leaching into the water table, Phillips said. “In the Netherlands, the environmental limitations on the number of animals they can raise per hectare of land is just squeezing that industry,” he added.190
In short, one of the main regulatory benefits of the Enviropig™, as with environmental nutrition and microbial phytase, is that it has the potential to help maintain the profitability of high density swine operations, in spite of regulatory restrictions on land application of manure.
Besides benefiting the regulated industry, the Enviropig™ developers argue, this breed has the potential to benefit regional economies as well. A promotional brochure claimed that the
Enviropig™ could help “[k]eep swine producing regions competitive,” 191 perhaps by helping to keep compliance costs in check in regions where they would otherwise be so high that they would place those regions at a competitive disadvantage as locations for the regulated industry.192
The potential regulatory benefits of the Enviropig™ should now be clear. “[I]n a world with increasingly stringent soil nutrient management legislation,” Forsberg and his colleagues
190 Reuters, “And This Little Piggy Was Environmentally Friendly,” June 23, 1999. Available online at: http:// www.public.iastate.edu/~ethics/EnviropigLong.pdf, p. 45 (italics added) (downloaded on January 23, 2010).
191 MaRS Landing and University of Guelph, “Enviropig™ Q&A.” (on file with author).
192 MaRS Landing and University of Guelph, “Enviropig™ Q&A.” (on file with author).
189 explained, the Enviropig™ promises to help maintain the profitability of both the regulated industry and of regions as locations for it (Forsberg et al. 2003a:E68). The other two technologies described in this chapter have the same potential regulatory benefits.
Some critics of the Enviropig™ have highlighted these potential regulatory benefits in an attempt to call the environmental goals of the research into question. By implying that the
Enviropig™ is a regulatory friendly rather an environmentally friendly breed, critics have sought to portray the research as concerned more with maximizing profits than with minimizing environmental harm. This argument tends to undercut the biotechnology industry’s effort, described below, to frame environmental applications of animal biotechnology as providing public rather than private benefits. To get a sense of this critique, consider the remarks made by a scientist affiliated with the Union of Concerned Scientists to a reporter from the journal
Environmental Health Perspectives. The reporter wrote:
Critics say that the enviropig marks only a stopgap solution to farm pollution. Jane Rissler, a plant pathologist and senior staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, says, “The solution to the hog production [waste] problem is not to genetically engineer pigs but to return to a more sustainable form of farming.” According to Rissler, today’s large hog “factories” will likely merely use the enviropig to boost hog densities at their facilities, packing more hogs into the same size facility while still complying with total phosphorus runoff limits. What’s more, the effect on the hogs’ long-term health is still unclear. Phillips points out, however, that enviropigs will also be useful on low-density hog farms and in less developed countries, where inadequate phosphorus in pigs’ diet limits their growth. (Taylor 2000:A14, italics added).
Other critics have made similar arguments.193 The suggestion is that this biotechnology would likely be used to help the pork industry overcome regulatory obstacles to the profitability of
193 See, e.g., http://www.aavs.org/images/fall2006.pdf (last visited on March 14, 2009), p. 16; http:// www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_446.cfm (last visited on March 14, 2009); http:// www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_683.cfm (last visited on March 14, 2009); http://www.public.iastate.edu/ ~ethics/EnviropigLong.pdf, p. 43 (downloaded on January 23, 2010).
190 high-density swine production. In other words, it would likely be used in regulatory friendly rather than environmentally friendly ways. At least in theory, however, it is possible that the technology could be used in ways that are both regulatory friendly and environmentally friendly.
4. Environmentally friendly The Enviropig’s™ developers have touted the potential environmental benefits of the breed. In this subsection I examine their claims. It is important to understand that my assessment applies to the claims made about “environmental nutrition” and microbial phytase as well. This is because the alleged environmental benefits of the three technologies are said to derive from their ability to reduce phosphorus inputs and outputs per unit of production.
Its developers have often described the Enviropig™ as “environmentally- friendly” (Phillips et al. 2002:33). For example, a former version of the University of Guelph’s website described the Enviropig™ as “an environmentally friendly breed of pigs that utilizes plant phosphorus efficiently,”194 and the current version calls the breed “Environment
Friendly.”195 Another promotional document suggests that the Enviropig™ offers “a more environmentally sustainable process to raise pigs,” one that results in “[e]nvironmentally friendly pig production.”196 One of the features of the Enviropig™, the document explains, is that it is
“Friendly to the environment.”197 In a document advertising the Enviropig™ as a potential
194 http://web.archive.org/web/20080731090010/http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/ (last visited on January 28, 2010) (italics in original). The earliest version of the website I could find describes Enviropig™ slightly differently: “EnviropigTM a genetically modified environmentally friendly pig that utilizes plant phosphorus more efficiently.” http://web.archive.org/web/20021028110410/www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/ (last visited on December 29, 2009) (italics in original).
195 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/features_performance_pictures.shtml (last visited on January 28, 2010).
196 http://www.guelphinnovation.com/Portals/0/Presentations/Enviropig.pdf (last visited on March 21, 2009).
197 http://www.guelphinnovation.com/Portals/0/Presentations/Enviropig.pdf (last visited on March 21, 2009); see also MaRS Landing and University of Guelph, “Enviropig™ Q&A” (on file with author).
191 licensing opportunity, the University of Guelph Business Development Office describes
Enviropig™ as “the first genetically engineered animal primarily designed to make modern animal production more environmentally friendly . . .”198 Enviropig™ is “[a]n environmentally friendly solution to phosphorus pollution,” the document claims.199 Finally, in a news release announcing that, on March 25, 2009, Enviropig™ would “be showcased at the World’s Best
Technology Showcase,” the Business Development Office described it as “a genetically engineered pig developed in Canada at the University of Guelph to make pork production for food more environmentally sustainable by reducing non-point source pollution.”200
For the biotechnology industry, the Enviropig™ has become a symbol of the potential environmental benefits of GE animals. The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) recently published a report titled Genetically Engineered Animals and Public Health: Compelling
Benefits for Health Care, Nutrition, the Environment, and Animal Welfare (Gottlieb and Wheeler
2008). According to the report, “genetically engineered animals can . . . sustainably and in an environmentally friendly and pro-welfare friendly manner. . . meet the growing global demand for high quality and safe animal food products” (Gottlieb and Wheeler 2008:35). Equipped with the tools of modern biotechnology, the industry claims to be able to “[e]nginee[r] . . .
‘environmentally friendly’ animals capable of meeting human needs more efficiently, with the consumption of fewer resources and the production of less waste, allowing direct positive
198 http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/bdo/licensing/pdf/AnimalScience/Enviropig.pdf (footnote omitted) (last visited on March 21, 2009); see also http://www.flintbox.com/technology.asp?page=586 (last visited on January 24, 2010).
199 http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/bdo/licensing/pdf/AnimalScience/Enviropig.pdf (footnote omitted) (last visited on March 21, 2009)
200 http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/bdo/news/WBT_Enviropig.shtml (last visited on March 21, 2009).
192 impacts on human health” (Gottlieb and Wheeler 2008:6).201 “Livestock agriculture has been targeted by some as being harmful to the environment,” the report notes, but “genetic engineering of agricultural animals has the potential to significantly reduce its environmental footprint” (Gottlieb and Wheeler 2008:19). The organization has cited the Enviropig™ as an example of the ecological promise of genetic engineering,202 describing it as “a biotech pig that is environmentally friendly.”203 As the organization’s 2008 Guide to Biotechnology puts it, genetic engineering
can . . . be used to mitigate environmental impacts of livestock production. The EnviroPig™, for example, dramatically lowers levels of phosphorus pollution. Such applications underscore the [biotechnology] industry’s commitment to environmental protection.204
Some journalists covering the biotech beat have parroted the industry’s self-serving claims. For example, the New York Times recently described Enviropigs™ as “environmentally friendlier pigs,”205 implying that ordinary, non-transgenic swine are less friendly to the
201 See also Biotechnology Industry Organization, “What is Animal Biotechnology?” Animal Biotechnology Update (September 2008); Biotechnology Industry Organization, “What Are GE Animals?” Animal Biotechnology Update (January 2009); Biotechnology Industry Organization, “Fact Sheet: Genetically Engineered Animals.” No date; Biotechnology Industry Organization, News Release, “Animal Biotech Products to Include Novel Medicines and Better Foods: FDA Finalizes Regulatory Guidance Governing Genetically Engineered Animals,” January 15, 2009; see also Gottlieb and Wheeler (2008); Letter from Barbara P. Glenn, PhD, Managing Director, Animal Biotechnology, Food & Agriculture Section, Biotechnology Industry Organization to Dr. Michael Schechtman, USDA Office of the Deputy Secretary, Re: Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture Meeting, Notice of Meeting [Federal Register: May 5, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 87) Page 24530], dated May 29, 2008; Biotechnology Industry Organization, “What Are GE Animals?” Animal Biotechnology Update (September 2008); Biotechnology Industry Organization, “Genetically Engineered Animals: Frequently Asked Questions,” October 1, 2008; Biotechnology Industry Organization, “Genetically Engineered Animals: Frequently Asked Questions,” January 15, 2009, page 1.
202 BIO has also cited the AquaAdvantage™ salmon: “The transgenic pig and salmon embody the leading edge of various types of genetically engineered animals that will reduce the environmental footprint of animal agriculture through enhanced metabolic capabilities” (Gottlieb and Wheeler 2008:29).
203 Biotechnology Industry Organization, Biotechnology backgrounder, pp. 18, 13; see also http://bio.org/speeches/ pubs/er/BiotechGuide2008.pdf (page 50, last visited on May 11, 2009).
204 http://bio.org/speeches/pubs/er/BiotechGuide2008.pdf (page 46, last visited on May 11, 2009).
205 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/business/18drug.html (last visited on November 2, 2008).
193 environment. Similarly, the title of the previously mentioned news article in Environmental
Health Perspectives was “A Less Polluting Pig,” which suggests that Enviropigs™ pollute less than ordinary swine do (Taylor 2000:A14). Finally, in an article in the Toronto Star cited on the
Guelph website, a journalist wrote that Enviropigs™ “poop out more environmentally friendly waste,” implying that the relatively high-phosphorus manure excreted by swine fed the typical industrial diet is less environmentally friendly.206
These claims are flawed. Consider the claim about manure. High-phosphorus manure does not necessarily have negative environmental impacts. Indeed, it can be a valuable resource, rather than an environmental liability, if swine production is organized in such a way as to take full advantage of the fertilizer value of the nutrients in it (cf. Lanyon 1995:76). Similarly, ordinary swine are not inherently unfriendly to the environment anymore than Enviropigs™ are inherently friendly to it. Rather, the ecological impact of a breed depends upon the larger technological assemblage in which it is enrolled. The same breed can have different impacts in different production systems.
According to some proponents of genetic engineering, the Enviropig™ is proof that GE organisms are not inherently unfriendly to the environment. For example, a short educational video about animal biotechnology produced by the University of California at Davis used the
Enviropig™ as an example of the potential environmental benefits of GE animals. Making a brief appearance in the video, Guelph scientist John Phillips asserted that “there is no inherent conflict between sustainable agricultural systems and biotechnology.”207 “Indeed,” he argued,
206 http://www.thestar.com/Comment/article/541710 (last visited on February 14, 2010).
207 The movie is available for download online: http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/animalbiotech/Outreach/ Animal_biotechnology_The_movie.htm (last visited on February 14, 2010). Phillips’s comments appear between minutes 19:56 and 20:16.
194 “the Enviropig™ stands as a shining example of how biotechnology can be brought directly to bear to help sustainable agricultural systems in terms of the pollution that traditional agriculture imposes on the environment.” In other words, the Enviropig™ could potentially be used to create more sustainable agri-food systems. Even if this is true, it does not follow that the breed is environmentally friendly, for it could also be used in ways that are environmentally unfriendly.
Echoing the UC-Davis movie, historian James McWilliams and molecular biologist Lee
Silver have cited the Enviropig™ to challenge the categorical rejection of genetic engineering on environmental grounds by some activists (McWilliams 2009; Silver 2006a; 2006b). Writing in
Newsweek, Silver suggested that “[t]he Enviropig is one of many new technologies that are putting environmentalists and organic-food proponents in a quandary: should they remain categorically opposed to genetically modified (GM) foods even at the expense of the environment?” In a recent article in Slate, McWilliams suggested that some environmentalists, including some advocates of sustainable agriculture, “instinctively deem GMOs the antithesis of environmental responsibility” (McWilliams 2009). Citing the potential ecological benefits of the
Enviropig™, among other GMOs, McWilliams argued that we ought to judge each individual application of genetic engineering on its ecological merits. The blanket rejection of modern biotechnology has cost the public dearly, he argued:
The cutting-room floors of research laboratories all over the world . . . are littered with successful examples of genetically engineered products that have enormous potential to further the goals of sustainable agriculture. Demand for these products remains high among farmers—it almost always does—but food producers fear the bad publicity that might come from anti-GMO invective. (McWilliams 2009).
In McWilliams’s view, this “anti-GMO invective” has become an obstacle to the creation of more ecologically sustainable agri-food systems.
195 McWilliams and Silver have a point when they criticize those who claim that genetically engineered organisms are inherently unfriendly to the environment. Yet shouldn’t they be just as critical of the biotechnology industry’s assertion that certain GE organisms are inherently friendly to the environment? The flaw in both positions is that they fixate on the technology itself, ignoring the more fundamental question of how it is used. The environmental impacts of a technology, whether positive or negative, depend upon how it is used. This, in turn, depends upon questions of social power, for the way a technology is likely to be used depends upon whose interests it is likely to be used to serve. We do not yet know whether, much less how, the
Enviropig™ will be used. Any assertions about its environmental impacts must therefore be made with care.
We need to get beyond the environmental rhetoric and examine the particular claims that have been made about the alleged environmental benefits of the Enviropig™. As explained above, its developers claim that this breed has the potential to offer two main environmental benefits, which are summarized nicely in an article by Golovan and his colleagues: “pigs producing phytase in the saliva present a new biological approach for reducing phosphorus pollution in animal agriculture and for reducing dependence on diminishing global phosphate reserves” (Golovan et al. 2001b:744, citations omitted; see also Forsberg et al. 2003a:E72;
Phillips et al. 2002). By eliminating the need for inorganic phosphate supplements, the developers argue, the Enviropig™ can help conserve phosphate rock. And by reducing phosphorus excretion per animal, they argue, it can help reduce the risk of eutrophication. In short, the Enviropig™ can help conserve a natural resource and protect aquatic ecosystems. But do these claims withstand scrutiny?
196 Take the claim about the conservation of phosphate rock. As explained above, the
Enviropig’s™ developers suggest that, by eliminating or reducing the need for inorganic phosphate supplements in swine feed—a result which can also apparently be achieved with
OptiPhos®208—the Enviropig™ could potentially help conserve phosphate rock. An estimated
5% of worldwide phosphate rock production is used for animal feed, with swine feed representing some fraction of this. Some 80% is used to make fertilizer. What the Enviropig™ developers and the phytase companies are saying is that eliminating (or reducing) the need for inorganic phosphate supplements would reduce the consumption of phosphate rock by the pork, aquaculture, and poultry sectors. But is this necessarily so?
According to the Jevons paradox (York 2006), increasing efficiency per unit of production can, under certain circumstances that are not completely understood, actually increase overall consumption of a natural resource more than it would have increased if production had remained less efficient. Consider what might happen with the Enviropig™ or the other two technologies described in this chapter. By decreasing feed costs and regulatory compliance costs, they could cause livestock or poultry production to increase more than it otherwise would have.
This boost in production could lead to an increase in the mining of phosphate rock for fertilizer to grow the additional feedstuffs that would be needed. On balance, the industry’s overall consumption of phosphate rock could increase more than it otherwise would have. I am not saying that this is what would inevitably happen with the Enviropig™. Nor am I saying that it has already happened with environmental nutrition or microbial phytase.209 What I am saying is
208 “OptiPhos is so potent, you could eliminate all inorganic phosphate in grow-finish swine diets, if desired. No other phytase product has this capability.” http://www.optiphos.net/swine.html (last visited on May 31, 2009).
209 I have found no studies examining this question.
197 that it could happen. Given this possibility, we should not presume that the Enviropig™, microbial phytase, or environmental nutrition will necessarily result in an overall reduction in the consumption of phosphate rock.
It is also important to note that there is a more effective way of conserving phosphate rock. Human beings, especially affluent consumers who eat far more animal products than they need to eat to be healthy, could eat fewer animal products, especially those products that are the most inefficient in terms of feed conversion. This would help conserve phosphate rock because of the inefficiency involved in transforming feedstuffs into meat, milk, and eggs. Stewart and his colleagues explain:
Meat production is relatively inefficient in terms of nutrient conversion, implying that as the world consumes more meat the need for grain and its nutrient inputs will be accelerated. The future agricultural phosphate demand and use may well reflect the inefficiency of an increasingly meat oriented diet. (Stewart et al. 2005:17-18).210
Vaclav Smil has argued that reducing the consumption of feedstuff-intensive animal products is the most fundamental way of reducing the extraction of phosphate rock:
The most fundamental opportunity to minimize the inputs is to reduce the intake of animal foods whose production requires first high inputs in growing the requisite feed and then entails unavoidably large P losses in animal wastes. The nutritional status of people in affluent countries would not be compromised in the slightest if people were to consume 25% less meat and dairy products than the current average . . .; because 66% of all phosphatic fertilizers are used on cereals and 60% of all grains in rich countries are used as animal feed, the need for phosphatic fertilizers would decline by 10% without any investment, This shift would lower P applications in high-income countries by about 15%. (Smil 2000:76-77).
210 Talking about the efficiency of meat production is potentially misleading. We need to examine the efficiency of each livestock, poultry, and aquaculture sector (e.g., eggs, dairy, turkey meat, chicken meat, beef, salmon, etc.). We also need to realize that not all of these sectors depend upon feedstuffs (e.g., pasture-based systems do not). Finally, we need to recognize that within each particular sector, there are variations in the production process. For a nuanced analysis of the feed efficiency issue that attempts to capture all of this complexity, see Smil (2002). Increasing feed conversion efficiency has been touted as a way of mitigating the ecological impacts of livestock, poultry, and aquaculture production (see, e.g., Burke et al. 2009). Unfortunately, however, Burke and his colleagues did not address the Jevons paradox.
198 Of course, getting affluent consumers to change their diets would require fundamental social change. It is far easier to change the diets—or even the bodies—of the animals whose flesh, milk, and eggs they consume.
Another way to conserve phosphate rock would be to reintegrate animal feeding with feedstuff production (Cordell et al. 2009; Liu et al. 2008). Manure—or the nutrients it contains— could be returned to the fields from which the nutrients came, creating more or less cyclical nutrient flows. Like livestock and poultry, human beings could also be reintegrated with the soil by returning the nutrients in human urine and excrement to the fields from which they came
(Foster and Magdoff 2000). By reusing and recycling nutrients, fewer additional nutrients would need to be pumped into the system as an input. In the case of phosphorus, less phosphate rock would need to be mined.211
The other environmental claim about the Enviropig™—that it can help mitigate eutrophication—is also problematic. The suggestion is that reducing phosphorus excretion per animal will result in less phosphorus flowing into aquatic ecosystems. For example, the current
Enviropig™ website suggests that the breed is “Environment Friendly” because it can “[r]educ
[e] phosphorus output in manure by up to 60%”212 Elsewhere the website makes a similar point:
The Enviropig excretes from 30 to 70.7%213 less phosphorus in manure depending upon the age and diet. Therefore, by raising Enviropigs instead of ordinary pigs a more expensive manure phosphorus application limit could be avoided, and would contribute to an overall phosphorus pollution reduction in addition to reducing the feed cost by eliminating the need to supplement the diet with either phosphate or phytase.
211 As mentioned in chapter four, however, if one considers the full range of ecological impacts, including the energy it might take to transport nutrients (Lanyon 1995; Magdoff et al. 1997), creating cyclical nutrient flows might do more harm than good in some cases. Nutrient cycling is most certainly not inherently friendly to the environment.
212 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/features_performance_pictures.shtml (last visited on February 6, 2010).
213 It is unclear why the website cites 60% in one place and 70.7% in another.
199 A Guelph Business Development Office document advertising the Enviropig™ as a potential licensing opportunity suggests that “[t]he Enviropig™ excretes much less phosphorus in its manure, which greatly reduces their impact on the environment.”214 Yet none of these documents explains how reducing phosphorus excretion per animal reduces water pollution. They simply presume that it does.
Before examining this presumption, we first need to attempt to clear up an issue having to do with the evidence presented by the Guelph website. In its estimate of the reduction in total phosphorus excretion achievable with the Enviropig™, the website claims that “[t]he Enviropig excretes from 30 to 70.7% less phosphorus in manure depending upon the age and diet.”215 The trouble with this claim is the vagueness of the term manure. As explained above, manure is a mixture containing feces and urine, among other things. According to a recent pork industry publication, the reduction in phosphorus excretion that is achievable with the Enviropig™ is much less when both the feces and the urine are considered than when only the feces are considered:
Forsberg and his colleagues have shown that phosphorus in feces from one line of weanling Enviropigs, not supplemented with phosphate, was reduced by 75 per cent compared to standard weanling pigs. A more realistic measure is the total excretion in the manure consisting of both feces and urine. On this basis, unpublished data has shown that finisher Enviropigs™ excrete 35 per cent less total phosphorus than phytase- supplemented standard pigs. (Hein 2009:12).
It is unclear whether the estimate on the Guelph website refers to the total phosphorus in the excreta (i.e., feces and urine) or only to fecal phosphorus. It is also unclear what the
214 http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/bdo/licensing/pdf/AnimalScience/Enviropig.pdf (downloaded on February 6, 2010).
215 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/environmental_benefits.shtml (last visited on January 24, 2010).
200 Enviropig’s™ performance is being compared to—the Hein (2009) article suffers from the same shortcoming. I discuss the latter point below, in my assessment of the claim that the Enviropig™ is more effective than microbial phytase.
The urine issue is important because of the potential ecological significance of soluble phosphorus. There is evidence that although phytase decreases total phosphorus excretion (i.e., the total amount of phosphorus in the excreta), it increases the proportion of the excreted phosphorus that is in soluble forms, especially when the diet contains excess phosphorus. As
Gary Cromwell explains, this soluble phosphorus tends to be excreted into the urine:
. . . [B]ecause adding phytase to diets or feeding low-phytate feedstuffs increases the digestibility and subsequent absorption of dietary P, greater amounts of P appear in the urine. This effect is particularly evident when the dietary P level exceeds the pig’s requirement. Because the P in urine is highly soluble, the proportion of P that is soluble in manure216 (feces + urine) increases when phytase or low-phytate feeds are fed . . . (Cromwell 2005:628).
This issue has potential ecological significance because soluble phosphorus is thought to be a more immediate threat to aquatic ecosystems than phytic acid.217
Despite the soluble phosphorus issue, some scientists are convinced that phytase is still likely to do more environmental good than harm. That is the conclusion reached by April Leytem and Rory Maguire (2007), who argue that total phosphorus is what is most important. “Concern has been expressed about the potential negative environmental implications of diet alteration on phosphorus losses from manure-amended soils,” they acknowledged, “but given the urgent
216 Read excreta.
217 Phytase can reduce sales of feed-grade phosphate, cutting into the fertilizer industry’s profits. At least one fertilizer company, PotashCorp, has helped to raise the soluble phosphorus issue. See http://www.potashcorp.com/ media/pdf/customer_service/shades_of_gray/shades-of-gray.pdf (downloaded on January 3, 2010). For information about the company’s phosphate sales, see http://www.potashcorp.com/about_potashcorp/at_a_glance/phosphate/ (last visited on January 3, 2010).
201 requirement to reduce total phosphorus concentrations in manures in areas of high livestock density, dietary manipulation is overwhelmingly beneficial” (Leytem and Maguire 2007:164).
Unfortunately, the Enviropig™ website does not address the issue of soluble phosphorus, except by noting in an illustration (reproduced above as Figure 6-2) that excess orthophosphate is excreted into the urine. It is unclear from the diagram whether Enviropigs™ excrete more inorganic phosphate into the urine than ordinary swine do. In 2003, however, Forsberg and his colleagues cited unpublished data suggesting that Enviropigs™ “excrete slightly more phosphorus in the urine than nontransgenic pigs . . .” (Forsberg et al. 2003a:E71). Whether the soluble phosphorus issue makes Enviropig™ manure less “environmentally friendly” than its developers suggest depends upon how it is handled. Leytem and Maguire explain:
Such manipulation may increase the proportion of the manure phosphorus that is soluble in water, but this is likely to have negative environmental consequences only when manure is applied on a phosphorus basis and without prolonged storage prior to land application. If manures are applied on an equivalent weight or nitrogen basis, diet modification will result in less total phosphorus being added to soils and therefore a reduction in soil test phosphorus build-up over time. This in turn decreases the risk of phosphorus transfer to water bodies. In addition, most research indicates a reduction or no increase in phosphorus losses in runoff from soils amended with manures from modified diets compared with normal diets, when these are applied on an equivalent phosphorus basis (surface application or incorporation of manures). It therefore seems likely that in most cases there is no enhanced environmental risk from dietary modification and associated changes in manure phosphorus composition. (Leytem and Maguire 2007:164, italics added).
It appears that the soluble phosphorus issue is not grounds for concluding that phytase is likely to do more environmental harm than good.
Setting aside the issue of soluble phosphorus, we now return to the presumption that reducing phosphorus excretion per animal will translate into reduced environmental impact.
Reducing the amount of phosphorus excreted per animal does not necessarily reduce the amount
202 generated per operation, for the number of animals could be increased. This point was recently made by Rick Weiss, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, at a public forum on
GE animals. John Phillips was there as well, and responded to Weiss’s argument, generating the following exchange:
MR. WEISS: . . . And a related question, making the point that you can’t always predict what the impact of things is going to be, what is to say that as hog producers switch to Enviropigs, they don’t, because of the ability to do so, also increase the number of pigs they are cramming into these operations, and so in the end, you have a net wash in terms of the environmental impact of all this hog manure?
DR. PHILLIPS: The latter is a good question, and that just depends on regulation and management, as it does now, whether it apply [sic] to transgenic animals or traditional commercial animals. It is the same.218
In other words, ultimately the stringency of the environmental regulations are more important than the genetics of the animals in determining the environmental impact of swine operations. Must an operation comply with nutrient management regulations? If so, are the regulations adequately designed and enforced? These are the kinds of questions that determine what the environmental impacts of an operation are likely to be. What the Enviropig™ and similar technologies do is help keep the cost of complying with regulations in check.
As I explained in the last chapter, nutrient management regulations tend to legalize the application of excess phosphorus, so long as this can be done without creating a legally unacceptable short-term risk of phosphorus runoff. It is not at all clear that the regulations are adequate to address this short-term risk, let alone the long-term risk of phosphorus runoff
(Kovzelove et al. 2010). Nor is it clear that the regulations deal adequately with problems they were never designed to address, including the ecological risks associated with metals and other
218 http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/ge_panel_transcript.pdf (last visited on June 5, 2009), pp. 69-70, italics added.
203 unregulated pollutants found in manure (Bolan, Adriano, and Mahimairaja 2004; Honeyman
1993). Indeed, by enabling regulated operations to apply manure at higher rates than would otherwise be possible, thus applying more of these unregulated pollutants than would otherwise be applied, technologies such as the Enviropig™, environmental nutrition, and microbial phytase could increase the risks associated with unregulated pollutants. If the Enviropig™ ends up being used to help the pork industry cut the costs of complying with regulations that are inadequate to protect the environment, calling this GE animal “environmentally friendly” would be a bit of a stretch. The same goes for the other technologies. Of course, this is not the only way these technologies could be used. But that is precisely the point: the effects of this technology, like all technologies, will depends upon how it is used.
It is also important to understand that the Enviropig™ presents some unique ecological risks of its own. There is a risk that Enviropigs™ will become feral, especially if they are incorporated into pasture-based systems. The Guelph researchers have argued that free-range
Enviropigs™ would be beneficial in certain regions, including parts of West Africa. As they explain, “free-range phytase pigs would have the capability as they were rooting of utilizing phytate phosphorus from plants, which would substantially improve pig growth, as phosphorus is a key limiting nutrient in the acidic soil in parts of West Africa” (Forsberg et al. 2005:437, citation omitted). Although the scientists were aware that the NRC had expressed concerns about the potential ecological impacts of feral Enviropigs™ (Forsberg et al. 2003a), they did not discuss the risk that free-range Enviropigs™ might become feral. Instead, as we have seen, they argued that for so-called developing countries one of the benefits of raising Enviropigs™ would be its simplicity. As Forsberg and his colleagues put it, “genetically modified animals can easily
204 be incorporated into local farm practices; anybody who raises pigs today can raise an
Enviropig™ tomorrow with no special training” (Forsberg et al. 2005:433). The assumption was that containment would not make production more complicated or require special infrastructure or training.
Escape is possible even in the industrial confinement system, though the risk might well be lower than in pasture-based systems. There are numerous ways in which the animals could escape. For example, an animal liberationist might set animals free from a swine operation.
Animals might also escape if a truck hauling them got into an accident. Yet despite these types of risks, a section of a recent Guelph report made the following assertion about feral Enviropigs™:
The ecological safety issues surrounding the Enviropig do not appear to be grave. Reproduction of transgenic animals is easily controlled, and mixing with feral populations is highly unlikely, especially in Canada. Feral pig colonies have been known to exist, for example in northern California, but if there were to be an Enviropig escape and breeding with a non-transgenic individual, presumably the worst that could occur would be the production of environmentally friendly feral pigs (Mistry and Castle 2006:10, italics added).
Contrary to what the report implies, feral pigs with the ability to secrete their own phytase would not necessarily be “environmentally friendly.” In fact, the previously mentioned NRC report expressed concern about the possibility of Enviropigs™ becoming super pests: “The addition of a phytase gene would allow GE non-ruminants such as pigs . . . or mice . . . to obtain needed phosphorus from seeds and grains, which would increase their ability to grow and produce more offspring, thereby resulting in a greater pest potential for feral pigs . . . and mice . . .” (NRC
2002:84, citations omitted; see also 11). Once again we are reminded that the Enviropig™ is not inherently friendly to the environment. As explained above, to reduce the risk of escape, the pork
205 industry might need to adopt various containment strategies, which could call into question the notion that raising Enviropigs™ is as simple as raising ordinary pigs.
!D. Will the industry adopt the Enviropig™? One question we need to ask is whether the pork industry is likely to adopt the
Enviropig™ in the U.S. or any other country, particularly given that microbial phytase is already available and can do the same job. For some observers, including animal protection groups, this raises an ethical issue: “If alternative means are available,” the American Anti-Vivisection
Society argued, “can genetic engineering be justified?”219 According to the Enviropig™ developers, the industry should still be interested in the Enviropig™ because it is more effective than microbial phytase. In this section I examine the strengths and weaknesses of the
Enviropig™, as compared to microbial phytase. I conclude that the potential for public controversy is a significant disadvantage of the Enviropig™.
A previous version of the Guelph website, which was online until as late as March of
2009, suggested that the Enviropig™ was more effective than microbial phytase:
[Enviropigs] utilize practically all of the phosphorus present in the diet and do not require supplemental phosphate for growth on a standard diet consisting of corn, barley, wheat and soybean meal, with a saving of $1.14 per pig (CDN) for supplemental phosphorus, or an equal or greater saving in the cost of phytase. Furthermore, when conventional pigs are fed a diet with added supplemental phytase the extent of phosphorus release from the diet is not as efficient as the the [sic] digestion by the EnviropigTM.220 This claim is difficult to evaluate, mainly because the website did not specify which microbial phytase it was comparing the Enviropig™ to. In the published research upon which the website presumably relied, the scientists compared the Enviropig™ with a first-generation phytase
(Golovan et al. 2001a; 2001b). Given the advances that have occurred in phytase production,
219 http://www.aavs.org/images/GE-Animals-Report.pdf (last visited on March 14, 2009), p. 11.
220 http://web.archive.org/web/20080621180629/www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/ (last visited on January 26, 2010).
206 resulting in second- and now even third-generation enzymes, this comparison is outdated. To my knowledge, nobody has compared the Enviropig™ with OptiPhos® or Quantum Phytase XT, which at the time of this writing, in February of 2010, appeared to be the most advanced enzymes on the market. It is therefore unclear whether the Enviropig™ is more effective than the most effective phytase.
Whatever its advantages might be,221 the Enviropig™ has a unique social disadvantage: as a transgenic animal, it is more controversial than other technological approaches to the phosphorus issue (Haefner et al. 2005:594). Unlike the adoption of “environmental nutrition” and microbial phytase, neither of which has, to my knowledge, created controversy––despite the fact that some phytases are produced using genetic engineering––any attempt to introduce a genetically engineered animal into the food system would likely face significant public opposition.
We can get some sense of what might be in store for the Enviropig™ by examining the public reaction to the release of the FDA’s policy for regulating GE animals. On January 15,
2009, the FDA published a guidance document clarifying its regulatory approval process for the sale of commodities derived from the bodies of GE animals, including, most notably, milk, meat, eggs, and other edible commodities.222 During the public comment period on a draft version of
221 Another potential benefit of the Enviropig™, one not been mentioned by its developers, has to do with the health of workers in the feed industry. A study found that powdered fungal phytase can cause asthma and rhinitis among workers who are exposed to it, such as those who work in feed mills (Baur et al. 2002). Whether the same risk applies to phytases derived from other microbes, such as E. coli, is unclear from my reading of the study. If it eliminated, or at least greatly reduced, the need for microbial phytase, the Enviropig™ could potentially reduce the incidence of these occupational illnesses.
222 http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2009/NEW01944.html (last visited on February 14, 2009); Federal Register, January 16, 2009, Vol. 74, No. 11, pp. 3057-3058; Transcript of Media Briefing on FDA’s Release of a Final Guidance for Industry on the Regulation of Genetically-Engineered Animals,” January 15, 2009; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Veterinary Medicine, Guidance for Industry # 187: Regulation of Genetically Engineered Animals Containing Heritable Recombinant DNA Constructs (Final Guidance, January 15, 2009).
207 the document,223 the FDA received almost 29,000 comments, “the vast majority” of which, the agency acknowledged, “expressed opposition to the genetic engineering of animals.”224 Indeed, some of the comments urged the FDA to “ban rather than facilitate the genetic engineering of animals,”225 something the agency declined to do, arguing that its legal obligation is to facilitate the commercialization of this biotechnology, so long as it is safe. Social and ethical issues, including the fundamental questions of “[w]hether animals should be genetically engineered,” and who should decide, fall “outside the scope” of the FDA’s legal authority, the agency explained.226 The FDA also rejected the notion that consumers have the right to know what they are eating. Over the objection of consumer groups, the agency made it perfectly clear that it would not require edible commodities derived from the bodies of GE animals to be labeled as such.227
Although obtaining regulatory approval is a necessary step on the path to commercialization, it is not necessarily sufficient to guarantee consumer acceptance or broader public support.228 Well aware of the public relations challenge it is facing, the biotechnology industry has avoided the mistake of portraying genetic engineering as just another way of
223 http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01887.html (last visited on November 2, 2008); Federal Register, Volume 73(183), Friday, September 19, 2008, pages 54407-54408; Transcript for Media Briefing on FDA’s Draft Guidance for Industry on the Regulation of Genetically Engineered Animals, September 18, 2008; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), Guidance for Industry #187: Regulation of Genetically Engineered Animals Containing Heritable rDNA Constructs (Draft, September 18, 2008).
224 http://www.fda.gov/cvm/GEFDAresponsepublic.htm (last visited on February 14, 2009).
225 http://www.fda.gov/cvm/GEFDAresponsepublic.htm (last visited on February 14, 2009).
226 http://www.fda.gov/cvm/GEFDAresponsepublic.htm (last visited on February 14, 2009).
227 http://www.fda.gov/cvm/GEFDAresponsepublic.htm (last visited on February 14, 2009).
228 The absence of labels on GE commodities would not prevent consumers from avoiding them. Even though edible commodities derived from the bodies of GE animals would not need to be labeled as such, non-GE commodities could be labeled as GE-free, so long as the labels were legal. This would enable some consumers––those who could afford to– to avoid GE commodities.
208 boosting profits for biotechnology companies and agribusinesses. Instead, it has wrapped itself in the garb of the public interest, arguing that GE animals offer biotechnological solutions to pressing social problems, including the ecological problems that have plagued the industrial livestock, poultry, and aquaculture sectors (Gottlieb and Wheeler 2008).
Despite the public’s misgiving about GE animals, the biotechnology industry is optimistic that a significant number of consumers will accept environmental applications of genetic engineering. “Consumer surveys suggest that genetic engineering directed to issues involving environmental sustainability and food safety receive meaningful support,” the previously mentioned BIO report asserts (Gottlieb and Wheeler 2008:29, footnote omitted). A recent CAST report offers a slightly less optimistic assessment. Although the report predicts that “[b] iotechnology related to manure nutrient management will be more acceptable to society than that directed solely at improving production efficiency,” it acknowledges that this goodwill might not extend to GE animals, even if they are described as environmentally friendly (CAST 2006:13, citations omitted).
Echoing BIO’s optimism, the Enviropig’s developers have raised the possibility that a significant number of consumers might deliberately choose to purchase what one Guelph report calls “Enviro-pork” (Mistry and Castle 2006:11; see also Forsberg et al. 2003a: E68, E75;
Phillips et al. 2002).229 Guelph scientist John Phillips: “I believe the Enviropig, and other equivalent transgenic agricultural animals (e.g. chickens) will ultimately become widely accepted by consumers and widely adopted by the industry for the very simple reason that they leave a smaller footprint on the environment” (Phillips et al. 2002:40). Similarly, the Guelph
229 Dove (2005:285) coined the term “EnviroBacon.”
209 report suggests that “[c]onsumers might be persuaded that environmentally friendly pork is the responsible purchase decision, and some research indicates that so long as informational needs of the buyers are addressed, transgenic pork might find market uptake in Canada. . .,” especially if it costs less than ordinary pork (Mistry and Castle 2006:11).
Even though the FDA does not require that edible commodities derived from the bodies of GE animals be labeled as such, the Guelph scientists are apparently willing to accept certain labels. At the November 10, 2008 forum on FDA regulation of GE animals, John Phillips had this to say about the labeling issue:
DR. PHILLIPS: . . . [W]e will insist on labeling. We want people to know. I don’t think we will call it “green pork.”
[Laughter.]
DR. PHILLIPS: But nonetheless, we think people should have a choice. We understand that there are people that do not and may not want to at the time purchase or consume meat from these animals for whatever reason, and we say fine, we don’t want to impose on you, but there may be people out there who do wish to have this product labeled as environmentally friendly pork, with data to back it up.230
Another speaker at the conference, Michael Greger, Director of Public Health and Animal
Agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States, was suspicious of Enviropig™, seeing it as part of a slick public relations ploy. “So I am concerned that the EnviroPig reminds me of
Golden Rice, kind of this Trojan horse or Trojan pig, if you will, that the industry can hold up while they kind of slip past the really lucrative yet potentially damaging, dangerous developments.”231 Whether the public will be more accepting of “environmentally friendly” GE animals than they are of those engineered for other purposes remains to be seen.
230 http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/ge_panel_transcript.pdf (last visited on June 5, 2009), pp. 38-39.
231 http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/ge_panel_transcript.pdf (last visited on June 5, 2009), p. 60.
210 Indeed, the recent Guelph report acknowledges that, in spite of its potential environmental benefits, the Enviropig™ is vulnerable to several critiques. The first is the well- known techno-fix argument: “The creation of genetically modified pigs may be considered a radical move as a means to solving the environmental problems associated with industrial scale hog production” (Mistry and Castle 2006:15). In other words, critics might argue that we should change the factory farm not the factory farmed animal. As one might expect, environmentalists have criticized the Enviropig™ approach precisely on these grounds (See, e.g., Rutovitz and
Mayer 2002:57-58; Nierenberg 2005:52-53; Philipkoski 2001; Taylor 2000; Vestel 2001). So has long-time agribusiness critic Jim Hightower, who had this to say about the “Frankenpig”: “The answer to pig pollution is not scientific quick-fixes, but sustainable agriculture based on small family farmers, rather than massive concentrations of animals in confined factory operations.”232
The essence of this critique is that simply stocking animal factories with “environmentally friendly” animals would not make factory farming environmentally friendly.
The second critique suggests that, whatever its environmental merits, the Enviropig™ approach has negative effects on animal welfare. The Guelph report frames the welfare issue as follows:
Despite the evidence that the Enviropig does not suffer uniquely in virtue of the genetic modification, it is nevertheless destined for industrialized animal production. To the extent that the Enviropig lessens the feed, production and environmental costs, it may be seen as being complicit in the perpetuation of unethical animal farming practices [sic]. (Mistry and Castle 2006:15).
232 http://www.alternet.org/environment/11318/and_now_..._frankenpigs!/ (last visited on January 23, 2010); for a similar argument by a Greenpeace activist, see http://www.acfnewsource.org/environment/little_piggy.html (last visited on January 23, 2010).
211 In other words, even if the design of the Enviropigs™ does not cause them to suffer, this technology, like the other two described in this chapter, is open to the criticism that it helps maintain the profitability of an industry that results in animal suffering.
In addition to indirectly perpetuating animal suffering, the Enviropig™ research could also be criticized for directly causing suffering.233 Consider the process by which the
Enviropigs™ were created. Microinjection was used to introduce the transgene into embryos, which were then implanted into the reproductive systems of female swine. It is well known that microinjection fails far more often than it succeeds, raising concerns about animal welfare. A recent NRC report on animal biotechnology discusses this high failure rate in its chapter on animal health and welfare:
Microinjection . . . is an extremely inefficient method for producing transgenic offspring. Although the success of the method varies by species and gene construct, it has been estimated that less than one percent of microinjected livestock embryos result in transgenic offspring, and, of those, typically fewer than half actually express the transgene. [One study] reported efficiencies of between 0 to 4 percent for production of transgenic pigs, cattle, sheep, and goats. About 80 to 90 percent of the mortality occurs very early during development, before the eggs are even mature enough to be transferred to the recipient female, but postnatal mortality also occurs . . . In mice and pigs, the inefficiencies associated with microinjection can be compensated for to a great extent by implanting recipient females with multiple embryos. (NRC 2002:96-97, citations omitted).
233 One might hypothesize that the three approaches described in this chapter could increase the density at which animals are stocked, and that increased crowding, especially inside of confinement facilities, could exacerbate welfare problems. But it is not clear that these technologies would—or have—resulted in significant increases in density. Indeed, the USDA-ERS report noted that manure application intensity actually decreased among those swine operations that were most likely to have been subject to nutrient management regulations, which were also, perhaps, the operations which were most likely to have adopted microbial phytase in response to regulatory pressure (Key et al. 2009:12-13). What these technologies might do, instead, is help producers maintain existing densities, or avoid the need for major reductions in density. We will have to wait to see how the Enviropig™ is used should the breed ever be adopted by the industry.
212 In a review article on animal biotechnology, including both cloning and transgenesis, UC-Davis animal scientist Alison L. Van Eenennaam echoed the NRC’s concerns. She also discussed the welfare implications of technological interventions into the reproductive system:
Animal cloning and transgenic methodologies themselves create some welfare concerns, not the least of which is the current inefficiency of the techniques, which results in the use of many more animals than would be needed if success rates were higher. Some of the reproductive manipulations (e.g., embryo transfer, superovulation) that are required for the production of genetically engineered animals and clones may cause pain or discomfort to the animal. However, these are not new or unique concerns specific to these biotechnologies; commercial livestock breeders have commonly employed such techniques for many years. (Van Eenennaam 2006:137).
The impact of the Enviropig™ research on animal welfare is unclear. What we know is that the production process was inefficient, requiring thousands of embryos. While conducting the research that led up to the publication of the 2001 article in Nature Biotechnology, the scientists injected the transgene into 4,147 embryos, but only 33 transgenic founder piglets were born, for an efficiency rate of 0.8%, which is within the range cited in the NRC report (Golovan et al 2001b:741). Whether animal welfare was compromised as a result of this inefficiency is unclear.
The Enviropig™ website addresses the issue of animal welfare as follows:
Animal Welfare Issues All animal experiments are conducted following the strict guidelines of the Canadian Council on Animal Care (http://www.ccac.ca/). Guidelines relating to transgenic animals may be downloaded from the site. Pigs are raised in accordance with the Canadian Code of Practice (new website http://www.nfacc.ca/pdf/english/Pigsfactsheet.pdf ) for environmentally sound hog production. A major concern with the production of transgenic animals is the impression that they are unhealthy and suffering. However, for a transgenic pig to be useful in the pork production industry it must have all the valuable attributes of pigs currently in production, and in addition have the unique trait it was designed for. In the case of the Enviropig™, the pigs were developed to make available an adequate supply of phosphorus from plant material for optimal growth. Endowing
213 upon the pig the ability to better satisfy its nutritional requirements is a positive characteristic. Growth rate is a key indicator of animal health. We have shown that the Enviropigs grow at the same rate (or indeed faster under some circumstances) as conventional pig [sic] that have the same diet except supplemented with phosphorus. From conventional wisdom, it is obvious that the Enviropigs are not suffering, and indeed are more fit than conventional pigs.234 This paragraph suggests that the design of the Enviropig™ does not cause them to suffer, but it does not tell us whether any animals suffered during the research that led to the development of the Enviropig™. It asserts that the research complied with the applicable guidelines, which are, it claims, “strict.” But what does “strict” mean? Does it mean that absolutely no suffering occurred during the research? Or does it mean that a legally acceptable level of suffering occurred? If the latter, who got to decide what constitutes acceptable suffering?
To adequately address the effects of the Enviropig™ research on animal welfare, we would need to know much more about the research than has been described in the publicly available literature. We would need to know whether extracting embryos from, or implanting embryos into, the reproductive system caused any female swine to suffer. We would need to know whether any embryos became piglets who suffered. And we would need to know what was done to all the mice. Without more details about how the research affected each animal who was involved, we cannot fully evaluate the animal welfare implications of the research. An assertion that the researchers complied with the applicable guidelines only begs the question of whether those guidelines are adequate.
Given the potential public concerns about the Enviropig™, the industry might be reluctant to adopt the breed, even if its developers obtain regulatory approval, and even if they convince the industry that the Enviropig™ can reduce the industry’s regulatory compliance and
234 http://www.uoguelph.ca/enviropig/societal_issues.shtml (italics added, bold omitted) (last visited on January 26, 2010).
214 feed costs more than alternative technologies such as microbial phytase can. The industry might decide that the economic benefits are outweighed by the potential costs of controversy.
Interestingly, the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield, has reportedly distanced itself from ongoing research on GE animals, including the Enviropig™ research, at least in the U.S. press
(Pollack 2007). With the FDA currently reviewing an application for approval to sell pork products made of Enviropigs™, we might soon get the chance to find out whether the U.S. pork sector believes that the Enviropig™ is a more attractive option than microbial phytase. We will also have to wait to see how the industry receives this GE animal in Canada, China, and other parts of the world as well.
V. Conclusion!
I conclude that regulatory pressure has probably encouraged the U.S. swine sector to feed animals closer to the minimum phosphorus requirements described by the NRC. The need to keep feed costs in check has probably also encouraged this trend. It is important to acknowledge, however, that the evidence I relied upon to reach this conclusion has significant limitations. I placed heavy reliance on comments made by Gary Cromwell, who as a leading authority on swine nutrition presumably had knowledge of trends in the formulation of swine diets. Even so, my analysis would have been strengthened if I had interviewed swine nutritionists. My analysis would have also benefited from survey evidence on the prevalence of, and reasons for, changes in phosphorus feeding in the swine sector. My conclusion should therefore be regarded as tentative rather than definitive. Although the extent to which the swine sector has adopted
“environmental nutrition” in response to regulatory pressure is unclear, what is clear is that
“environmental nutrition” has been promoted as a way of keeping compliance costs in check.
215 I also conclude that regulatory pressure probably played a role in the increased adoption of phytase by the U.S. swine sector over the past decade or so. It is clear that adding this enzyme to swine feed can help keep compliance costs in check, that increased regulatory pressure gave the industry an incentive to adopt the enzyme, and that phytase companies and animal scientists have touted its potential regulatory benefits. Like Nigel Key and his colleagues, I suspect that regulatory pressure contributed to the increase in phytase adoption between 1998 and 2004 (Key et al. 2009). However, it is unlikely that regulatory pressure was the only factor. Other factors probably also played a role, including the rising price of inorganic phosphate supplements; a decline in the use of meat and bone meal as an alternative source of digestible phosphate, mainly in response to food safety concerns (Forsberg et al. 2005); and technological advances that increased the effectiveness and decreased the price of phytase.
As with my conclusion about environmental nutrition, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of my data. I was unable to find any surveys examining the reasons for the increase in phytase adoption. Like my conclusion about “environmental nutrition,” this conclusion should therefore be regarded as tentative.
As for the Enviropig™ breed, its developers have touted its potential regulatory benefits, and solving the swine sector’s regulatory problems appears to have been one of the reasons the breed was developed. But given the potential for public controversy and the availability of less controversial techno-fixes, the U.S. pork sector might decide that the Enviropig™ is not worth the trouble. Regardless of whether the breed is ever adopted, we should try to understand its broader significance. In my view, the Enviropig™ is perhaps one of the best examples of how
216 the need to overcome (socio)ecological obstacles to the accumulation of capital is driving the production of nature. I explore this point in the final chapter.
217 Chapter 7. CONCLUSION
This chapter has four main goals. First, I summarize my main findings. Second, I describe the three most significant theoretical contributions of the thesis. Third, I suggest ideas for future research. Finally, I make some policy recommendations.
This thesis examined the relationship between agri-environmental technoscience and the environmental regulations governing certain sectors of agriculture. Regulations can create such high compliance costs that they undermine the profitability of the regulated industry or of particular regions as locations for it. In this case study of the phosphorus-based nutrient management regulations governing industrial livestock and poultry operations, I found that agri- environmental technoscience helped keep compliance costs in check.
Acting as regulatory scientists, public agricultural researchers minimized compliance costs by minimizing legally induced scarcity in the natural conditions of production required by the regulated industry––in this case, the manure loading capacity of farmland. Along with regulatory science, techno-fixes also helped keep compliance costs in check. By reducing the phosphorus content of manure, increasing the amount that could be applied per acre without exceeding the maximum legally acceptable phosphorus application rate, the three techno-fixes I examined reduced demand for manure loading capacity. In short, I found that two types of agri- environmental technoscience––regulatory science and techno-fixes––worked together to help maintain the profitability of the regulated industry, and of regions as locations for it.
This thesis contributes to the field of agri-food studies. More specifically, it helps solve what Jill Harrison and Steve Wolf (2008) recently described as one of the most important
218 intellectual problems in the field. According to Harrison and Wolf, agri-food researchers have done a good job of highlighting ecological contradictions that are inherent in the industrial agri- food system, and they have also helped promote alternatives to this system, such as community supported agriculture and farmers markets, but they have failed adequately to explain how this system is able to persist in spite of its ecological contradictions. Part of the answer, Buttel (2006) and others have argued, is that public and private agri-environmental technoscience helps sustain the industrial agri-food system. This thesis highlighted the role of industry friendly regulatory science and regulatory friendly techno-fixes. At least in the case examined here––and I do not intend to generalize beyond this case––agri-environmental technoscience helped prevent environmental regulations from undermining the profitability of an industry that is widely regarded as ecologically unsustainable.
The thesis also contributes to the sociology of agricultural technoscience. More specifically, it contributes to the literature on the social forces shaping the research agenda of the public agricultural research system. In a review of the literature, Jessica Goldberger (2001), citing previous work by Busch and Lacy, mentioned regulations as a potential external social force shaping public agricultural research. If my study is any indication, public agricultural researchers are helping certain sectors of agriculture solve their regulatory problems (see also
DeLind 1995; Henke 2008:Ch.6). What this suggests is that the public agricultural research agenda is being shaped by the regulatory pressure facing certain sectors of agriculture.
The third contribution of this thesis is to the interdisciplinary literature on the relationship among capitalism, technoscience, and nature. Because for me this is the most interesting contribution, I will discuss it in a little more depth. What the Enviropig™ in particular suggests, I
219 argue, is that nature––in this case, the body––is being physically reconstructed to overcome
(socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation.
Sociologist Richard Twine is one of the few scholars writing about biotechnological fixes for factory farming’s ecological problems. In his forthcoming book, Animals as Biotechnology, he argues that this new biotechnological project is an attempt to legitimize industrial livestock and poultry production in an era of increasing environmental concern (pp. 213, 240), an argument that echoes Wolf’s work on precision farming (Wolf and Buttel 1996; Wolf and Wood
1997). Twine draws on Sarah Franklin’s (2003) concept of “ethical biocapital” to make his case.
In her research on Dolly the sheep, Franklin coined this phrase to refer to how “concerns about public opinion are literally being built into new life forms” (Franklin 2003:98). Twine argues that environmental and animal welfare applications of animal biotechnology are examples of ethical biocapital.
The real subsumption of nature literature offers another useful theoretical framework for making sense of environmental applications of animal biotechnology. In a passage that has gotten far too little attention (but see Goldman and Schurman 2000), James O’Connor discussed what he saw as a new development in the capitalist production of nature:
. . . For reformist Greens . . . the question is how to remake capital in ways consistent with the sustainability of nature. . . In the boardrooms of most corporations, however, the problem is discussed in different terms . . . [C]orporations construct the problem of the environment in a way that is the polar opposite of that in which Greens typically think about reform, namely, the problem of how to remake nature in ways that are consistent with sustainable profitability and capital accumulation. “Remaking nature” means more access to nature, as “tap” and “sink,” which has political and ideological as well as economic and ecological dimensions, for example, the assault on the lives of indigenous peoples. Remaking nature also means reworking or reinventing nature (the political and ideological aspects of which are also important). Examples include “even-age industrial plantations” of pine and fir in the U.S. southeast and northwest—a monoculture that has been called “forestry’s equivalent to the urban tower block”; genetic alteration of food to
220 reduce crop losses and increase land yields; microorganisms used in the semiconductor industry to “eat” toxic wastes; and genetically altered ragweed plants that clean soil contaminated by lead and other metals. (O’Connor 1998:238, italics in original, footnotes omitted).
In this passage O’Connor was describing a “capitalist project to remake nature” to overcome
(socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation (O’Connor 1998:239). He saw this project as a major shift in the capitalist production of nature:
Here we enter a world in which capital does not merely appropriate nature, then turn it into commodities that function as elements of constant and variable capital (to use Marxist categories), but rather a world in which capital remakes nature and its products biologically and physically (and politically and ideologically) in its own image. A precapitalist or semicapitalist nature is transformed into a specifically capitalist nature (O’Connor 1998:238, italics added).
In other words, what is taking place is a shift from the formal to the real subsumption of nature. That nature is being reconstructed is nothing new. What is new are the social forces driving the reconstruction of nature. What is new is that the real subsumption of nature is being driven by the need to overcome (socio)ecological obstacles to capital accumulation (O’Connor
1998; Smith 2006).
An example can be seen in the shift from extraction to cultivation in forestry and fishing
(Boyd et al. 2001). Having liquidated old-growth forests, the forestry sector is now growing trees on plantations (Prudham 2003). Having caused the collapse of oceanic fisheries, the fish sector is now growing fish in aquaculture (Clark and Clausen 2008; Clausen and Clark 2005; Kelso 2003;
Mansfield in press). And these sectors are taking the real subsumption of nature even deeper by developing transgenic trees and fish (Kelso 2003; Prudham 2003) In each case, we have an industry that has undermined its ecological conditions of production and is now producing new conditions of production to replace them. In each case, the production of nature is being driven
221 by the need to overcome an ecological obstacle to capital accumulation and avert an ecologically induced economic crisis.
The real subsumption of nature is also be driven by the need to overcome socioecological obstacles to capital accumulation, including legally induced scarcity in the natural conditions of capitalist production. Previous research suggests that the need to keep compliance costs in check has led to the production of regulatory friendly ecosystems such as mitigation wetlands
(Robertson 2000; Smith 2006). The case of the Enviropig™ adds something new. Arun Agrawal argued that environmental regulations aim to create “environmental subjects––people who have come to think and act in news ways in relation to the environmental domain being governed . . .” (Agrawal 2005:7; see also Darier 1996; Rutherford 2007). In the case of the
Enviropig™, however, something much more radical is taking place. In this case, regulatory pressure has encouraged the production of regulatory friendly bodies, bodies that can help the regulated industry keep compliance costs in check.
Future research is needed on several issues. We need to know to what extent environmental regulations are shaping the research agenda of the public agricultural research system. A single case study like mine cannot answer this question. A study examining the research agendas of all the land-grant universities would be a good starting point. An especially important question that should be examined is whether public agri-environmental research is becoming oriented toward the particular environmental problems that have attracted the attention of environmental regulators. Researchers should also examine whether other issues that have attracted the attention of regulators, especially animal welfare, are shaping the public agricultural research agenda. It would be especially interesting to know whether regulatory pressure is
222 driving the development of biotechnological fixes for animal welfare problems, including the creation of animals who are designed not to suffer in factory farms.
My policy recommendations build on my recommendations for future research. Activists, not just academics, should pay greater attention to the environmental research being done at land-grant universities and other public agricultural research institutions. Following the publication of Jim Hightower’s Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times in 1972, a movement emerged to challenge the research priorities of the land-grant universities (Buttel 2005; Hightower 1978). Yet in recent years, Fred Buttel (2005) observed, this kind of critique has waned, especially among environmentalists. Indeed, according to Buttel, “neither agriculture nor agricultural research and the land-grant system have ever been of great importance to American environmental movement leaders,” even though many of the leading environmental organizations are part of the sustainable agriculture movement (Buttel 2005:281, citation omitted). Environmental organizations might want to consider paying greater attention to the public agricultural research system. For if public agri-environmental technoscience is helping sustain ecologically unsustainable forms of agriculture, then to achieve its goals the sustainable agriculture movement will need to transform the public agricultural research system.
223 Appendix: Interview Guides
Interview Guide for Doug Beegle (Note: The interview took place on August 12, 2009 at his Penn State office.)
Issues to Explore:
What was your role in the development of PA’s nutrient management regulations? Keeping compliance costs in check? Ensuring that Pennsylvania is a profitable location for high-density livestock and poultry production?
Shift from N to P How did P become an issue that the SCC had to address? Was the new science really all that new in 1998? Did the P issue precipitate a manure disposal crisis in late 1990s?
What role did you play in helping the SCC make the shift from N to P?
3 Approaches Did you advocate a particular regulatory approach for P?
Why do you think the P Index has become the preferred approach to P-based nutrient management in PA? Socioeconomic Issues?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the P Index approach?
Conserving resources/mitigating risk of eutrophication Is it a waste of a resource to apply phosphorus to cropland that already has a soil test P level that exceeds the upper limit of the optimum range for crop production?
Long-term solutions versus short-term solutions: Does the P Index provide adequate short-term environmental protection? How long can it do so?
Does the P Index force a long-term, systemic solution before the time runs out?
Is the P Index designed to make not fixing the systemic problem unprofitable at some point?
Can you have such a low transport factor that you could keep applying phosphorus to soil with soil test P levels exceeding 200 ppm almost indefinitely?
224 Climate Is it possible that climate change could influence the effectiveness of PA’s regulations at addressing the risk of phosphorus loss to surface waters? (e.g., affect erosion or effectiveness of BMPs). Is there adequate protection from loss during severe storms?
Lawsuit
Why did you defend PA’s N-based regulations during the lawsuit?
Interview guide for Andrew Sharpley (Note: The interview took place by phone on August 14, 2009.)
Issues to Explore:
What was your role in the development of PA’s nutrient management regulations? Keeping compliance costs in check? Ensuring that Pennsylvania is a profitable location for high-density livestock and poultry production?
Shift from N to P How did P become an issue that the SCC had to address? Was the new science really all that new in 1998? Did the P issue precipitate a manure disposal crisis in late 1990s?
What role did you play in helping the SCC make the shift from N to P?
3 Approaches Did you advocate a particular regulatory approach for P?
Why do you think the P Index has become the preferred approach to P-based nutrient management in PA? Socioeconomic Issues?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the P Index approach?
Conserving resources/mitigating risk of eutrophication Is it a waste of a resource to apply phosphorus to cropland that already has a soil test P level that exceeds the upper limit of the optimum range for crop production?
Long-term solutions versus short-term solutions: Does the P Index provide adequate short-term environmental protection? How long can it do so?
Does the P Index force a long-term, systemic solution before the time runs out?
225 Is the P Index designed to make not fixing the systemic problem unprofitable at some point?
Can you have such a low transport factor that you could keep applying phosphorus to soil with soil test P levels exceeding 200 ppm almost indefinitely?
Climate Is it possible that climate change could influence the effectiveness of PA’s regulations at addressing the risk of phosphorus loss to surface waters? (e.g., affect erosion or effectiveness of BMPs). Is there adequate protection from loss during severe storms?
Interview guide for Cecil Forsberg and John Phillips (Note: The conversation took place by phone on October 2, 2009.)
Issues to Explore:
Why was the Enviropig™ developed?
Is it inherently friendly to the environment, or do its environmental effects depend upon how it is used?
What about the Jevons paradox?
How does it compare to the leading microbial phytase on the market?
What about the issue of public acceptance?
What is the relationship between the Enviropig™ and nutrient management regulations?
What can it do besides keep compliance costs in check?
Update on regulatory approval process.
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256 VITA: JONATHAN LAWRENCE CLARK
EDUCATION The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Ph.D. in Rural Sociology 2010 Dissertation: “Greening the Factory Farm: Toward a Theory of Agri-Environmental Technoscience.”
Washington & Lee University, School of Law, Lexington, VA J.D., cum laude 2002
The Pennsylvania State University, Behrend College, Erie, PA B.S. in Biology, with high distinction 1998
EMPLOYMENT Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA Assistant Professor 2010- Instructor 2009-2010 Lecturer 2008-2009
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis, MO Assistant District Counsel 2002-2003 Law Clerk and Honor Law Graduate 2002
Washington & Lee School of Law, Black Lung Clinic, Lexington, VA Student Caseworker 1999-2002
AWARDS AND GRANTS Human-Animal Studies Summer Fellowship, Animals & Society Institute 2008
Dissertation Research Award, Rural Sociological Society 2006
Competitive Grant for Graduate Students, Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences 2006
University Graduate Fellowship, Penn State Graduate School 2003-2004
Public Service Grant Award, Washington & Lee School of Law 2002