Des Moines Register s6

Des Moines Register 12-02-06

Critics use false claims against modern hog operations

By MIKE VER STEEG SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER

I can't say it surprised me to read a recent study that shows people here in Lyon County have some of the longest life spans in the nation. We believe in clean living, hard work and being good to our neighbors, and that's bound to pay off.

What does surprise me is how people outside the business and outside this county continue to get ink in The Des Moines Register by throwing around unscientific reports that hog producers like me are ruining the health of adults and children who live near modern hog facilities. Lyon County and Sioux County (two counties noted for longevity in the study) also rank among the top 10 hog- production counties in the state. Talk about ironic!

I'm a third-generation, 33-year-old hog producer. All I've ever wanted to do is farm. I work in an 850-sow hog barn every day of my life, seven hours a day. My wife and three young children also help out. All are in good health, and I haven't had a sick day in 10 years. My father, a longtime hog producer and veterinarian, also is of good health. Activists often cite a University of Iowa study linking hog confinements to childhood asthma. If I believed it were true, I never would have built our home just 150 yards north of our earthen manure-storage basin.

It's sad to see your newspaper continue to give credence to false claims from folks with no working experience or credibility in the industry rather than to seek out the views of people who actually live and do the work on the farm and speak with that full-time farmer experience.

I read that U of I study, and the results are often misquoted by activists and hobby farmers. Dr. Joel Kline, a professor of internal medicine, noted in his summary statement that his results were inconclusive. Furthermore, "Because different sets of physicians are responsible for the medical care of the groups of children, it is possible that physician bias is responsible for the different prevalence of asthma diagnoses. This was not explored in the study."

But what's really troubling is that the study, which the Register continues to cite, also didn't consider whether there were any smokers in the homes where there were children with asthma symptoms. Secondhand smoke has been positively linked to upward of 26,000 new cases of childhood asthma a year, according to dozens of studies documented in a 430-page report published by the National Cancer Institute in November 2000. Anyone can do a simple Google search and find 590,000 hits of studies and other stories that link cigarette smoke to asthma. I also found a recent one by Steven Hoff, an agricultural and biosystems engineering professor at Iowa State University, which says that a litter box from an indoor cat might have a stronger link to ammonia levels in a home than a 4,800-head hog confinement.

I think there are good operators and bad, and no one worth their weight in salt would defend the bad. But we all need to step back and stop using the broad brush to paint all modern hog barns as "factory farms" out to ruin the health and well-being of Iowans.

I truly believe the folks with agendas out to ruin all family farms bigger than their own will one day be called on their hurtful and false rhetoric. After reading that study about long life in my home county, I have to say, time is on my side!

MIKE VER STEEG of Inwood is a third-generation family farmer.