TEACHING MATERIALS FOR KS 3&4: FOOD, FARMING AND GLOBALISATION
Contents
03 USING THE SUPPORT LITERATURE
04 SYNOPSIS
05 STOP-THE-FILM TESTS
07 WORKSHEETS
09 GENERAL QUESTIONS
10 DISCUSSION TOPICS
11 BACKGROUND INFORMATION
11 SMITHFIELD FOODS PROFILE
19 SMITHFIELD AND SWINE FLU
22 SMITHFIELD AND JOB CUTS
24 A MULTINATIONAL AT WORK
31 PORK PRODUCTS
36 EUROPE AND THE BATTLE FOR POLISH FARMS
43 THE ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN BANK
46 ANIMAL WELFARE OR PROFITS
52 BRITAIN'S WELFARE STANDARDS
55 PIG-KEEPING: THE FIVE FREEDOMS
62 WORKING CONDITIONS IN FACTORY FARMS
64 POLLUTING PIG FARMS
67 FILM CONTROVERSY
Using the e-Book toolkit
The aim of this support e-Book is to help you use the video, both as a teaching and a learning resource. All the material can be photocopied for teaching purposes. Every effort has been made to make it as flexible as possible, and to be useful across the widest range of age levels and ability ranges.
Stop-the-film tests are questions linked to specific sections in the video. These are designed to be attempted following a viewing of one particular section of the video and can usually be answered with relatively short responses.
General questions presume one or two complete viewings of the video and are designed to be answered with longer, possibly written, responses. Discussion topics also assume reasonable familiarity with the video and are designed to stimulate group discussion of the wider issues raised by the video, These may well then form the basis of further written work.
A synopsis and full script of the video are also available to make it easier not only to prepare lessons and courses, but also to relate questions and exercises to the content of the programme.
Background information provides further information on the subject matter in the video together with original documents and source materials relevant to the film.
The film and support material can be used together in many different ways, but one popular method is as follows. Play the film once all the way through. Then show the video again, stopping after each section to consider the stop- the-film tests. The general questions might be attempted later, drawing on the script and background information as needed.
Synopsis
PIG BUSINESS Four years ago seasoned campaigner, eco-warrior and mother of three Tracy Worcester set out to discover who was paying the true price for the cheap imported pork for sale in Britain's supermarkets. Documenting her investigation into intensive pig farming and the damaging impact it is having on the quality of our food, the environment, and the health and welfare of agricultural communities, the film follows Tracy as she infiltrates farms in Europe and America and confronts the biggest firm in the pig business, Smithfield Foods. The film reveals that these huge meat factories overcrowd and mistreat animals, pollute air and water in the vicinity, endanger the health of workers, local residents and consumers, and put small farmers out of business. Former workers and local residents complain of the stench of the effluent, a local doctor confirms that employees and neighbours are poisoned by the cocktail of 400 gases inside the sheds, and when waste from the putrid slurry lagoons is sprayed onto nearby fields. Living in crowded and unsanitary conditions, the pigs are routinely given antibiotics in their feed to prevent disease and promote growth. The over-use of these drugs is helping to create antibiotic resistant strains of diseases such as MRSA and E. coli which can spread into human populations and cause serious illness or even death. While the European Union subsidises this operation in the name of helping Poland become more competitive, small-scale farmer Alicia complains that the giants out-compete her traditional farming methods, as they give their animals antibiotics to make them grow faster and collect huge subsidy cheques.
Tracy Worcester’s message is that as consumers, we have a choice. We need not stand by as corporations ride roughshod over communities, destroying democracy and culture. ‘’If we demand accurate supermarket labelling, so that we can buy British, and thereby support the farmers in raising their animal welfare standards, or if we reconnect direct with farmers via local butchers and farmers’ markets’’, she says, ‘’we ourselves can reclaim high- quality, small-scale humane farming, we can help restore communities, and we can protect animal welfare, the environment, and human health’’.
Stop-The-Film-Tests
A. Play the film until the caption WHERE IT ALL STARTED: AMERICA. Stop the film and answer the following questions. 1. Why, according to Tracy, are small family farms going bankrupt? 2. What two things has Tracy long been campaigning about? 3. Why is Tracy worried about where meat comes from? 4. Where should you go if you want to be sure about where your meat comes from? 5. In which country was intensive farming pioneered? 6. What's the problem with intensive pig farming?
B. Play the film until the caption THE THREAT TO SMALL FARMS. Stop the film and answer the following questions. 1. Which industry did the American industrial pig farmers copy? 2. How many pigs might there be on an intensive farm? 3. How does cleaning the floor of the farm affect the worker interviewed? 4. What system is used to dispose of the pig waste? 5. How much faecal waste do ten million hogs produce? 6. What kind of the gas is released by the giant pig farms? 7. What do the people living near the pig farms complain of?
C. Play the film until the caption HOW CAN YOU LIVE HERE? Stop the film and answer the following questions. 1. Who bought out livestock farms in the 1990s? What was the result of the drop in pig prices? 2. What price did pigs go down to in the US? 3. Who opposed the factory farming in the US? 4. What was the result of the protests against factory farming in the US? 5. Why did Smithfield Foods decide to set up operations abroad? 6. Who are Smithfield's annual sales? 7. How many pigs do Smithfield process each year? 8. How many people do Smithfield employ? 9. What was the attraction of Poland to Smithfield?
Stop-The-Film-Tests
D. Play the film until the caption HOW WILL POLAND’S SMALL FARMS BE AFFECTED? Stop the film and answer the following questions. 1. How many pigs were housed in the Polish factory farm in 2004? 2. What kinds of illnesses are people living near the farm experiencing? 3. What happened to children who swam in the lake near the pig farm? 4. How have fish been affected by the factory farm? 5. How did Tracy get pictures of conditions inside the factory farm? 6. How did Smithfield respond to the allegations about their lagoons and conditions 7. inside the factory farm?
E. Play the film until the caption A FUTURE OF CHEAP MEAT? Stop the film and answer the following questions. 1. What problems does the small farm owner in Poland face? 2. Why do the factory farms get large EU subsidies? 3. How is Europe involved in the multinational takeover of Polish agricultural life? 4. What size loan did Smithfield receive from Europe? 5. What is the mission of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 6. in former communist countries? 7. What is the view of the European Commission of the future for farming?
F. Play the film until the caption AND WHAT ABOUT BRITAIN? Stop the film and answer the following questions. 1. What ambitions does Smithfield have for the UK? 2. What is the “food service industry”? 3. Who does Robert Kennedy claim Smithfield is doing to American food? 4. How does the Smithfield boss defend his company against Tracy’s charges? 5. What is Rick Dove’s answer to the problem of over-powerful multinationals? 6. What, according to Kennedy, are big companies doing to the small US farms? 7. Does the Smithfield boss admit his company pays politicians for their help? 8. What forces does Kennedy see as the big danger to democracy in the US?
G. Play the film until the end. Then answer the following questions. 1. Why did UK farmers demonstrate in London in 2008? 2. How much of the pig meat sold in Britain comes from abroad? 3. What does the circled UK/EC mark on pork products mean? 4. How does the factory farming system put us at risk of pig MRSA? 5. How is British farming being affected by cheap imports? 6. What is Frank Henderson’s answer to the problems facing Britain’s pig farmers? 7. How can consumers make a difference?
Work Sheet
1. It is important to know where our meat comes from because not all countries have the same ______.
2. Intensive pig farming was pioneered in ______and the idea was taken from the ______industry.
3. Pig waste is disposed of through the ______and ______system.
4. 10 million pigs produce more faecal waste than ______.
5. In the 1990s ______became the main buyers of US pigs.
6. Put a cross against any of the following statements that are false. a. The gas from intensive pig farms may contain up to 400 substances. b. Tracy was permitted to film inside the Polish factory farm. c. Factory farming is causing the spread of a pig form of MRSA. d. Factory farming has led to a rise in the price of pork. e. In Poland Smithfield bought the state slaughter house and 21 state farms.
7. Smithfield benefited from a ______that was organised by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
8. In 2008 pig farmers from across the UK besieged ______.
9. In this country we've lost ______of the herd in the last ten years.
10. ______percent of imports would be illegal to produce in the UK on the grounds of animal welfare.
11. Put a cross against any of the following statements that are false. a. Less than a quarter of pig meat sold in the UK comes from abroad. b. Smithfield supplies Spanish chorizo to the UK. c. If packaged meat shows a circle with UK and EC in it, it is raised in the UK. d. To support high welfare farmers, look for pork that is ‘outdoor reared’, ‘outdoor bred’, ‘free range’ or ‘organic’
12. Smithfield has annual sales of almost ______, employs over______people, and processes ______pigs a year.
Work Sheet – Model Answers
1. It is important to know where our meat comes from because not all countries have the same ANIMAL WELFARE STANDARDS.
2. Intensive pig farming was pioneered in AMERICA and the idea was taken from the CHICKEN industry.
3. Pig waste is disposed of through the LAGOON and SPRAY system.
4. 10 million pigs produce more faecal waste than 100 MILLION PEOPLE.
5. In the 1990s FACTORY FARMS became the main buyers of US pigs.
6. Put a cross against any of the following statements that are false. a. The gas from intensive pig farms may contain up to 400 substances. b. Tracy was permitted to film inside the Polish factory farm. c. Factory farming is causing the spread of a pig form of MRSA. d. Factory farming has led to a rise in the price of pork. e. In Poland Smithfield bought the state slaughter house and 21 state farms.
7. Smithfield benefited from a 100 MILLION DOLLAR LOAN that was organised by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
8. In 2008 pig farmers from across the UK besieged DOWNING STREET .
9. In this country we've lost FORTY PERCENT of the herd in the last ten years.
10. 70 percent of imports would be illegal to produce in the UK on the grounds of animal welfare.
11. Put a cross against any of the following statements that are false. a. Less than a quarter of pig meat sold in the UK comes from abroad. b. Smithfield supplies Spanish chorizo to the UK. c. If packaged meat shows a circle with UK and EC in it, it is raised in the UK. d. To support high welfare farmers, look for pork that is ‘outdoor reared’, ‘outdoor bred’, ‘free range’ or ‘organic’
12. Smithfield has annual sales of almost $12 BILLION , employs over 52,000 people, and processes 27 MILLION pigs a year.
General Questions
1. Why are some people worried about the conditions of pigs in intensive pig farms? 2. How did the factory farming of pigs begin? 3. What's it like to work in an intensive pig farm? 4. What kinds of problems do intensive pig farms pose to the surrounding environment? 5. What do people living near the factory farms complain of? 6. How did the factory farming of pigs come to pose a threat to America's small farms? 7. Why did big food producers like Smithfield Foods start looking abroad to expand their operations? 8. In terms of people it employs, countries it has a presence in, pigs it processes and the sales in makes, how big a company is Smithfield Foods? 9. Why was Poland, in particular, attractive to Smithfield? 10. What problems do people living near the intensive pig farms in Poland complain of? 11. How did Smithfield respond to allegations about its operations in Poland? 12. What problems does the coming of factory farming pose to the small family farms in Poland? 13. What part is the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development playing in the expansion of intensive pig farming in Poland? 14. What seems likely to be the future for farming in Europe? 15. What is the "food service industry"? 16. According to Robert Kennedy, what threats does Smithfield pose to the US? 17. How does the Smithfield boss answer the charges against his company? 18. Why were British farmers protesting in the streets in 2007? 19. How do animal welfare standards in Britain compare with other parts of the world? 20. Why do some British farmers feel disadvantaged? 21. What's the importance of the labelling on the pork products we see in the shops? How can we be sure of the living conditions of the animals whose meat we're buying? 22. Why might the use of antibiotics in intensive pig farming be a problem? 23. What is the true cost of cheap pork?
Discussion Topics
1. What could be said to be wrong with the way pigs are treated in factory farms? 2. Should we be more worried about the conditions of intensively farmed pigs than in intensively farmed chickens? Does it make a difference that pigs are more intelligent than chickens? 3. Are people too worried about animals and not worried enough about people dying in poverty around the world? 4. The people complaining about the problems of living near the intensive pig farm in the US are black. Is this significant? 5. Why should we worry about the threat the factory farms pose to smaller farms? They're all businesses, motivated by the need to make profit, aren't they? Why should a small business be any better than a big one? 6. What drives a big company like Smithfield Foods? What good things can be said for successful multinationals? 7. Poland is a poor country. Multinationals like Smithfield Foods bring employment and cheaper food. Why shouldn't Poland welcome them with open arms? 8. Some people blame the European Union for the problems facing small farms. Is the problem with the policies of the EU or with the existence of the EU as a body? Is there a case for dissolving the Union? 9. Should we rid the world of multinationals? What would we have instead of them? 10. The film makes a plea for consumers to use their buying decisions to make a difference. This is all very well if you can afford to pay a higher price for your meat -- but what if you can't? 11. We need political power rather than consumer power to really change things, don't we? 12. Do you care about where the food you eat comes from? Isn't the taste more important to you? 13. Would you keep a pet in the same conditions as many pigs are kept in on factory farms? Why not? 14. What would you do if you knew a Smithfield pig farm was moving to where you live? 15. How important is cheap food? 16. Should we all eat less meat but better quality meat, reared with good welfare standards?
Background Information
1. SMITHFIELD FOODS PROFILE
Smithfield Foods is a giant US farming business and the world's biggest producer of pork, with holdings in many different countries. Smithfield uses the most controversial methods of factory farming of pigs. Its tough employment policies have resulted in disputes with its staff. The following is taken from Wikipedia. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
Background Information
Smithfield Foods
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Type Public (NYSE: SFD) Founded 1936 Headquarters Smithfield, Virginia Key people Joseph W. Luter, III (Chairman), C. Industry Larry Pope (CEO) Products Food Meat Revenue $11 Billion USD Employees 51,000 Website www.smithfieldfoods.com
Smithfield Foods, Inc. is the world's largest pork producer and processor.[1] Its headquarters are in Smithfield, Virginia, with operations in 26 states and 9 countries. The company raises 14 million hogs a year and processes 27 million. The company produced 5.9 billion pounds of pork and 1.4 billion pounds of fresh beef in 2006. Its plant in La Gloria, Mexico is suspected to be the source of the 2009 swine flu outbreak[2]. According to Mexican newspapers,[3]Smithfield's pig farming practices may have helped cause the swine flu outbreak. Photographs of Smithfield's Granjas Carroll plant in Mexico show rotting pig carcasses floating in pig-waste lagoons.[4]
Smithfield started as Smithfield Packing Company, now its largest subsidiary, and grew by acquiring companies such as Farmland Foods, Eckrich, and Premium Standard Farms. Smithfield has many familiar brands including Butterball, John Morrell, Gwaltney, Patrick Cudahy, Krakus Ham, Cook's Ham, and Stefano's.
In February 2009, the company announced that it planned to close six plants and to reduce the number of its independent operating companies from seven to three.[5]
Background Information
Environmental record
Farming
Smithfield has come under criticism for the millions of gallons of fecal matter that it produces and stores in holding ponds, untreated. In a four year period, in North Carolina alone, 4.7 million gallons of hog fecal matter were released into the state's rivers. Workers and residents near Smithfield plants have reported health problems, and have complained about constant, overpowering stenches of hog feces.[1]
In 1997, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million for violation of the federal Clean Water Act. [6] "The fine was the third-largest civil penalty ever levied under the act by the EPA. It amounted to .035 percent of Smithfield's annual sales."
The hog industry in North Carolina came under scrutiny in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd flooded much of the eastern part of the state, including a number of fecal matter holding ponds (lagoons, in industry parlance). Many of the [7] farms that contracted hog with Smithfield were accused of polluting the state's rivers.
In the wake of Hurricane Floyd, Smithfield entered a settlement in 2000 with the then North Carolina attorney general Mike Easley to fund development of environmentally sound waste management technologies for use on North Carolina swine farms. As part of this settlement, Sm[8] ithfield committed $15 million to fund research at North Carolina State University. In addition, the company agreed to make an annual contribution of $2 million to fund environmental enhancement grants in the state.
The environmental effects of Smithfield's slaughterhouses have come under much less criticism than its industrial farming and the fecal matter that is a byproduct of the high concentration of pigs without adequate sewage treatment facilities. Consequently many of its slaughterhouses have been environmentally certified by the International Organization for Standardization, .[9]
In 2006, Smithfield's hog-production subsidiary Murphy-Brown agreed to adopt new measures to enhance environmental protections at its hog production facilities in North Carolina in a landmark environmental pact with the Waterkeeper Alliance, once one of Smithfield's biggest critics.[10][11]
Disease
It is speculated that a collection of Smithfield's farms in Perote, Veracruz in Mexico may have been the source of the 2009 swine flu outbreak. Residents in the area have complained of the swarms of flies around waste lagoons. Mexican health officials have said that the type of fly is known to reproduce in[12] waste, and that the swine pig influenza outbreak may be linked to these pig farms.
• Background Information
Labour issues
Smithfield Packing, Tar Heel, North Carolina
The Smithfield Packing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, had been the site of a long dispute between the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which had been trying to organize the plant for over a decade. Employees at the plant voted against the union in 1994 and 1997, but the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) later alleged that unfair election conduct had occurred and ordered a new election.
In 2006, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the NLRB, and Smithfield agreed to comply with the NLRB's remedies to ensure a fair election.[13] Smithfield and the employees at Tar Heel had repeatedly called on the UFCW to hold a new election and the company had agreed to pay half the cost of an independent observer to ensure a fair election process, but the union had refused the offer, arguing that Smithfield would not allow a fair election and should have recognized card-check organizing.[14]
After a year-long series of public demonstrations, several lockouts, a number of protests and a shareholder meeting which was disrupted by shareholders supporting the union, the UFCW called for a boycott of Smithfield products. In October 2007, Smithfield countered by filing a federal RICO Act lawsuit against UFCW.[15] In October 2008, the UFCW and Smithfield reached an agreement, under which the union agreed to suspend its boycott campaign in return for the company dropping its RICO lawsuit and allowing another election. On December 10 and 11, workers at the plant voted 2,041 to 1,879 in favor of joining the UFCW, bringing the 15-year fight to an end.[16]
Farmland Foods Monmouth, Illinois
The UFCW has been trying without success to organize employees of the Monmouth, Illinois subsidiary packing facility for some time. However, an employee points system has refueled the drive to organize. In this system, employees receive points on a rolling 12-month calendar, as follows:
• Late for work, 2 hours or less: 0.5 point • Late for work, more than 2 hours: 1 point • Sick, with doctor's excuse: 1 point per day • Sick, without doctor's excuse: 2 points per day • Doctor visit: 0.5 point • Other appointments (banking, dental, school, child care or court related issues): 1 point
Accumulating points can lead to termination. Because employees are forced to work more than 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, they must take points to maintain a household outside of work. As a result, numerous employees "point out" and are terminated by Farmland Foods.
• Background Information
Pig reproduction
Gestation crates
Sows used for breeding are confined in 7ft x 2ft gestation crates.[17]
Smithfield confines pregnant sows to 7 ft (2.1 m) by 2 ft (0.61 m) gestation stalls, where they spend most of their lives. As the sows grow larger, they are unable to turn around, and must choose between standing or sleeping on their chests.
Illegal in several U.S. states and Sweden, gestation stalls are to be phased out in the E.U. by 2013. After several supermarket chains and McDonalds expressed concern about the crates, Smithfield announced that in ten years it would no longer use sow crates.[18] The Humane Society of the United States called the announcement "perhaps the most monumental advance for animal welfare in history of modern American agribusiness."[19]
In June of 2009 Smithfield announced that the gestation stalls would not be phased out within a ten year period as predicted, stating, "Due to recent significant operating losses incurred by our Hog Production segment, we have delayed capital expenditures for the program such that we no longer expect to complete the phase-out within ten years of the original announcement." [20] No word was given as to when Smithfield expected changes to be made.
Farrowing crates
Journalists Sally Kneidel and Sadie Kneidel describe in detail their 2005 tour of [21] a factory farm that produces pork for Smithfield. In their book Veggie Revolution, the authors report that each sow is transferred from her gestation crate to a farrowing crate a few days before giving birth.
On the farm the Kneidels visited in North Carolina, the writers were taken to a metal warehouse-type building to see the farrowing sows. Each door opened into a separate room of pigs, approximately 1,400 square feet (130 m2). Each room had a series of 50 or so compartments separated by low metal barriers. In each compartment, around 4 ft (1.2 m) by 6 ft (1.8 m), lay a mother pig with 8 to 13 piglets. Clamped over each reclining sow was a metal grate of parallel bars that kept her from moving sideways or rolling over.
• Background Information
The grate of bars over each sow was hinged so that the center bars could be pushed upward by the sow's shoulders, allowing the sow to sit or stand with the bars still resting on her back. No position of the bars allowed her to take a step in any direction, so the farrowing crate is functionally little different from the gestation crate described in the section above. The purpose of the bars, the owner said, is to keep the sow from rolling or stepping on her piglets.
The floor of the farrowing compartments was a metal mesh, which the Kneidels were told allows fecal waste to pass through into a collecting area under the floor. The owner said that the accumulation of feces under the floor was hosed out a couple of times a week into an open-air waste lagoon outdoors. From there the liquified manure is sprayed onto crops. The Kneidels stated that each room of farrowing crates had only one small window fan, which was turned off at the time of their visit. Rooms were dimly lit to save energy costs.
Nursery, finishing buildings, sow cycles
When the piglets at the Smithfield farm described by the Kneidels are about 3 weeks old, they are weaned and moved without the sow to the nursery, where they are housed in groups of 15 or so, in compartments with wire mesh floors. The piglets are grouped by age and gender. They remain in the nursery for 12 to 16 weeks, then are moved into the finishing buildings where they are fattened to a market weight of 250 to 280 pounds by the age of 25 weeks.
When their stay in the finishing buildings is complete, the pigs are moved out one room at a time, along a corridor created by movable plastic walls, onto a truck. The truck delivers them to a slaughterhouse.
After weaning, sows at the hog farm described above are given one week of rest, then the sows are impregnated through artificial insemination and returned to the gestation crates to await the next litter. Although the piglets' life span is only 25 weeks, the breeding sows are kept for 12 years. The sows follow a continuous cycle of insemination, gestation, farrowing, one week rest, insemination, and so on, until litter size begins to decline, at which time the sows are replaced.
• Background Information
Charitable giving
Established in 2002, the Smithfield-Luter Foundation is a non-profit organization that acts as the philanthropic wing of Smithfield Foods. The Foundation is dedicated primarily to providing scholarship opportunities to the children and grandchildren of Smithfield employees. Since its inception, the Foundation has granted 74 scholarships worth over $800,000.
The Foundation has also given $5 million to Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia and $5 million to the University of Virginia Cancer Center in Charlottesville, Virginia; these one-time donations totaling $10 million amount to less than one thousandth of a single year's revenue.
The Foundation also provides ongoing support for its Learners to Leaders programs, begun in 2006, and which now operates in four locations: Sioux2]Falls, South Dakota; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Denison, Iowa; and Norfolk, Virginia.[2] References
1. ^ a b Tietz, Jeff (2006-12-14). "Boss Hog - America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat.". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_ nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters. Retrieved 2009- 04-30. 2. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/for- la-gloria-the-stench-of-blame-is-from-pig-factories-1675809.html Stephen Foley The Independent, For La Gloria, the stench of blame is from pig factories 29 April 2009 3. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/swine-flu-intensive- farming-caroline-lucas 4. ^ http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2009/04/swine-flu-smithfield-foods-statement- vs-the-ugly-truth.html 5. ^ "Smithfield Foods to close plants, cut jobs". MarketWatch. February 17, 2009. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/smithfield-foods-close-plants- cut/story.aspx?guid={64C71410-5D1A-44DF-8DA9- C48FEB3FEE63}&dist=msr_32. 6. ^ "SMITHFIELD FOODS FINED $12.6 MILLION". Environmental Protection Agency. August 8, 1997. http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1997/August97/331enr.htm. 7. ^ "Future clouded for hog farmers". The News & Observer. October 2, 1999. http://www.unc.edu/courses/2006fall/econ/051/001/hogs/nofloyd.html. 8. ^ "Smithfield Agreement". NCSU College of Agriculture & Life Sciences. http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/waste_mgt/smithfield_projects/smithfieldsite.htm. 9. ^ "A Leader in ISO 14001 Certification". Smithfield Foods. http://www.smithfieldfoods.com/Enviro/Programs/ISO.asp.
• Background Information
10. ^ "Testimony of Richard J. Dove, Waterkeeper Alliance". Senate Committee on Government Affairs. 2002-03-02. http://www.senate.gov/~govt- aff/031302dove.htm. 11. ^ "Waterkeeper Alliance and Smithfield Foods Reach Agreement on Environmental Pact". Waterkeeper Alliance. January 20, 2006. http://www.waterkeeper.org/mainarticledetails.aspx?articleid=216. 12. ^ "Swine-flu outbreak linked to Smithfield factory farms". Tom Philpott. April 25, 2009. http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/. 13. ^ "Statement on NLRB decision". Smithfield Packing Co. June 15, 2006. http://www.smithfield.com/news/articles/062006_statement.php. 14. ^ "Smithfield: Workers Want Union Vote". Associated Press. July 13, 2007. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070713/nc_smithfield_letters.html?.v=1. 15. ^ Kris Maher, "Firms Use RICO to Fight Union Tactics," Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2007. 16. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/us/13smithfield.html 17. ^ Rollin B.E. Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical, and Research Issues. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1995, p. 76 cited in The Welfare of Sows in Gestation Crates: A Summary of the Scientific Evidence., Farm Sanctuary. 18. ^ Kaufmann, Marc. "In Pig Farming, Growing Concern, Raising Sows in Crates Is Questioned", The Washington Post, June 2001. 19. ^ "HSUS Praises Smithfield Move to End Confinement of Pigs in Gestation Crates". The Humane Society of the United States. January 25, 2007. http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/pressrel/smithfield_gestation_crate_phase_out .html. 20. ^ "Smithfield Foods, Inc. - Recent Material Event". HotStocked.com. http://www.hotstocked.com/10-k/smithfield-foods-inc-SFD-237296.html. Retrieved June 25, 2009. 21. ^ Sally Kneidel, PhD, and Sara Kate Kneidel, Veggie Revolution: Smart Choices for a Healthy Body and a Healthy Planet, Fulcrum Books, 2005. 22. ^ Learners to Leaders | Local Programs
• Background Information
2. SMITHFIELD AND SWINE FLU
The 2009 outbreak of swine flu began in Mexico and the first victim lived near a Smithfield Foods pig farm. The following is taken from The Daily News, a US newspaper. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
• Background Information
More Smithfield Experts Visit Farm in Mexico Wednesday, May 06, 2009
GLOBAL - Smithfield Foods of the US has sent a second expert team to its farm in La Gloria, Mexico, where some believe that the influenza A H1N1 may have started. Local opinion is divided on the matter, and shows more concern over possible environmental impacts of the farm.
Smithfield Foods executives said they have sent a second team to the company's joint hog-farming operation in Veracruz, Mexico, including agriculture experts from a pair of universities, according to Daily News.
The company's CEO said the team, and a pending series of genetic tests on hogs raised at the massive Granjas Carroll operation, would likely clear Smithfield of any involvement in the spawning or spread of swine flu.
C. Larry Pope said Smithfield hired consultants from the University of Minnesota and North Carolina State University to be "an extra set of eyes."
"We want an open process here because we feel like this is something we have absolutely no responsibility for, and there is no one in the world who says we do except a couple of locals who have started something," Mr Pope said, referring to villagers in La Gloria, a town near the Mexican hog farm.
Mr Pope told WTKR Television and Daily Press that his company has been rattled by what he calls "mistaken identity."
Smithfield posted sales of $12 billion last year, making the company one of the largest meat producers in the world. Since the company was tied in media accounts to swine flu, its stock has dropped 17 per cent.
"We find a little boy in southern Mexico who gets sick, there happens to be a Smithfield facility close to that, boom, we have the linkage by some people's standards," Mr Pope said. The little boy was five-year-old Edgar Hernandez. Mexican health authorities last month said they believed Edgar was the first to contract swine flu. He has since recovered.
His mother, Maria del Carmen, said she doesn't believe her child caught the flu from the pig farm, but she does worry that the lagoons of pig waste and the flies that feast on it have contaminated her village of La Gloria.
Several others in the village also got sick in April. When asked if she worries about the cleanliness of the well water, del Carmen said through a translator, "Yes, yes. Very much."
But Mr Pope insists the lagoons have not contaminated the groundwater. And, he says, no one from his company has seen the clouds of flies described by the locals.
• Background Information
Pope says people in the area dislike the smell, and claims of mass sickness are either exaggerations or illnesses unrelated to farming.
In 1997, the company was fined more than $12 million for violating federal environmental regulations, and environmental activists in Mexico have picked up on Smithfield's past. Some say that once the US cracked down, Smithfield built a farm in Veracruz to escape tougher regulations.
Mr Pope denies that, and said the company underwent a cultural shift after the 1997 case.
"The number of people in this organisation who are focused exclusively on environmental (issues) is probably ten times the level we had in 1997," he said.
La Gloria villagers do not speak with one voice about the nearby hog farms. Some said the Smithfield operation is not the source of their seasonal sicknesses. Others said God controls their health, not the farm. But many said the odour, the flies and impure well water all contribute to their maladies, reports Daily News.
ThePigSite News Desk
Note: the Daily News is a US local newspaper based in the state of Virginia.
(From the website of ThePigSite.com, an online news and technical resource to the global swine industry)
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3. SMITHFIELD JOB CUTS
Like most multinational companies, Smithfield is always looking to cut costs and maintain profits. The following, taken from a website that tracks US job redundancies, describes Smithfield's plans to reduce its workforce and streamline its operations. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Smithfield Foods cuts 1,800 jobs
Pork producer Smithfield Foods said that it plans to cut 1,800 jobs and close six factories as part of a restructuring.
Smithfield Foods Inc., based in Smithfield, Va., announced the closures and layoffs as part of a plan to consolidate and streamline its pork business. The company plans to save $125 million a year by 2011.
To help fund the restructuring, the company will take a pre-tax charge of $85 million in its fiscal third-quarter that ended Feb. 1, as well as another $30 million over the next three quarters. It will spend $53 million in capital expenditures related to plant consolidation.
The plants are expected to close by December 2009, the company said.
Chief Executive C. Larry Pope said Smithfield was switching its focus from "opportunistic acquisitions of high-quality companies at distressed prices" to being more efficient. He said the company would focus on growth of its high-margin packaged meat business.
Also, the company refinanced its U.S. and European debt facilities to lower the cost of interest payments. Both agreements were reached within the past two weeks.
"This action should remove any question about the financial strength of Smithfield Foods," Pope said.
Smithfield will combine seven of its independent operating companies into three main units: The Smithfield Packing Co., John Morrell & Co. and Farmland Foods Inc. Further, John Morrell and Farmland will combine their sales forces.
Plants slated for closure include: Smithfield Packing Co. plants in Smithfield, Va.; Plant City, Fla.; and Elon, N.C.; as well as a John Morrell plant in Great Bend, Kan.; a Farmland Foods plant in New Riegel, Ohio; and an Armour-Eckrich Meats factory in Hastings, Neb.
The company said it would offer transfers to some employees.
(From the website of Lay Off Tracker, a US organisation that documents company redundancies.)
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4. A MULTINATIONAL AT WORK
Like most big companies, Smithfield has learned to dominate the market for its products by taking over smaller producers. It is now working from its foothold in Poland to dominate the European market for pork. The following was written by one of the famous Kennedy dynasty, Robert Kennedy Junior son of the assassinated Robert Kennedy. It first appeared in The Ecologist magazine. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
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Snouts in the Trough
In the early days of Smithfield Foods, the company signed a few contracts with large North Carolinan producers to provide tens of thousands of pigs for its slaughterhouse. It then took over those producers, who had to take Smithfield's price for their farms because they had nowhere else to slaughter their pigs.
Once Smithfield owned these large farms it began overproducing pigs so that the price of pork dropped from 60 cents per pound to eight cents per pound. Since it costs 36 cents per pound for a farmer to raise a pig, most other US pig farmers went to the wall. Only pig farmers who sign contracts with Smithfield survive. These contracts are never negotiated. The desperate farmers will sign the contract the way Smithfield writes it.
Typically, Smithfield contracts require farmers to use their property for security and borrow approximately $200,000 to build warehouses according to the firm's specifications. In return, Smithfield promises the farmer approximately $20,000 per year. The farmer owns the warehouse and pays the insurance and interest to the bank. Smithfield owns the feed and the pigs. The farmer also owns the manure, but Smithfield does not pay the farmer enough for him to be able to legally dispose of it. That's his problem and the problem of his community as he pollutes the air and water with the excess manure.
Often Smithfield's contracts last only one year, even though it will take farmers 20 years to pay off their warehouse mortgage. When it is in Smithfield's interest to buy more land, the company has the power to make future contracts so burdensome that farmers go bankrupt. Smithfield can then buy their property from the bank for pennies on the dollar. Since these farms are valueless without a Smithfield contract, there are no other bidders. In this way Smithfield came to control pork production in North Carolina.
Even with the wholesale price of pork as low as eight cents per pound Smithfield continues to make money, because the price the consumer pays for Smithfield's processed pig-meat products stays the same. And with Smithfield owning the sole slaughterhouse, it squeezes the farmer until it has a monopoly on farm production. This is one of the reasons why the US Senate, along with many national legislatures, is considering legislation that will ban the ownership of farms by slaughterhouses. Smithfield's 'integration' system, through which it is farmer, slaughterhouse and meat packer, puts small farmers at a catastrophic disadvantage.
There are many studies that show that factory farms have a devastating impact on rural economies and quality of life. There is not a single empirical study showing net benefits to rural communities. Studies show that property values in areas hosting pork factories fall, on average by 30 per cent.
If you drive through the US's rural communities, you will see bankrupted hardware and feed stores (factory farms don't buy locally), boarded up high streets and closed banks, churches and schools. The US's heartland and historic landscapes are being emptied of rural Americans and occupied by large corporations.
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Political corruption
Traditional farms are exempt from laws regulating the disposal of manure, because for them manure is not waste but a valuable fertiliser. However, pig factories produce far more manure than is needed to fertilise the fields around them. The costs of properly treating and disposing of this waste make factory farming uncompetitive for traditional farms - unless they violate numerous environmental laws.
Because factory meat producers must break the law in order to survive, the industry's business plan relies on the assumption that pork factories will be able to evade prosecution by improperly influencing government officials.
Smithfield uses its wealth to buy politicians, paralyse regulatory agencies and break health and environmental laws with impunity. In North Carolina Smithfield made business partnerships with then state and US senators Wendell Murphy and Launch Faircloth, who protected the company's interests in local and federal legislatures. Using these alliances and adept campaign contributions, the pig industry has been able to corrupt and control the North Carolina state senate.
The state's largest newspaper, The News and Observer, won the Pulitzer Prize for its five- part investigative report disclosing how the factory pig industry had captured and corrupted the state senate. And in 2000 Murphy was made a director of Smithfield. He now owns 15 per cent of the company's shares.
Politicians who oppose the pig barons are punished. When North Carolina's Duplin County state assembly-woman Cynthia Watson began speaking out against Smithfield's impact on her farm community, the pig industry launched a savage multi-million dollar attack, spending as much as $510,000 a week for two years to destroy her reputation. Watson was subsequently unseated, and the pig barons succeeded in sending a powerful warning to all North Carolina's senators not to oppose their industry.
Citizens who protest get the same treatment. When communities have opposed the siting of pig factory farms within their localities they have had their democratic rights removed. In Iowa, North Carolina, Michigan and many other US states and Canadian provinces, public officials have stripped local governments of their decision-making powers over these facilities.
Similarly, Polish local officials who opposed Smithfield developments have been overruled by national authorities. The industry routinely uses bullying lawyers and illegal intimidation, threats, harassment and violence to terrorise and silence its critics - including those among its own workers.
A group of Nebraska citizens who made comments during a public hearing on a pig factory planning proposal were sued by Nebraska's largest livestock producer. Neighbouring farmers are routinely sued for participating in public hearings or speaking out against the pig industry.
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Taking over Europe via Poland
Just as Smithfield used North Carolina to launch its takeover of US pork production in the 1980s, so Poland is now being used as Smithfield's platform for launching its bid for monopoly control of pork production in Europe.
In 1999 Smithfield purchased Animex, the state-owned conglomerate of slaughterhouses and giant communist-era farms responsible for exporting Polish sausage and ham to the US. The deal was a bargain, Smithfield paid only $55m just after Animex had made, at state expense, extensive renovations to its facilities. The estimated value of the company following these improvements was $500m, causing Smithfield CEO Joe Luter to boast that he paid 'only 10 cents on the dollar' for Animex.
But gaining monopoly control of national slaughterhouse capacity is difficult in Poland, because there are over 4,000 slaughterhouses in the country. Smithfield's strategy? Get the government to close down the competition for them.
Following a three-hour meeting between Luter and Poland's then prime minister Jerzy Buzek, the Polish government began closing hundreds of small slaughterhouses. Buzek's minister of agriculture promulgated regulations that would put up to 50 per cent of Poland's slaughterhouses out of business.
The government justified these new rules under the fraudulent pretence that small slaughterhouses must be shut down to comply with the EU regulations. EU regulations clearly state, however, that small slaughterhouses may be kept open to serve regional markets.
Germany, France and Sweden have all fought to keep their small slaughterhouses and milk plants open, and even subsidise them in the knowledge that local markets and food distribution depend on them. Once small slaughterhouses disappear, local markets quickly follow.
Furthermore, large high-tech slaughterhouses do not make for a safer food supply. In the US and the UK the closure of small slaughterhouses coincided with huge increases in meat- borne disease (by 300 per cent and 500 per cent, respectively). This is because large centralised slaughterhouses encourage the consolidation of pork production on factory- farm lines; disease is rampant in factory farms, and the long transport distances resulting from centralisation stress the animals and spread disease further.
In addition, technologies that increase line speed inside the slaughterhouse multiply worker errors and make proper inspections impossible. Now the big slaughterhouses are insisting on the controversial technology of irradiation in order to solve the problems of disease.
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The Polish government took a number of other steps to facilitate Smithfield's takeover of Polish agriculture. First, it legalised the uncontrolled use of liquid manure and tried to dismantle the country's Animal Welfare Act. Then it allowed Smithfield to use front companies to buy and lease farms in Poland, despite official policies forbidding foreigners to purchase Polish agricultural land. Finally, it gave large pork-export subsidies to Smithfield amounting to 55 cents per kilogramme.
The subsidies were supposed to aid Polish farmers, but as Smithfield imports both its pigs and the feed it is difficult to see how. With this help, Smithfield has converted as many as 35 Polish state farms into pig factories. One in Nielep, West Pomerania, already houses 30,000 pigs.
To circumvent Polish laws, some of these factories are listed as the property of front companies wholly owned by Smithfield. Prima Farms, for example, is officially owned by two Poles, but every important decision must be signed by Mr Griffith of Smithfield. In this way, Smithfield can capture subsidies from the EU intended for Polish farmers.
The pattern is almost identical to the route Smithfield took in Carolina. Soon Smithfield will own all the landscapes of Poland, and the farmers who are so critical to the country's culture and democracy will be wiped off the land.
The biggest and the worst
Smithfield Foods is the world's largest pork producer and packer. It markets approximately 12 million pigs a year in the US. In the last fiscal year, Smithfield's profits were approximately $224m on $5.9 billion in sales.
The company has pig production facilities in 10 US states, Brazil and Mexico, as well as slaughtering and processing facilities in 11 US states, Canada, France, Mexico and Poland. Its operations have consistently been found guilty of gross environmental violations.
The US Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency have alleged almost 7,000 violations of the Clean Water Act by Smithfield dating back to 1991, and accused the firm of falsifying and destroying records to conceal its actions. Smithfield's waste- water treatment plant manager was sentenced to 30 months in prison for crimes that he alleged Smithfield officials had ordered him to commit.
In 1997 a federal judge ordered Smithfield to pay $12m - one of the biggest Clean Water Act penalties in history. The court determined that a single Smithfield plant had violated the act on more than 6,000 occasions, and that Smithfield officials had intentionally lied to federal regulators to cover up these violations.
In April 1998 a Smithfield meat processing plant in Kinston, North Carolina, recalled approximately 490,877 pounds of processed ham products that were potentially contaminated with gear lubricant grease
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In 1999 and 2000 Smithfield received approximately 178 'Notices of Violation' for offences that included: reported and unreported spills and discharges into streams or wetlands; over-application and run-off of wastes; failure to notify state officials of discharges; spraying wastes into streams or woods or onto unlicensed disposal fields; leaking waste pipelines and malfunctioning equipment; over-full, leaking, unstable, breached or abandoned lagoons; and improper or inadequate record keeping.
In a 23-month period between June 1999 and May 2001 Smithfield companies and partners were fined at least 55 times. A lagoon rupture at the Murphy's Vestal facility spilled 1.5 million gallons of liquefied faeces and urine into nearby wetlands.
In 2000 the US federal agency the National Labor Relations Board found Smithfield guilty of serious labour law violations. The board found that Smithfield managers conspired with local police to physically intimidate and assault union supporters. It also found that the firm's attorneys suborned perjury and that company witnesses lied under oath.
In July 2002 Smithfield recalled almost 20,000 pounds of fresh pork bones due to possible contamination with plastic. The same year Smithfield was found guilty of significant labour law violations - this time by a federal court, which ordered the company to pay $755,000 in damages to workers who it had wrongfully imprisoned. Smithfield in Poland
Last year Smithfield used a Polish-registered front company called Prima Farms to begin operating pig factories stocked with imported sows in the the northwestern Polish region of Western Pomerania. Currently, Prima has at least 11,000 sows, reportedly Pig Improvement Company (PIC) stock imported from Britain, housed in former state farms at Byszkowo and Zensko. Prima intends to confine up to 15,000 more sows on its farms, and plans to produce 500,000 pigs for Smithfield's AGRYF slaughterhouse in the town of Szczecin. It expects to be transporting 11,000 pigs a week to AGRYF by 2006.
In the meantime, Prima is moving aggressively to acquire and renovate state farms to confine feeder pigs. It already has one nursery for piglets and at least three other occupied farms in Western Pomerania. Smithfield is in the process of setting up operations at Kielpino and at Liskowo, where it has encountered fierce opposition from the public. It is also reportedly in the process of establishing pig factories at Wierzchowo, Ognica and Suliscewice.
All this represents, in all probability, only a partial list of ongoing developments in Western Pomerania.
Some of the Prima pigs are being shipped to properties of the Smithfield-owned company Animex at Wieskowice and Trzcielin. Last spring Animex was forced by local authorities to move approximately 7,000 pigs illegally housed at Rekoniewice, southwest of the city of Poznan. The company still controls the Rekoniewice farm, however, and there are reports that is either confining or preparing to confine feeder pigs at nearby Stara Dobrowa and Goscieszyn.
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In the northeastern province of Warminsko-Mazurskie, Animex is renovating a number of former state farms as pig factories. In Warminsko-Mazurskie there are already pigs present at Wronki Wielkie, Kozaki near the border with the Russian federation of Kaliningrad, and Wyrandy. It has been reported that there are 10,000 feeder pigs at Radkiejmy, while a reported death loss of 1,760 pigs in six months suggests an even larger number of animals at Bykowo. Farms at Rozynsk and Koliszki are in the early stages of renovation.
All in all, there are plans to transport 250,000 pigs a year to the Warminsko-Mazurskie slaughterhouse at Elk, which exports meat products to the UK under the brand name PEK.
Smithfield has been quoted in Pig International magazine to the effect that a complex of pig factories in the southeast of Poland will be delivering another 250,000 animals a year to the Constar plant in Starachowice by 2006. An investigation uncovered a probable Smithfield front company confining PIC sows at Nowy Machnow in the southeast of the eastern Polish province Lubelskie. There are also reports of activity in three other sites in the area.
Smithfield predicts that its own Polish pig factories will produce around 20,000 pigs per week by 2006, and that an additional 10,000 animals will come from farmers raising Smithfield-owned stock under contract. There is no reason to believe (judging by the firm's record in the US, or its continued acquisition of land and the excess capacity being developed at its existing facilities) that Smithfield's expansion in Poland will stabilise in 2006. There is every reason to believe that the firm will - as in the US - strive for complete vertical integration and that it will deny farmers that do not accept its yoke a market in its plants.
Written by: Robert Kennedy Jr., from The Ecologist Magazine (Dec. 03/Jan 04). Robert Kennedy, Jr. is the president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international grassroots coalition dedicated to protecting water systems from pollution.
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5. PORK PRODUCTS
Pig meat results in a huge variety of pork products. Some, from the website of Living Countryside, are described here. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
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Pork, bacon ham and foods from the pig
Below we detail just some of the many food products that are derived from pigs. Little is wasted when a pig is killed and this explains their popularity in historic times when most homes would have had a pig. If this had been killed in November it would have provided fresh meat until Christmas with ham, bacon and lardie cakes for the rest of the year.
The pig provides a wide range of quality food products that find their way into our shops. Nowadays many of these products are in the form of processed products that come prepackaged with other ingredients for convenience. Pigs are bred to produce lean "low fat" meat which is the choice of the consumer.
Black pudding is an early processed food with formal recipes for its use dating back to 1600. Typically made with pigs blood and liver and mixed with cereal filling, black pudding provides a nutritious food.
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A large leg of (boned) pork provides an excellent value sunday roast that will often provide other meals in the form of curries and simple fry ups. Choice cuts of pork meat like this are much cheaper kg for kg than comparable lamb and beef joints.
One of the principle products of the pig is ham. Hams are cooked and prepared under a number of traditional recipes and today they are often supplied vacuum packed and eaten within a few days of produce. In times past many of the traditional ham recipes were designed to preserve the meat in a tasty way so that a large piece of meat could be stored in a larder or cellar for consumption some months later.
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Smoked bacon, a traditional feature of the cooked English breakfast and now the "all day" breakfast. Eating bacon with beans throughout the day is nothing new however as fourteenth century cookery books provide guides to the preparation of this meal!
Pork sausages traditionally included many local ingredients but with the rise of food processing in the 1960's pork sausages became rather plain and standardised. Recently there has been a revival in sausage making and sausages are now produced under a large number of recipes.
Pig meat in the form of ham is a common constituent of many prepared meals like this tagliatelle. Many Italian dishes use ham in the preparation of pasta and pizza dishes.
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This pork pate has been prepared and packed into a convenient portion. Vacuum packing of meat products like this provides longevity of freshness and allows smaller portions to be sold. Below are a number of additional products containing pig meat. Scotch eggs, pork pies, pizzas, hot dogs and spam are just some examples that illustrate the wide diversity of food products that are derived from the pig.
Statistics for Pigs and Pigmeat
Pigs and Pigmeat 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Total marketing pigs (000s) 12381 10567 10282 9051 8679 8777 8731 9075 9006 Pigs value of production (£ millions) 822 738 689 686 681 677 685 736 858 Pork - home fed as % new supply (%) 92 73 74 71 73 70 68 69 Bacon & Ham - home fed as % new supply 45 43 43 43 42 44 45 42
Pig meat - home fed as % new supply (%) 49 48 48 49 51
From Living Countryside, a small organisation that "cares deeply for the countryside and believes in its preservation through a viable agricultural industry." It is run by volunteers.
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6. EUROPE AND THE BATTLE FOR POLISH FARMS
When Poland joined the European Union it opened up an opportunity for multinational farming businesses, such as Smithfield Foods, to take over land that had been farmed using traditional methods for centuries. Now factory farming of animals and genetically modified crops are endangering the older, more environmentally friendly, practices.
The following is an article by Julian Rose, president of the Institute of Science in Society. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
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The Battle to Save the Polish Countryside
Julian Rose exposes the scandal of EU's deliberate policy to get rid of family farms for the benefit of the corporations and gives a personal account of his battle with the GMO dragon that threatens to devastate rural Poland
Poland's peasant farmers are the true trustees of its countryside
Poland is accustomed to fighting rearguard actions to throw off unwelcome invaders. Throughout the 19th century period of "The Partitions" - occupation by Russia and then Austria - the Poles kept in their hearts a longing for a day when they could be freed from the yoke of repression and find genuine independence. After finally succeeding in 1918 to rid themselves of the invaders, they were soon engulfed in conflict again, this time with the invading Nazi Germany. They responded with the 1939-45 resistance movement that sprouted up in the fields, small towns and main cities.
As many will know, the Poles fought alongside the British throughout the Second World War - a time when Poland's government in exile had its head quarters in London. I remember quite well when I was a boy a Polish exile who lived in our village (Whitchurch- on-Thames) coming regularly to my family home and diligently cleaning the chimneys. He spoke little, but did a very thorough job.
It was only in 1989 that Poland finally threw off the last repressive regime of occupation in their land, the Russian communists. So, the last nineteen years of freedom have been the longest historical period of non-occupation in a very long time..
"The European Union is simply not interested in small farms"
When I was first invited in November 2000 by Jadwiga Lopata, founder of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside, to come to Poland as a co-director of this newly established non governmental organisation, the Country was preparing itself, or more correctly, being prepared for entry into the European Union.
Opinions were strongly divided concerning the merits of such an action and those most against included the farmers.
One of our first tasks, as I saw it, was to warn the Poles just what 'joining the EU' would mean for the farming population, for rural communities and for the renowned biodiversity of the countryside.
Through the auspices of a senior civil servant in Warsaw, Jadwiga and I were able to address a meeting with the Brussels-based committee responsible for negotiating Poland's agricultural terms of entry into the EU. It proved to be an ominous foretaste of things to come.
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The first thing that struck us was the fact that out of the twelve people sitting in the room at the European Commission, not one was Polish. I explained to the attendant body that in a Country where 22 percent of the working population are involved in agriculture, and the majority on small farms, it would not be a good idea to follow the same regime as had been operated in the UK and other EU member countries, in which 'restructuring' agriculture had involved throwing the best farmers off the land and amalgamating their farms into large scale monocultural operations designed to supply the predatory supermarket chains. You could have heard a pin drop.
After clearing her throat and leaning slowly forward, the chair-lady said: "I don't think you understand what EU policy is. Our objective is to ensure that farmers receive the same salary parity as white collar workers in the cities. The only way to achieve this is by restructuring and modernising old fashioned Polish farms to enable them to compete with other countries agricultural economies and the global market. To do this it will be necessary to shift around one million farmers off the land and encourage them to take city and service industry jobs to improve their economic position. The remaining farms will be made competitive with their counterparts in western Europe."
There in a nutshell you have the whole tragic story of the clinically instigated demise of European farming over the past three decades. We protested that with unemployment running at 20 percent how would one provide jobs for another million farmers dumped on the streets of Warsaw? This was greeted with a stony silence, eventually broken by a lady from Portugal, who rather quietly remarked that since Portugal joined the European Union, 60 percent of small farmers had already left the land. "The European Union is simply not interested in small farms," she said.
What happens when a nation joins the EU
A month or so later, we were invited to the Polish parliament to address the government's agricultural committee. I gave a speech entitled, "Don't Follow Us", in which I explicitly warned of the fate in store for the Polish countryside if Poland joined the EU. I gave some vivid examples of what had happened in the UK over the past two decades: the ripping up of 35 000 miles of hedge rows; the loss of 30 percent of native farmland bird species; 98 percent of species-rich hay meadows, thousands of tonnes of wind and water eroded top-soil, and around fifteen thousand farmers driven off the land every year, accompanied by a rapid decline in the quality of food.
Poland joined the EU in 2004 after an intense publicity campaign calling on Poles to "Say Yes to the EU!" The propaganda machine went into overdrive with brash promises of "pots of gold" being showered on Poland and farmers being offered generous agricultural subsidies and free advice, provided they played by the rules of the game.
That 'game' was all too familiar to me. Spend hours out of your working day filling in endless forms, filing maps and measuring every last inch of your fields, tracks and farmsteads; applying for 'passports' for your cattle and ear tags for your sheep and pigs; re-siting the slurry pit and putting stainless steel and washable tiles on the dairy walls; becoming versed in
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HASAP hygiene and sanitary rules and applying them where any food processing was to take place; and living under the threat of convictions and fines should one put a finger out of lace or be late in supplying some official details.
Losing out to corporate serfdom
Throughout this time, I clearly remember the sense of losing something intangible beyond recall; losing something more valuable than that which was gained on the eventual arrival of the subsidy cheque.
What we were losing was our independence and our freedom; the slow rural way of life shared by traditional farming communities throughout the world. You cannot put a price on this immeasurably important quality. It is a deep, lasting and genuinely civilised expression of life.
So now the Poles, with their two million family farms (half a million of them bigger than the small family farms mentioned earlier), were going to be subjected to the same fate, and Jadwiga and I felt desperate to try and avert this tragedy. An uphill struggle ensued, which involved swimming strongly against the tide and risking the wrath of the agribusiness and seed corporations who were gleefully moving-in behind the EU free trade agreements while a bought-out government stood aside.
What these corporations want (I use the present tense as the position remains the same to- day) is to get their hands on Poland's relatively unspoiled work force and land resources. They want to establish themselves on Polish soil, acquire their capital cheaply and flog the end products of Polish labour to the rest of the world for a big profit.
Farmers, however, stand in the way of land acquisitions; so they are best removed. Corporations thus join with the EU in seeing through their common goals and set about intensively lobbying national government to get the right regulatory conditions to make their kill.
Farmers, once having fallen for the CAP subsidy carrot, suddenly find themselves heavily controlled by EU and national officialdom brandishing that most vicious of anti- entrepreneurial weapons: 'sanitary and hygiene regulations' - as enforced by national governments at the behest of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. These are the hidden weapons of mass destruction of farmers and the main tool for achieving the CAP's aim of ridding the countryside of small- and medium-sized family farms and replacing them with monocultural money-making agribusiness.
Already by 2005, 65 percent of regional milk and meat processing factories had been forced to close because they 'failed' (read couldn't afford) to implement the prescribed sanitary standards. Some 70 percent of small slaughter houses have also suffered the same fate. Farmers increasingly have nowhere to go to sell their cattle, sheep, pigs and milk. Exactly as has happened to UK farmers, Polish farmers are now being forced out of business by the covert and overt destruction of the infrastructure which supports their profession.
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The so-called global food economy is in reality the instrument of a relatively small number of very wealthy transnational corporations. It is a small club that nevertheless harbours very big ambitions. One of its members is Monsanto (USA), whose recent marriage with the Cargill Corporation makes it the biggest seed and agrichemical merchant in the world. Poland has been on the radar screen of Monsanto corporation as well as fellow seed operatives Dupont, Pioneer and Syngenta for some time now. However, in 2004, the same year that Poland joined the EU, Monsanto started a major lobbying drive on senior figures in the Polish government for a relaxation of national GMO precautionary laws and a government commitment to supporting the development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as a symbol of the modernisation of traditional Polish farming.
GMO-free Poland
We at ICPPC got wind of these developments and decided to devote our meagre, overstretched resources into fighting this new and immensely threatening dragon. Thus began an amazing campaign that, over the space of a year and a half, managed to help galvanise the boards of every province in Poland (there are 16) to declare themselves a 'GMO Free Zone', so that by September 2005 the whole country could declare itself 'GMO Free'.
The chair of each province wrote to the prime minister demanding national legislation to recognise their new status by law. At first nothing happened, but then, much to everyone's surprise - and Monsanto's fury - Jaroslaw Kaczynski (the then prime minister) announced that legislation would be passed to ban the import and sale of GMO seeds and plants in Poland. This was followed a little later by a similar announcement declaring that GM animal feed would also be banned as of 2008.
Europe and the rest of the world were amazed. Seemingly out of nowhere, a country passed national legislation to ban GM seeds and animal feeds, an illegal act in the eyes of the European Commission. Only Greece and Austria had come close to achieving such a ban. It seemed that Poland was to make history and perhaps lead the rest of Europe towards a new moratorium, if not outright ban, of GMO. But this fairy tale ending is yet to be.
Back at the ranch, bemused Polish farmers could hardly grasp the significance of this event, already deeply perplexed by the strange new world of western capitalism and shell shocked by the complexities and apparent two-facedness of the CAP, and the need to absorb the seemingly unfathomable 'science' and propaganda surrounding GMO.
Aware of this dangerously exploitable situation, we embarked on a countrywide awareness- raising campaign armed with the documentary film against GMO, Life Running out of Control, dubbed into Polish, and recorded onto CD.
We ran into considerable flack, especially wherever university professors of agriculture were invited to lead public debates. Often, on such occasions, Jadwiga and I were the only voices critical of GMO up against half a dozen professors armed with power point presentations and lecturing straight from the Monsanto manual. However, the distinctly intuitive Polish public nearly always came down on our side, offering much needed encouragement. It was
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an important tour in which we addressed some thirty different meetings in village halls, clubs, farmer’s institutions and Council offices.
Newspapers, television and to a lesser extent radio, were, and remain, pretty much gagged from reporting the truth. As we discovered, much of the Polish media is in foreign hands or largely held by outside interests. The GMO lobby had already won over the main Polish farmers union, and the new government, under Donald Tusk, kept an increasingly silent position on the future of the anti GMO legislation enacted by his predecessor Kaczynski.
Kaczynski's team had already appeared to stall when confronted by the dual threat of a fine from the European Commission for instituting an 'illegal' blanket ban on GMO (under EU law no country is allowed to overstep 'free trade' dictats by outright banning of GMO) and the huge corporate backlash resulting from the ban.
Now that a new government with a distinctly modernising agenda was in charge, we were forced to work even harder in order to keep the anti GMO momentum alive. Faced by this denouement, we decided to help create a new national organisation: 'The Coalition for a GMO Free Poland' and to draw upon as wide a cross section of society as possible to promote its aims. There are now 180 organisations and key individuals on the books and we have made some headway with the wary media.
Among those who have joined up are colleagues fighting another predatory US invader, Smithfield, the giant pig factory farming multinational (UK subsidiary Danish Crown, East Anglia) which moved onto Polish soil (or should I say concrete) in the late 1990s and, with a strong link to Monsanto's North American GM soya export trade, established their perverse animal factories with the aid of a cheap Polish work force and corrupt government officials.
The thousands of GM-soya fattened pigs that now flood the market have helped to undercut the prices and destroy the livelihood of many hundreds of already hard pressed traditional pig farmers throughout Poland and far beyond.
Smithfield and other industrial farming units operating out of Poland don't like the idea of a GM animal feed ban (due to come into force this year) and have used the current high price of conventional animal feeds to put pressure on the government to postpone the ban to 2009 or beyond. A great opportunity will be lost if this postponement is agreed, and it will be harder to ensure that companies such as Smithfield can be prevented from further exploiting the market place's demand for cheap pork.
How ironic it is that the hell bent US development of biofuels has played into the hands of the proponents of cheap GMO feed for meat production by forcing up the price of conventional feeds, such as barley based products, through displacing cereals from millions of acres planted with GM maize to produce fuel for motor-cars and trucks. Now GM soya and maize, previously avoided by most European animal feed importers, suddenly look like the only cheap option available.
We have consistently lobbied for government to encourage farmers to grow their own traditional feed products, but in a world hooked on the global trade of cheap proteins, such advice has fallen on deaf ears.
• Background Information
The next Polish peasant uprising
Poland has all the potential for a full blown peasant revolt to recapture the right to grow, eat and trade their superb farmhouse foods; thus freeing themselves from the bureaucratically perverse sanitary and hygiene regulations imposed upon them. With one and a half million largely subsistence-based small family farms still in operation, it is something we should not rule out.
But perhaps the strongest force militating against such an action is the fact that a fair proportion of farmers have already signed up to the 'pot of gold' held tantalisingly in front of their noses by the Brussels bureaucrats; that ultimately delivers just a few crumbs of financial support to farms of five to seven hectares, but rewards large farms with substantial offerings.
Money can indeed buy-out the seeds of revolution, but the heart of the peasants will not be appeased; neither will the hearts of caring individuals who know and love the working countryside. In a world where genuine independence is seen as a threat to the controlling influence of transnational and national power brokers, a watchful eye will be kept on any potentially rebellious leaders, and covert efforts made to ensure that placidity reigns supreme. But they will be up against a poisoned and polluted nature in rebellion, and those waking up to the stark choices that confront all of us: capitulate to the forces of 'total control' or wrest back control of life and work to rejuvenate your local communities to do the same.
Poland is well-versed in the art of survival. Provided the next generation of farm owners has the will to carry forward the traditions inherited along with the land, there is great hope for this proud and brave nation to come through the chaos with its soul and seed unspoilt.
This is an edited version of an article in the latest edition of Quarterly Review, a UK-based journal devoted to ideas and culture drawing upon penetrating socio-political insights. Julian Rose is president of the ICPPC (The Institute of Science in Society)
• Background Information
7. THE ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN BANK
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is assisting agri- businesses in Poland to increase large-scale, factory farming of pigs at the expense of smaller farms. The following is taken from the CEE Bankwatch network which monitors the activities of financial institutions around the world. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
• Background Information
Who is Squeezing Polish Farmers? The EBRD's Involvement in Promoting Big Agribusiness
(April 18, 2004)
The EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development] has supported agricultural reforms in Poland for many years. Its main clients are international corporations whose standards of management and competitiveness, according to the Bank, guarantee success for the transition process.
Unfortunately, the example of the Animex loan also shows the threat posed by the promotion of big business to particularly sensitive sectors of the economy like Polish agriculture. The EBRD's intended 'positive (loan) impact on Polish agriculture as a whole has turned out to be something entirely different.
Project background
In 1999, Animex S.A., second biggest Polish state-owned meat processor and producer, was taken over by Smithfield Foods company, one of the world giants in the meat industry. Two years later Animex/Smithfield got USD 100 million loan from the consortium of Banks - Rabobank Polska, BRE Bank and EBRD (this loan apparently raised Smithfield's reputation in the eyes of other financial institutions). In the same year Smithfield started buying Polish farms, using a front company called Prima Ltd. and Animex entities responsible for hog-raising.
According to the EBRD, its loan is devoted to modernising the meat processing line in the Animex group and has nothing to do with controversial industrial hog-raising. Bearing in mind Smithfield's management policy - vertically integrated production 'from breeding to bacon' - this assumption is likely wrong.
Moreover, company registration documents reveal that 30% of the corporate loan provided by Rabobank, BRE Bank and EBRD, is allocated for circulating capital, which makes it possible for Animex/Smithfield to invest money also in hog-raising.
However, as all Polish meat production plants were in compliance with EU standards, they do not need significant financial assistance, in contrast to hog-raising farms with poor environmental records.
Industrial hog-raising environmental record
Prima Ltd. and Animex became a front for Smithfield's dirty work, enabling it to shift the costs of industrial hog-raising onto the environment and onto individual farmers. Since many of its illegal practices, including over-manuring the land and violating veterinary laws, have been proved by NGOs and several environmental and sanitary inspections, no one is under any illusion that Smithfield's activities will positively influence the changing face of Polish agriculture.
• Background Information
Social and economic impacts
Irrespective of national and European environmental requirements, construction of new industrial hog-raising farms is under preparation. Therefore social and economic consequences for individual farmers can not be ignored anymore. Increasing production in industrial farms, over-production of pork and deregulation of the market are indicators proving that traditional farming in Poland is losing out.
Hundreds of thousands of individual farmers bit by bit are losing their source of income, without alternative employment perspectives, and thus are being pushed with their families towards the social margins.
Someone needs to ask where is the positive impact of multinational corporations investments on Polish agriculture sector as a whole, including farmers.
From the website of the CEE Bankwatch Network, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) with member organisations currently from 12 countries across the central and eastern European region. The aim of the network is to monitor the activities of the international financial institutions (IFIs) which operate in the region, and to propose constructive alternatives to their policies and projects in the region.
• Background Information
8. ANIMAL WELFARE OR PROFITS?
Pigs are probably more intelligent than dogs, so why do farmers keep pigs in apparently cruel, intensive conditions? Britain has the best welfare standards for pigs but we cannot be sure that the meat we buy has been produced in the UK. The following is extracted from an article in the Guardian newspaper. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
• Background Information
'Welfare doesn't come into it'
Pigs kept on slatted, concrete floors; pregnant sows in cages so small they can't move; piglets castrated without pain relief; tails routinely docked to prevent animals attacking each other. This is the truth behind the European pig industry - and so behind most of the pork we eat. By Jon Henley
Jon Henley, The Guardian, Tuesday 6 January 2009
A pregnant pig in a sow stall in the Netherlands. the stall does not allow the sow to move more than a few inches for her entire pregnancy.
Heaving with heavy goods, the A67 from Eindhoven barrels through the flat, featureless fields of the south-eastern Netherlands on its way to the German border. On a frozen December morning, nothing very much moves beyond the road's edge; a horse stamps at a trough, a tractor pushes along a narrow track. Every half mile or so, behind a stand of poplars, a neat brick farmhouse - raked gravel drive, lace curtains at the windows - slides into view. Next to it is a large, windowless and vaguely ominous shed, the size, perhaps, of a small aircraft hangar.
It will hold, almost certainly, several hundred pigs. In a country famed for the unnatural feats of its intensive farming sector (the Netherlands occupies less than one- thousandth of the world's surface, but is its third largest exporter of agricultural produce), this area, known as De Peel, is more densely populated with pigs than anywhere else on the planet.
Some of the sheds are multi-storey; they're called pig-flats. There's a fair chance - especially if you're partial to bacon - that you've eaten meat from one of them. A good proportion of the 20m pigs born, fattened, sent abroad or slaughtered each year in the Netherlands come from here, and the Netherlands has become the biggest single supplier of our morning rasher.
• Background Information
"This," Hans Baij of the animal welfare group Varkens in Nood, or Pigs in Distress, had told me the day before in his office in Amsterdam, "is advanced industrial pig farming. There's nothing natural about this whatsoever. It's about science, sperm selection, antibiotics, piglets per sow, grams per day, muscle-to-fat ratios. It's what this country does. Welfare doesn't come into it."
Picture, for a moment, a pig. Engaging, maybe. Large, pink, ungainly, certainly (though that's not how they always were; the original pig was compact and capable of speeds up to 40mph). That strong, muscular snout was designed for rooting around in soil and undergrowth; a sense of smell acute enough to snuffle out buried truffles was plainly intended for forensic foraging.
In many languages, pigs are a byword for anything gross, unpleasant, unhygienic. They're actually very clean; they hate a dirty bed, and will select a latrine area and use it. They are the most curious and intelligent farmyard animals. (A professor from Pennsylvania State University has demonstrated that pigs learn problem-solving games faster than dogs and as quickly as chimps, and will remember the lessons for three years or more.)
Britons ate 1.6m tonnes of pork in 2007. We're so fond of the meat that we now import more than 60%, including 40% of all fresh and frozen pork and an astonishing 80% of all bacon. In fact, our pig meat imports - mainly from Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany - have been soaring for nearly a decade; the Netherlands, and those sheds, account for almost half our bacon imports. Demand for UK pork, meanwhile, has slumped 36%.
There is one very good reason for this, say British farmers. It is that in 1999, we introduced standards on pig welfare - regarding the space in which they are reared - that have yet to come into force across the rest of the EU. They have made our pork a great deal more expensive.
"To rear our pigs the way we do," says Vicky Scott, who with her sister and father, Kate and David Morgan, wean more than 500 piglets a week on their 1,000-sow intensive farm near Driffield in Yorkshire, "costs us about 12p a kilo extra. Will that be reflected in the price we get for it? What do you think?"
Some Dutch and Danish producers do rear pigs for the UK market to UK rules. But according to the British Pig Executive, an alarming 70% of the 970,000 tonnes of pig meat we import each year does not meet British welfare standards. What's more, you are probably buying it without knowing it: retailers are perfectly entitled to label foreign meat British if it has been processed here.
The pigs from which much of that foreign meat comes will have led very different lives to many of those reared in Britain. Here, for example - and in Sweden, Switzerland and Norway - the use of a particularly nasty piece of kit called a sow stall has now been outlawed; it is legal in the rest of the EU until 2013. A sow stall is a narrow metal cage, on a bare concrete and slatted floor, in which pregnant sows spend all three months, three weeks and three days of their gestation.
• Background Information
They can move a few inches back and forwards, but not turn around. Lying down and getting up is difficult, too.
"It prevents almost all their natural activities," says Phil Brooke, welfare development manager for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). "They can't forage, they can't root around, they can't prepare a nest for their young. They're subject to bone and muscle weakness, digestive and urinary illnesses, cardiovascular problems. Many display signs of severe psychological problems, stress and frustration."
In much of mainland Europe, too, and on a by no means negligible percentage of British farms, naturally boisterous and playful fattening pigs also spend their days and nights on bare concrete and slatted floors; their faeces and urine fall through and are flushed away. In theory, EU regulations require plentiful "environmental enrichment" - straw, in other words - for bedding and rooting, but an undercover report by CIWF last month showed that 100% of farms surveyed in Spain, 89% in Germany and 88% in the Netherlands provided none. Such rules are, it seems, not very easy to enforce when animal welfare is weighed against export earnings.
If they're lucky, the animals may get a chain or a plastic football to play with. But since there is rarely enough light to see by (pigs are quieter in the dark), fighting and biting are more common than playing. To minimise the effects of this, the vast majority of piglets' tails are routinely docked soon after birth, and their teeth clipped, again in breach of EU rules.
Routine tail-docking in particular, Brooke and Baaij both argue, is a good general indication of pig welfare: pigs reared on extensive farms, outdoors, with plenty of scope for foraging and rooting, rarely need their tails docked. "If they've got plenty to do, they're happy," says Baaij. Otherwise, basically, they go for each other, with tails and ears the favoured targets. And once a pen full of pigs gets the scent of blood, the consequences can be catastrophic; pigs are, after all, omnivores.
In much of Europe too, male piglets are routinely castrated. That's because the powerful flavour of male pig meat - boar taint - is distasteful to many consumers. The operation is performed without pain relief, although the Dutch plan to adopt a gas anaesthetic, voluntarily, later this year. (British pigs are not castrated because they are slaughtered younger, before the taint develops.)
So is that what it's like, then, in those Dutch pig farms? Perhaps unsurprisingly, it isn't all that easy to find out. The big farms at least seem distinctly wary of allowing a journalist access. Any number of Dutch welfare groups, including the highly vocal Varkens in Nood, backed by an array of Dutch writers and artists, are now on their case. CIWF has accused them, along with most other continental pig farmers, of routinely breaking EU laws.
On the whole, if you're concerned about pig welfare, you generally are better off buying British (assuming, of course, you can be sure it actually was reared in Britain). Things are not perfect here, but they are quite a lot better: CIWF's undercover
• Background Information
inspectors found only 36% of British farms they visited did not use straw, although 54% still carried out routine tail docking. But Vicky Scott and Kate Morgan's farm in Yorkshire feels a world removed from those stifling Dutch sheds. Their pigs are reared on straw, in huge, open-sided sheds that let in all the daylight and - on another chill winter morning - the fresh air you could want.
Scott uses farrowing crates for birthing, although she prefers the term maternity units. "It may look like factory farming," she says, "and it's not very nice to see, but I really believe no better system's been invented." She docks her animals' tails ("We're planning on doing a trial without it, but if they start tailbiting, really, it's horrendous") and clips their teeth ("We've tried not doing it, but they make such a mess of their pen mates. Pigs' teeth are incredibly sharp.") Both operations are done when the piglets are a day old. But the most important thing, for her, is the straw.
"I would never, ever finish [fatten] pigs on slats," she says. "I've always said that. You only have to look at them. They need it, it's the way they're made. It's inconceivable to deny them it." And the family's pigs do, indeed, look pretty damn happy. But there's precious little encouragement from the market to do things that way, or to refund the extra pence per kilo of pork that the straw - and the extra labour to muck it out and replace it - costs them.
The business is tough enough as it is: when animal feed prices went through the roof last summer, Morgan and farmers like her were losing £26 on every pig they sold. "The retailers always say the customer likes the cheapest," she says. "We say we think the customer would actually like the choice. But the bottom line is, if people don't want to pay for higher welfare, farmers will stop doing it."
The best conditions, of course, are free-range, although there is a lot of confusion about what that means. Some 40% of breeding sows in Britain are kept outdoors, compared to fewer than 1% in the Netherlands; but only 7% of the piglets born to them are reared outdoors after they're weaned and only 2% are fattened, or finished, outdoors. "Outdoor bred" is not the same as "outdoor reared". The best guarantee of all is organic, but that comes at a considerable cost.
On a magnificent high field bordered by the Ridgeway near the Wiltshire village of Bishopstone, Helen Browning keeps her 250 saddleback sows producing some 65 piglets a week, about 3,500 a year. The pigs sleep in spacious, clean, straw-filled arks and have free access to the open field around them. Eastbrook farm is a mixed farm and the pigs are integrated into the agricultural cycle; they'll spend a couple of months trashing - and very effectively fertilising - a patch of land and then move on, to be replaced by grass or an arable crop for a few years.
Unlike high-intensity systems, in which pigs are removed from their mothers at three weeks or even earlier, Browning's piglets are weaned at a more natural eight weeks. "They're stronger, maturer, they don't need antibiotics," she says. Farrowing crates and the like, Browning believes, have bred the maternal instincts out of most modern sows. And the never-ending, retailer-led search for ever-leaner meat means they simply don't
• Background Information
have enough fat on them to nurse their litters for long anyway.
Browning's pigs are kept in the same family group, and they have an awful lot of room to create an unholy mess of their field. The day I was there, wading through the mud, they were positively gambolling...
"Pigs are clever animals, curious animals, they're clean animals, they tell you about their problems," Browning says. "They're not like cows, they're not stoics, they vocalise. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. And they're funny. They have pretty simple needs, really: space, lots to do."
But all this comes at a price. Tim Finney of Eastbrook's organic meats business, reckons that amounts to an extra 30 or 40p a kilo just to keep the system running, plus another 70p a kilo for the organic feed. "Overall," he says, "it probably costs us about double what it costs to produce a conventional pig. Although if we weren't organic, we could run the farm the same way and produce meat that was maybe 25% more expensive. That would still be a huge step forwards in welfare terms."
High-welfare organic meat is of course a niche market, recession-sensitive, and Finney admits he's is budgeting for zero growth for the coming year. But the alarming thing is that today, even moderately good welfare standards are coming under pressure. When it comes to pig welfare Britain is, Browning reckons, "genuinely squeaky clean" compared to much of the rest of the world; "probably the best in the world, in fact, for conventional pig-keeping". But what counts, it seems, is price.
Some years ago, the late Lyall Watson wrote that if you look properly behind the eyes of any pig, you will see "a liveliness, an intelligence for which you are just not prepared". These are not like other animals. If it matters to us that our morning rasher or chop or pork pie does not comes from a genetically engineered fat-free pig that spent its brief life in a dark, bare, windowless shed stuffed full of antibiotics and reduced to attacking its pen-mates for entertainment - a pathetic parody, in short, of a pig - we're going to have to reach deeper into our pockets. Right now, that seems increasingly unlikely.
(Extracted from the Guardian newspaper)
• Background Information
9. BRITAIN'S ANIMAL WELFARE STANDARDS
The UK is supposed to have the best animal welfare standards in the world, but many animal rights activists question how high these standards really are, and ask who is checking what is actually going on in pig farms in the UK. The following is a press release from one of the most vociferous campaign groups, Animal Aid. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document,whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
• Background Information
Best Welfare Standards in the World? The British
Pig Industry Exposed
Posted 17 June 2008
The British pig farming industry makes repeated claims that it has some of the highest welfare standards in the world. Its promotional message - which recently featured in a number of prominent national newspaper advertisements - bolsters this claim by showing healthy-looking pigs on thick straw or out in the fields with plenty of space to roam.
In March and April 2008, as part of a major investigation, Animal Aid visited 10 English pig farms spanning five counties: Cornwall, Somerset, Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire. Instead of idyllic images of straw-filled pens amidst leafy trees and bathed in sunlight, we found squalor, filth, death and disease.
Where the industry portrays pigs growing up outside with acres of space to roam, we found dead and dying piglets living in utterly barren, overcrowded pens. In the promotional images, pigs can root around in the earth. In reality, these inquisitive, lively and intelligent animals often had nothing but a metal chain - and sometimes nothing at all - to stimulate them and help fulfil their basic instincts.
Two of the farms we visited have board members of the British Pig Executive as their company directors. Others are owned or directed by individuals with positions of influence within the industry, by being connected to the National Pig Association, the Pig Industry Development Scheme, the European Pig Producers' Association or the National Farmers' Union. One farmer currently serves on the government's official advisory body, the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC). Another is a former FAWC member.
According to one press advert, the Quality Pork Standard mark 'is proof that farmers care about the welfare of their animals'. But the proof of how welfare-friendly British farms are lies not with industry propaganda but with photos and film taken on unannounced visits to real farms. And further proof of the low regard that farmers have for the welfare of pigs can be found in their tradition of opposing legislative moves that would raise welfare standards.
Dry sow stalls and tethering continued to be used for an additional three years when the Pig Husbandry Bill was sabotaged. And even when welfare laws are passed - such as the ban on routine tail docking - they continue to be flouted. Pigs at all ten farms we visited appear to have undergone this mutilation.•
Animal Aid Head of Campaigns, Kate Fowler-Reeves says:
'The pig farming industry has recently launched a media offensive to persuade the public that they should buy British because of the exceptionally high welfare standards on British pig farms. But rarely has there been such a huge disparity between marketing hype and truth.
If leading industry figures sincerely believe that welfare standards on typical British pig farms are so high, why do they not use images from their own farms in advertising campaigns? The answer surely lies in the obvious: if dead, dying, sick and injured pigs, existing in filthy, cramped conditions with nothing but a chain - and in some cases, nothing at all - to stimulate their inquisitive minds were shown, consumers would be appalled.
But while the idealised vision is perpetuated through expensive PR offensives, and while 'celebrity' farmers plead for the future of 'high welfare' pig farms, the wretched truth is pushed aside: that welfare standards on typical British pig farms are abysmally poor.'
Notes to Editors
Additional information
More than nine million pigs are slaughtered annually in the UK. Around 450,000 sows are currently used for breeding. Seventy per cent of British pig-meat comes from animals reared intensively, but even 'outdoor reared' and 'outdoor raised' pigs spend half or more of their lives indoors. Britain's modest advances in pig welfare have not been made alone, and this country is certainly not in the vanguard. Sweden, for example, banned tethering almost three decades before Britain. And in 1997, Switzerland banned the use of farrowing crates altogether, making nonsense of Britain's claims that we lead the way. In Sweden, weaning takes place at 5-6 weeks, an improvement on Britain and yet still far short of the17 weeks that pigs suckle and nurse their young in semi-natural conditions. The tethering of sows is now banned across the entire EU. Sow stalls are banned in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, as well as Britain. In 2013 they will be illegal across the whole of the EU. In Sweden, all pigs must be provided with straw or other litter material - something that British pigs are largely denied. And pigs on Swedish farms may be held in a farrowing crate for a maximum of one week. In Britain, it is four weeks. Norway will enforce a ban on the castration of piglets from 2009 - something which, although only rarely carried out in the UK, has not been outlawed here.
(From the website of Animal Aid, which claims to be the UK's largest animal rights group and one of the longest established in the world, founded in 1977.) Background Information
10. PIG-KEEPING - THE FIVE FREEDOMS
There are ways of making the lives of animals we keep for food as comfortable as possible. Humane farming methods take into consideration the psychological health of the animals as well as their freedom from diseases that may affect the quality of the meat.
The following gives guidelines for farmers on good practice for pig keeping based on the "five freedoms". It is taken from ThePigSite.com, a website devoted to giving guidance to farmers. For some animal rights campaigners the guidelines do not go far enough. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
• Background Information
Guidelines to Good Welfare Practices
The guidelines are based upon the requirements of UK legislation and in many respects these give a lead to future developments across the world
The 5 Freedoms
Freedom from hunger and thirst Ready access to fresh water and a balanced ration which maintains full health and vigour. Freedom from discomfort Provision of a suitable environment and a comfortable resting area. Freedom from pain, injury and disease Prevention where possible and prompt diagnosis and treatment when injuries or disease occur. Freedom to express normal behaviour Provision of sufficient and appropriate space, interest and the company of other pigs. Freedom from fear and distress Sympathetic stockmanship, constant environmental conditions and freedom from aggression by other pigs.
These represent the ideal which can rarely be achieved fully within the practical constraints of an efficient pig farm. Nevertheless they provide a comprehensive starting point from which to assess your own pig farm.
Freedom to express normal behaviour
This is the most difficult one to provide on intensive units. It is also the most controversial, beset by strong emotional and anthropomorphic opinions. It implies freedom of movement, so that all pigs should be able to turn round and carry out their normal bodily functions. This is a contentious issue with respect to the confinement of sows in stalls or tether systems.
Changing from stalls and tethers to loose housing replaces one set of welfare problems with another, particularly in relation to individual sow feed rationing and aggression. Good pen or yard design is required combined with skilled stockmanship if freedom from fear, distress, pain and injury are to be achieved. Housing must be such that animals can stand and lie down without difficulty, have a clean place in which to rest and have visual contact with other pigs.
Other aspects which are not spelt out by the 5 freedoms but which may be implied by them are:
The provision of a caring and knowledgeable management team. The provision of light during the hours of daylight. The avoidance of unnecessary mutilation. The provision of emergency arrangements to cover disasters such as fire, the breakdown, of mechanical services and the disruption of supplies. Humane slaughter.
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Factors Responsible for Good Welfare outlined for use as a checklist on your farm.
Quality of the management People should be selected for their standard of stockmanship which includes a caring nature and ability to establish empathy with their pig. Leadership on the pig farm starts with the manager motivating his staff. He must ensure that all the disciplines required on the farm are achieved. Attention to detail and the monitoring of daily routines are vital.
Education and understanding There should be an ongoing process of education as part of the management system. Young people entering the farm should be trained by more experienced stock people and in particular to recognise what is normal and abnormal. To do this requires a recognised training programme on the farm that is continually reinforced.
Observation Each day a detailed examination of all the pigs on the farm should be carried out. Sick animals should be identified and procedures adopted to ensure that they are comfortable and not victims of aggression from other pigs. This may require movement to a hospital pen. Whilst this statement may seem simple, nevertheless it is most important. A typical example would be the failure to identify a tail bitten pig. The consequences of this are considerable, not only for the welfare of the pig but also because excessive tail damage invariably results in abscesses of the spine and a condemned carcass.
The mixing of pigs Whenever pigs are mixed there are varying degrees of fighting and trauma. This is a constant problem on most pig farms. The adverse effects on growth are often unrecognised but growth rates may be reduced by as much as a week, and welfare aspects must also be considered. The use of injectable sedatives such as stresnil and the use of industrial scent sprays at the time of mixing help to reduce fighting. Reducing the light intensity for 24 hours after mixing also helps.
Stocking densities It is important to work within recognised and accepted standards for various ages and weights of pigs. This is to ensure optimum growth rates, good welfare and a low level of disease and mortality. The total square feet or metres of accommodation required for growing and finishing pigs needs to be determined from the mating programme, farrowing rates, litter sizes and pigs weaned.
Floor and wall surfaces The floors should be free from projections, well maintained, easily cleaned and if solid with good drainage towards the exterior of the pen. Slats should be well maintained and of a suitable size for the age of the pig to prevent trauma and disease. Where bedding is used there should be provision for dry lying areas. All solid floors should be well insulated. The walls and partitions should be constructed and maintained so that there no sharp edges or protrusions likely to cause injury or distress. All surfaces should be capable of being cleaned and disinfected.
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Automatic equipment This should be thoroughly inspected on a daily basis. Where breakdowns occur provision should be made to ensure that the welfare of the pigs is not compromised.
Food and water Food should be presented in a manner that allows all pigs to eat without distress or fear. Feed hoppers or dispensers should be examined daily for failure of supply. This is to ensure any automatic delivery systems are functional and are working efficiently. Pigs should be fed at least once a day. If fed only once a day all the pigs in a group should have access to food at the same time. All pigs should have an adequate supply of fresh clean water daily. There must be a sufficient number of accessible drinkers per pen for every pig to drink readily, including the underprivileged pigs at the bottom of the pecking order. Every drinker should be checked daily to ensure adequate flow rate. All header tanks should have a lid to prevent contamination by debris, dust and vermin. This also helps to prevent pipework blockages. If necessary pipes should be insulated to prevent freezing. An inadequate flow rate from partially blocked drinkers is one of the commonest management faults found in commercial piggeries. As well as being a welfare issue water shortage leads to poor productivity and predisposes to disease. This is particularly serious when single nipple drinkers with poor flow rates are incorporated into farrowing pens. This results in low milk yield, loss of appetite and sow condition and poor piglet growth. It is a wise precaution to have a single tap system on the water line over the sow's trough which can be turned on twice a day to let the sow have a good drink. The trough must of course be watertight to prevent wet floors, a common predisposition to mastitis and piglet diarrhoea. A single space hopper with an integral nipple drinker should not be the only source of water to a pen of growing pigs.
Hospital pens There must be adequate provision to cope with the number of sick pigs that have to be moved from their normal environment during periods of illness and treatment. Any ill pig that cannot fend for itself must be moved immediately to a hospital pen e.g. tail bitten, severely lame, acutely ill etc. The failure to provide adequate well-managed hospital pens is a cause of serious economic loss on many farms. The experiences on one large farm are worthy of consideration. No ill pig was ever treated in its pen but moved to one of a series of small hospital pens. The owner often remarked that many of the pigs reached slaughter weight before their contemporaries - a rather sobering thought.
Vice (Abnormal behaviour) All efforts should be made to ensure the environment satisfies the pig's physiological and behavioural needs. This is particularly important in the prevention of tail biting and other behavioural disorders. Vice is the traditional term used by stockpeople, but it is now discouraged by welfare and behaviour authorities who use the term abnormal behaviour.
Electrical installations These must not be accessible to pigs and should be correctly earthed with trip out switches. They should be protected against damage and contamination by water during cleaning and disinfection.
• Background Information
Mutilations Mutilations include nose-ringing of sows kept outdoors, tattooing, ear tagging or notching, tail docking, tooth clipping, castration and boar tusk removal. It is accepted that some of these procedures are necessary in some intensive environments to avoid behavioural problems but you should consider carefully whether it is necessary in your pig farm to carry out each of these. For example, modern genetically-improved pigs now reach slaughter weight before they are sexually mature so that castration is less important to reduce boar taint. Castration has virtually ceased in the UK and other countries may follow.
The procedures that you deem necessary on your pig farm should be carried out by well- trained operators, at the correct age, and in a manner that minimises pain and distress to the animal. Clipping the eye teeth and tail docking should be carried out within seven days of birth, preferably under three days. Castration should also be carried out under three weeks of age, preferably under one week. All equipment should be well maintained and kept clean and disinfected. Older pigs should not be castrated or tail docked without a local anaesthetic and where necessary by a veterinarian.
Sow Stalls and Confinement Design requirements
Size - Width 0.5 - 0.68m. The smaller width of stall is used for gilts to prevent them turning around and defecating in the trough at the front. If this occurs enteric diseases then become a risk particularly porcine enteropathy and salmonella. Length - 2.28m. If the rear part of the stall is slatted, gilts housed in long stalls will tend to defecate on the solid concrete area leading to sore legs and other leg problems. A short stall side 1.2m long is used for tethers, the width the same as the stall.
Rear gate - Ideally this should be made of vertical bars so that faeces and urine can spill away from the back of the slats. Care is required however to make sure that the bars do not cause pressure sores. Where solid rear gates are used their bottom edges should be raised 80mm above the slats so that faeces cannot build up, contaminate the vulva and lead to vaginitis and endometritis (but not too high to cause pressure sores). The height of the rear gate should be sufficient to prevent the sow from sitting on top of it. Out breaks of rectal prolapse and abortion have been associated with this.
Floors - These may be totally slatted, part slatted or totally solid. Totally slatted floors are not recommended. They are uncomfortable for the sow and create difficulties when the sow stands, increasing the incidence of leg weakness. On part-slatted floors the solid area should be approximately 1m at the front and the remainder slatted. The slats should be 80-100mm wide and with a gap of 10-25mm and run parallel to the sow to provide a better less traumatic surface for the feet. If sows are housed on solid floors there should be a 1:20 fall in the last 300mm of the floor. This allows drainage of urine and easy removal of faeces. If the whole length of the floor slopes to the back it may predispose to vaginal prolapse and in gilts and second litter females a predisposition to osteochondrosis or leg weakness. All the accessible concrete edges should be round and not sharp and the surfaces of the slats flat and not sloping to the gaps. Bedding - If bedding is used the faeces and urine soiled material must be removed from behind the sow daily.
• Background Information
Water - Fresh water should be made available to the sow in a trough at the front after each feed. If this is supplied manually, it may be necessary to provide extra in hot weather. A drinker may also be provided but it can leak producing wet floors that result in skin sores. A shortage of water will predispose to cystitis pyelonephritis and increased sow mortality.
Feeding - Sows may be fed once or twice daily, preferably once a day to prevent agitation and anticipation in sows awaiting their second feed. From a welfare point of view automatic dispensers held in front of each sow are best so that all animals can be fed at the same time. This will reduce the risk of torsion of the intestines, trauma due to excitation and stress associated reproductive failure.
Group size - There are no constraints on the numbers of animals held in any one building.
Temperature requirements - 18-20ºC (64-68ºF).
Management, welfare and disease If you keep a sow in a stall or tether she is totally confined and has no control over her environment. It is therefore important the stall is long enough, (some modern-day prolific sows grow too long for standard stalls), the floor is comfortable to lie on, she has sufficient feed to satisfy her appetite, the environmental temperature remains constant day and night and there are no draughts. You can tell whether you are achieving these if you quietly open the door to the dry-sow house when no pig persons have been present for a period. Over 95% of the sows should be lying down on their sides.
The majority of sows lie down most of the time and will only rise to drink, urinate, and defecate at feeding time. This leads to problems such as cystitis and pyelonephritis. If they are only fed one main meal a day, the ration should contain sufficient fibre to satisfy appetite and keep the faeces soft. It is advisable to stimulate all sows to rise at least once a day by walking the boar round or sprinkling small quantities of feed into the water in the troughs.
All animals should be examined daily in a standing position to detect any signs of lameness or leg weakness. Additionally feet, legs, shoulders and hips should be examined for any sores, swellings or granulomas. At least twice a week neck or girth tethers should be checked and adjusted as necessary.
Every two to three weeks an assessment of body condition and body score should be carried out. The skin should be examined for evidence of lice or mange. A frequent examination should be carried out of the slats, to check that they are not worn and causing trauma to feet and legs.
All metal work and rear gates should be examined regularly to check there are no parts likely to cause trauma. A maximum and minimum thermometer should be checked daily to ensure that the sows are being maintained within their comfort zone.
• Background Information
A minimum of 14 hours of light should be available to maintain a constant photo period and reduce the predisposition to abortion. If sows are weaned into stalls or tethers, both feed and water should be available at all times and the floor must be kept very clean and well drained. If straw is used keep surfaces well bedded to prevent udder contamination and the development of mastitis. A combination of the above factors can often be responsible for embryo reabsorption, abortion and heavy culling rates, resulting in persistent low farrowing rates.
Arguments for and against confinement
Sow stalls and tethers provide 4 of the 5 freedoms. They also allow individual sow examination, controlled feeding, and handling (e.g. treatment). The criticism levelled against them is that they deny the freedom to express normal behaviour and can lead to abnormal stereotypic behaviour such as bar biting.
Thin sows can develop "bed-sores", leg bones can become softer and more readily broken than those of loose-housed sows and being less fit they farrow more slowly. In addition, tethers can result in neck or girth sores if not regularly checked and adjusted. They can however serve a welfare-friendly purpose if used for short periods e.g. to hold aggressive sows at weaning and during oestrus or to hold a sow for treatment for a short period.
Arguments for and against cubicles and stalls
From a welfare viewpoint cubicles would appear to be an improvement on stalls since they retain many of the advantages of stalls but have the added benefits of freedom to express some degree of natural behaviour and the exercise results in stronger bones and better muscle tone. Unfortunately, part of the natural behaviour of sows is aggression to establish a pecking order and this is particularly marked in a confined space. Not only can they damage each other physically and cause fear and distress, thus denying 2 of the 5 freedoms, but also because the aggression occurs in the early weeks of pregnancy it can cause pregnancy failure and raise the rate of regular and irregular returns to oestrus.
The sows that return can be mated again but at some point they then have to be mixed into another group. If this is done in the first six weeks of pregnancy aggression may result in more returns and so on. It is best to move sows to this type of accommodation in the second half of pregnancy when pregnancy is more secure and sows are more docile but this is often not possible. Generally however well managed cubicles can provide very successful and welfare friendly housing.
(From ThePigSite.com, "the leading online news and technical resource to the global swine industry")
• Background Information
11. WORKING CONDITIONS IN FACTORY FARMS
Workers in factory farms have to work with the smell and extreme noise in the barns housing the pigs, but they are also exposed to chemical hazards from the manure and antibiotic resistant bugs. The following is taken from Beyond Factory Farming, a Canadian lobby group. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
• Background Information
Working Conditions in Factory Farms
Factory farm workers are exposed to numerous workplace hazards. Workers in hog barns are exposed to much higher levels of dust, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, noise, and odour than are farmers in smaller scale operations due to the difference in the amount of time each spends in barns. They are also exposed to drugs and hormones used in factory farm production.
Hydrogen sulphide poisoning
Hydrogen sulphide is produced by decomposing liquid manure. It is a colourless, odourless deadly gas that can reach hazardous concentrations in confined spaces. Several Canadian workers have died and many have been affected by H2S poisoning.
Hydrogen Sulfide: The Deadliest Manure Gas
Exposure to Antibiotic resistant pathogens
The routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock in factory farms results in microbes evolving antibiotic resistance. Workers exposed to these pathogens can become sick, or become carriers of the disease, spreading it within their communities.
Guelph Researchers Find MRSA in Pigs "The researchers found no difference in the prevalence of MRSA among suckling, weanling and grower-finisher pigs, but they concluded that people working on pig farms are at higher risk for MRSA than the general population."
Noise
Thousands of pigs in a confined space make a lot of noise. Studies have shown that decibel levels in intensive hog barns are above safety thresholds much of the time. Continuous exposure to such noise leads to stress and hearing loss.
Occupational noise exposure assessment in intensive swine farrowing systems
Air quality and respiratory disease
"Large hog barns are complex environments with a variety of gases and dusts present. It is well documented in the international scientific literature that exposure to the air in large hog barns may cause short and long term harmful health effects in workers." Industrial Hog Barns - Air Quality Occupational Health Considerations by Manitoba Federation of Labour, Occupational Health Centre, Inc. April 2007
(From the website of Beyond Factory Farming, a national organization promoting socially responsible livestock production in Canada.)
• Background Information
12. POLLUTING PIG FARMS
In the United States intensive pig farms are notorious for environmental pollution, in particular in terms of air and water pollution. The following report about North Carolina highlights the problems. It is taken from the website of the Waterkeeper Alliance, which campaigns to maintain water quality and safety. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.)
• Background Information
North Carolina Hog Initiative
Producing close to 10 million hogs, North Carolina is the second largest swine producing state in the country. This enormous concentration of animals has been detrimental to the environmental health of North Carolina because of the heavy impact of discharged animal wastes on water resources, and these impacts are only exacerbated by the unsuitable waste management techniques often used on North Carolina CAFO facilities.
All regions of North Carolina suffer, in varying degrees, from nutrient pollution, but due to consolidation, the impacts of swine production in North Carolina are born exponentially by the communities in eastern part of the State.
That means that this vast Industry, an Industry that houses more animals than North Carolina houses people and generates 12 million pounds of hog waste per day, disposes of its waste in the small region of eastern North Carolina.
Such large waste output is due partially to the fact that the average hog produces ten times the fecal waste of the average human being, or taken another way, that "a large farm with 800,000 hogs could produce over 1.6 million tons of manure per year, which is one and a half times more than the annual sanitary waste produced by the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - about 1 million tons - with a population of almost 151.5million."
However, unlike the intensive treatment and monitoring of the wastes produced by those comparable human populations, swine waste typically goes through a very minimal treatment regiment that ultimately results in the land application of waste containing high levels of nutrients and bacteria.
To combat this threat, Waterkeeper Alliance, working alongside a core group of North Carolina Waterkeepers, including the Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper, the Lower Neuse Riverkeeper, the White Oak-New Riverkeeper, and the Cape Fear Riverkeeper, challenges CAFOs and industrial farming in North Carolina through a number of dynamic strategies designed to reduce these impacts by actively advocating for the control of animal waste pollution, the reduction of pollution runoff, and the promotion of sustainable agriculture.
• Background Information
WATERKEEPER'S FACTORY FARM CAMPAIGN
By cramming thousands of animals into warehouse style buildings, industrial livestock farms produce mountains of waste that end up in our nation's waterways. In many rural communities farm animals produce more waste than humans - and while human waste is treated and cleansed before being released into the environment, manure is often dumped raw onto fields -- allowing it to wash into local creeks, streams and rivers, and causing algae blooms, fish kills, and polluting our drinking water.
Waterkeeper Advocacy
Waterkeeper Alliance helps protect rural watersheds by working to prevent the spread of factory-style agriculture and promoting the security of family-owned, sustainable farms.
The Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign combines hard-nosed litigation with education and outreach on sustainable agriculture. We are working with farmers, environmentalists and political leaders to support real alternatives to factory-raised food.
From the website of the Waterkeeper Alliance
• Background Information
13. FILM CONTROVERSY
The screening of the film "Pig Business" has had a stormy history, as this review from The Morning Star indicates. (Please note: any inaccuracies you find in this document, whether of fact, spelling or punctuation, are in the original source.
• Background Information
Review of "Pig Business"
Wednesday 10 June 2009 by Ian Sinclair
Originally due to premiere on Channel 4 in February 2009, Pig Business - a documentary about intensive pig farming - was cancelled because of fears of legal action from Smithfield Foods, the world's largest producer of pork.
Subsequent screenings have also run into difficulties, with a recent showing at the Barbican only going ahead after director Tracy Worcester signed an indemnity taking personal responsibility for the content.
So what is Smithfield Foods so afraid of?
Four years in the making and just over 70 minutes long in its current form, this cogent documentary argues that intensive pig farming is "bad for our food, our health and the livelihoods of our rural communities."
Initially focusing on the United States, Worcester explains how large corporations such as Smithfield Foods - an organisation that processes 27 million pigs in 15 countries, producing sales of $12 billion every year - now have effective control over the whole market, providing cheap meat to supermarkets which in turn sends small, independent farms out of business.
Housed in superstore-sized sheds amid cramped conditions and little natural light, the stressed-out hogs produce a staggering amount of waste (pigs defecate 10 times the amount that a human does), often contaminating the local water table and emitting an illness-inducing stench.
Tom Garrett, from the Animal Welfare Institute, argues that this is nothing less than "the application of industrial systems that were designed to build cars and machines, to living creatures."
• Background Information
Tired of being steamrollered by large corporations, a grassroots movement of farmers and environmentalists won a number of small but significant victories in the 1990s, leading to greater regulation of pig farms in the US.
For example, in 1997 Smithfield Foods was fined $12.6 million for discharging illegal levels of pollutants into the Pagan River in Virginia - the then largest-ever financial penalty awarded by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
In response to popular protest and increasingly restrictive laws, Smithfield Foods relocated much of its business to countries such as Poland, where it purchased former state farms and slaughterhouses at bargain basement prices.
As Worcester points out, following the radical free-market shock-therapy of the early '90s, what is euphemistically called a "favourable business environment" was created in Poland - low labour costs, light regulation and poor governance, among other things.
Speaking to the Polish Senate, Robert Kennedy Jnr, son of US liberal legend Bobby Kennedy and chairman of the Waterkeeper Alliance, notes that Smithfield Foods is trying to "get away with something in Poland that people in the United States now recognise is a catastrophe."
A long-time environmental activist working on a small budget, Worcester has done a great public service by shining a light on an industry that would prefer to stay out of the public eye.
She has certainly done her homework, gaining incisive interviews with academic experts, politicians, industry heads and ordinary people on both sides of the debate.
Best of all is the film's centrepiece interview with Smithfield Foods' vice-president of environmental and corporate affairs, where Worcester's pointed and passionate questions are countered by some particularly bland and slippery answers.
But frustratingly, like much of the coverage of animal welfare in the mainstream, Worcester fails to consider vegetarianism as a legitimate response to the problem.
Her plea for consumers to flex their power by buying locally produced, organic, free- range meat is welcome.
However, if you are really concerned about pig welfare, isn't not eating these intelligent creatures in the first place the answer?
On the other hand, perhaps it could be argued that an ethically minded meat-eater has more influence on the welfare of animals than those who completely disengage with the industry, such as vegetarians.
But while the debate continues about how best to improve the lives of pigs and of the workers, local residents and consumers who are most affected by the industry, it is clear that Smithfield Foods only has one interest - profit.
• Background Information
As Joel Bakan notes in his seminal study of the corporate world, "the corporation's legally defined mandate is to pursue, relentlessly and without exception, its own self- interest, regardless of the often harmful consequences it might cause others."
Seen in this light, the legal threats from Smithfield Foods are a logical response to this illuminating and absorbing documentary.
In short, there is no doubt that if Pig Business receives a wide audience, it will be very bad for Smithfield Foods' own pig business.
"It's a battle about who is going to control our resources," Kennedy Jnr sums up at the film's close.
"Are our resources going to be controlled by a corporate-feudal system or are they going to be controlled by the people?"
From the Morning Star online