From the Boston Globe:
Food for thought: Safeguarding what we eat
Second of three parts
Animal waste emerging as US problem
Regulations fall short in protecting water quality, report finds
By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff, 09/21/98
ILAN, Mo. - We are in deep manure.
Animal manure, that is.
How deep? Roughly 1.3 billion tons of animal waste was produced last
year, or five tons of manure for each American, according to a recent report
by the US Senate Agriculture Committee. The report said that animal waste
from factory farms is an emerging national problem and that federal
regulations fail to adequately protect water quality from animal waste.
Missouri-based Premium Standard Farms, the nation's second largest hog
producer, guarantees safe pork from conception to consumer. But it also
produces five times more waste than the city of St. Louis, without a sewage
plant to treat it, according to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
The manure stored in nearby lagoons - sprayed on fields and recycled to
wash away solid waste in 1,000 temperature-controlled barns - has created
leaks and spills that have polluted waterways, killing more than 180,000 fish,
the department said.
Nationwide, pollution from factory farms has been increasing dramatically,
according to the Senate report issued last December. In 1995 in North
Carolina, a record hog waste spill of 35 million gallons killed 10 million fish
and closed 364,000 acres of coastal wetlands to shellfish harvesting. Spills in
Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri in 1996 killed more than a half-million fish.
In Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, waste from hog and chicken
factories is widely believed to have caused the pfiesteria, which has killed
more than a billion fish and caused human sickness, including memory loss.
The Senate report also warned of human health risks including dangerous
pathogens like salmonella and cryptosporidium, and the pollution of drinking
water with high levels of nitrates which are potentially fatal to infants.
Excess nutrients flowing down the Mississippi River are believed to have
resulted in a dead zone the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico. Could
a pig farm in the northwest corner of Missouri be contributing to the dead
zone 700 miles away?
''I can certainly blame them for part of it,'' said Scott Dye, director of
Citizens Legal Environmental Action Network or (CLEAN), an
environmental watchdog group comprised of 80 northern Missouri families
living near Premium Standard. ''Everything up here drains into the Missouri
and then the Mississippi. The large factory farms are a big part of it.''
Whatever Premium Standard may contribute, it is not alone: water and
waste from 31 states flow into the Mississippi. Although chemical fertilizer
runoff from Corn Belt states is also blamed, factory farm waste is
increasingly finding its way into the water, causing algae blooms and fish kills.
''There were three stages of denial from these states,'' said Don Anderson, a
senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in
Massachusetts. ''First was that the problem even existed. Then that it was
linked to excess nutrients, and finally that it was their runoff.''
Nationwide, more animals are being produced on less land. Concentrated
factory farms, virtually non-existent 30 years ago, are now proliferating,
generating billions of dollars in big business while creating cheaper, leaner
food. In the case of Premium Standard Farms, that means 97 percent
fat-free meat, with uniform color and weight and less cholesterol: the perfect
pork chop.
The story of Premium Standard, which raises 1.7 million hogs a year,
represents a changing America, where big, high-tech corporations are
replacing mom and pop farms, and lawsuits involving odors and pollution are
being filed in little towns where the only thing people used to worry about
was putting too much gravy on their mashed potatoes.
''Agriculture is the most widespread source of pollution in the nation's
surveyed rivers,'' said Mike Cook, director of the Office of Wastewater
Management for the Environmental Protection Agency. In 60 percent of
rivers and streams that the EPA has identified as ''impaired,'' agricultural
runoff, including nutrients from animal waste, is the largest contributor to
pollution, according to the Senate Agriculture Committee report., entitled
''Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem.''
Although human waste is sanitized, animal waste is not and it contains
parasites, bacteria, and viruses. There are no federal regulations that address
the handling, storage, land application, or disposal of manure, the Senate
report said.
''This is a public emergency,'' said Ken Midkiff, director of the Missouri
Sierra Club. But he stressed that it's not just the waste. ''It's also a food
safety issue. The faster the production lines go, the more likelihood you have
of contaminants like fecal coliform. If you have a processing plant that
produces 7,000 hogs a day, or 300,000 chickens a day, the USDA can't
catch the problems at the plant. We didn't use to have these problems with
small packing houses.''
Big factory farms produce food safety problems simply because of their
volume, because of the sheer numbers they deal with, according to one
former US Department of Agriculture meat inspector.
''Factory farms do their own testing of meats under USDA supervision,'' said
Albert Midoux, who worked as a meat inspector for 28 years, retired a
decade ago and joined the Sierra Club. ''It's like the wolf guarding the hen
house. Our USDA stamp doesn't mean that food is safe, it means 'watch
out.'
''With the pig farms, they put most of them in the middle of nowhere and
when the water is running high, some of them just dump their lagoons. Then
people wonder why all the streams are polluted. It's disgusting.''
Fifteen years ago, there were 600,000 hog farms in the United States.
Today there are 157,000, producing roughly the same number of hogs.
''It's not necessarily bad,'' said Dr. Paul Mead, an epidemiologist for the US
Centers for Disease Control. ''Bigger plants in general have better quality.
It's just that when something goes wrong, it goes wrong in a very bad way.
That's why we have bigger outbreaks.''
'This has divided the community'
In the rolling hills of northwest Missouri, Jeri McKinley sits on the 500-acre
farm his great-grandfather homesteaded in 1853 and talks about the giant
pig factory next door.
''There are some mornings it wakes you up and you can barely breathe,'' he
said, referring to the huge lagoons that store pig waste before it is sprayed
over the fields. ''If this happened in my grandfather's day, there would have
been a war. This has divided the community more than the Civil War.''
Today, there is a war, but it will be fought in the courts. In a suit filed last
year in US District Court court by CLEAN, the group charges that Premium
Standard Farms is in violation of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.
The suit cites 50 violations, including waste spills, leaks from manure
lagoons, and allegations of illegal spraying of waste and illegal disposal pits
for dead hogs. The Sierra Club has also charged that Premium Standard is a
''habitual and chronic polluter.''
''Waste from these facilities is leaching from their lagoons,'' said CLEAN's
Dye. ''They are grossly saturating the soil with hog feces and urine. It makes
all the families mad. We have to live by these facilities and our children have
to live by these facilities.''
But Premium Standard strenuously denies being a polluter. ''We are
stewards of the environment,'' said company president Robert ''Bo'' Manly.
''Hogwash,'' said Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon. ''In too many
instances their waste has spilled into State of Missouri waters. They run a
Jurassic pig operation.''
Some neighbors have seen enough. ''The public wants cheap, lean pork,''
said Lynn McKinley, who raises 56 pigs mostly for her family and friends.
''But they wouldn't want to see what goes on there. You got 'em stuck in
there in confinement, the sows are in crates and can't even stand. The pigs
are eating each other's ears, eating the metal bars. The stink from the
lagoons on a warm summer night wakes you up gagging. My pigs, I can't say
they're happy all the time, but they like Mother Nature. I keep the radio on
and they like their country music.''
To treat its animal waste, Premium Standard says it uses a biological
treatment called anaerobic digestion, a low-cost system which under the best
of conditions causes some solids to be turned into liquids and gas. The EPA
wants the farm factories, or ''concentrated feeding operations'' as they are
also called, to build waste - water facilities.
The Clinton Administration has proposed that by the year 2005, huge
factory farms be governed by EPA-issued discharge permits similar to rules
set for industrial factories.
Manly says that Premium Standard has spent over $1 million to try new
techniques in waste management, and it has emergency response teams in
place to contain spills. ''I'm very proud of our record,'' he said.
But the company's critics charge that Manly has a record as a polluter. They
note that from 1986 to 1994, he was executive vice president of
Virginia-based Smithfield Foods Inc., which in 1997 was fined $12.6 million
for 7,000 violations of the Clean Water Act from 1991-1996 - -- the largest
such penalty in US history.
Premium Standard spokesman Charlie Arnot said during that time, Manly
was responsible for hog production, international sales and genetics. ''It is
important to note that at no time during his tenure at Smithfield did the
environmental function report to him,'' said Arnot.
Factory farms like Premium Standard use genetic engineering to make a
better pork chop. Since 1983, pork has gotten leaner, slimmer with 31
percent less fat, 14 percent fewer lower calories and 10 percent less
cholesterol, according to the National Pork Producer's Council.
Leanest, tastiest pork inthe world
And in pursuit of the perfect chop, Premium Standard has the world's largest
artificial insemination program of its kind. The million-and-a-half pigs
processed each year at the facility have been bred to produce what the
company claims is the leanest, tastiest, lowest-cholesterol pork in the world.
''We're trying to produce an Arnold Schwarzenegger pig, and not a Danny
DeVito,'' said Premium Standard's Arnot.
Premium Standard was the first company certified to export fresh pork to
the European Union. It has strict policies on cleanliness. Employees must
shower when they report to work and when they leave to prevent disease.
They wash their trucks daily. There are temperature-controlled growing
monitors with 30,000 sensors, second only to the Pentagon. They test every
carcass for trichina. There have been no cases of E. coli bacteria and no part
of the pig goes to waste. Pig ears become pet treats and gelatin becomes
part of the Gummy Bears that are sold at movie theaters.
At Premium Standard's Genetic Improvement Facility, scientists study sperm
samples under microscopes and computers check genetic backgrounds.
One day recently, boar No. number 2067 was led from his pen to a
cylindrical rubber device that looks like it belongs on a football practice field.
Jana Lewis, assistant general manager, establishes eye contact and makes a
combination of clucking, groaning, and moaning noises until the
frothy-mouthed boar mounts a rubber dummy.
''It turns them on,'' she says with a cheery smile. ''They get to talking back to
you.'' Then she dons rubber gloves and collects the semen from the boar's
orgasm. ''It doesn't bother me a bit. I do it every day. It's like being a doctor
or a gynecologist.''
The semen is sent by pneumatic tube, chilled and analyzed under a
microscope. Pictures of flawed sperm cells are plastered on the wall like
FBI wanted posters at a post office. If the semen is approved, a synthetic
diluter is added so that one boar can artificially inseminate 20 sows.
Small hog farmers like Lynn McKinley can't produce hogs as cheaply.
''When we're all out of business and it's just the biggest two or three
producers, well, it ain't gonna be cheap,'' she says.
The time from birth to slaughter can be as short as 5 1/2 months. Premium
Standard processes 7,000 hogs per a day using stun guns to render them
unconscious before they are bled to death.
Neighbors say the pigs are given drugs to fatten them up faster. A May
report in the New England Journal of Medicine said that 40 percent of all
antibiotics are used in agriculture and 80 percent of them are used to
promote rapid growth.
''Antibiotics are being used not to prevent or treat illness but to promote
rapid weight gain of animals and increased profits for owners,'' said
Margaret Mellon, director of the agriculture and biotechnology program at
the Union of Concerned Scientists. ''We are compromising our own future
as our resistance to antibiotics increases.''
''There is great concern and belief that antibiotic use in animals is promoting
a resistance for certain pathogens like salmonella,'' said Mead, of the CDC.
In 1997, the World Health organization recommended phasing out the use of
antibiotics to promote livestock growth.
''Farms are factories of drug resistance,'' said Dr. Stuart Levy, director of
the Center for Adaptation, Genetics and Drug Resistance at the Tufts
University School of Medicine. ''The non-therapeutic misusage is just
causing more multi-drug resistance in human therapy. They can transfer
resistance, whether it's something we eat or touch or waste that's tilled into
another source.''
Premium Standard's Manly responded that although the company's hogs are
given ''the absolute minimum'' amount of antibiotics as growth additives, the
drugs are stopped weeks before slaughter, and the final product is ''antibiotic
- residue free.''
''No one is pointing fingers at the medical centers that are prescribing
antibiotics for every ear infection and common cold,'' added Collette Schultz
Kaster, Premium Standard's director of technical services.
Kaster gives a tour of the company's massive packing room. It is
immaculate. ''The public wants safe food and they want genetic improvement
of their food,'' she says.
The processing plant is a high-tech, antiseptic operation, the antithesis of the
family farm.
''I came from family farms,'' says Kaster. ''I'd love to work on a family farm
like my grandpa. It's a little hurtful, but we look for segments where we can
make a living.''
Tomorrow: Genetic alterations under fire Globe Online This series is
available on the Globe Online at
boston.com. Use the
keyword: Food.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 09/21/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
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