Pigs, front and center
The Pal Item does a really good job this morning with an in depth look at the proposed CAFO going into Wayne County:
The paper does a good job showing how Natural Pork Production II (hereafter, NPPII) went into a hog CAFO in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and turned it around after it had been shut down by the state when it could not prevent manure spills into local waterways.
The paper also gives a good perspective on the future of agriculture being solidly vested in CAFO’s.
NPPII seems to be a sophisticated player. They know what the challenges are and are ready to address them with the community.
Generally, concerns with CAFO’s relate to the following:
- Water contamination.
- Air pollution/smell
- Inhuman treatment of animals
Joe Huhl, the site manager for NPPII in the Crawfordsville site, is quoted in the article, and he stresses the extents to which NPPII will go to assure appropriate operations. NPPII will spend over $15 million on the Wayne County site, including the building of new hog barns, with waste water holding built to hold a year’s worth of waste. The plan is to “mechanically inject” the waste into surrounding farm ground.
A neighbor to the Crawfordsville site is also quoted, and while he is happy that NPPII has the waste runoff under control, he stresses that the smell is still a big issue:
“If you burnt someone’s house down, it would be a crime,” he said. “But you can slowly take the value of someone’s property with a CAFO and nothing’s done.”
Huhl even takes on the “animal rights” critics:
NPPII has a local veterinary that visits every two weeks. While the animals are kept indoors at all times, Hohl said the barns are environmentally controlled to be warm in the winter and cooler in the summer. Sows outside endure cold winters and hot summers.
“I think there’s an argument that (confined feeding is) more humane,” Hohl said.
But he reminds people that the animals are not pets.
“They are production animals,” he said. “But we give them the best care.”
I do not know if that does it for me. Is the minimum standard for the quality of life we give to animals in our care temperature control and medical care? What is the moral distinction between the treatment of a “pet” and a “production animal?” I grew up around horses and chickens, and I have spent several years caring for sheep, goats and chickens. While animals in nature are subject to starvation, disease and death as a matter of routine, I know that once you take on the care of an animal, its health and standard of life are your responsibility. My experience tells me that any animal, even a chicken, gets something of value out of being alive and interacting with the world around it. I cannot see how raising an animal in a box, where it never sees the sky, never sees a growing plant, never even sees dirt, or any other animal other than its own species and some humans is a good thing.
Would you accept that kind of treatment for a dog? A cat? A horse? If not, what’s the difference? If you think that pigs are “dumb animals” and cannot distinguish between a life in the world and one in a concrete box, I would like to know the basis for that.
July 24th, 2005 13:58
It’s probably worth noting that NPPII has received numerous fines in Iowa - some within the last year - for poor manure containment. They have a very good PR machine which paints a rosy picture of their operations. Not exactly true.
July 25th, 2005 19:13
Jean:
Can you hook me up with a source to document those fines? I poked around a bit, but I could not see any type of database of environmental actions by the State of Iowa on the web.