Fatal outbreak exposes something rotten in the state of farming

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[Finally... someone's talking about the REAL problem here. Great article...]

 

 

 

Fatal outbreak exposes something rotten in the state of farming

 

By Thomas Walkom

Toronto Star

May 27, 2000

 

http://www.thestar.com/thestar/editorial/health/20000527NEW01d_CI-WALKOM.html

 

 

THE ONLY surprising element of the Walkerton tragedy is that it didn't happen

sooner.

 

The details are still being pieced together: what went wrong with the town's

water purification system; who tested what; who warned whom.

 

But the broad outlines of the story, a story that so far has claimed at least

five lives in this small southwestern Ontario town, should have been anticipated

by anyone bothering to pay attention.

 

Over the past decade, southern Ontario has become home to a new form of

agriculture. Called intensive or factory farming, it differs from traditional

livestock agriculture by its sheer scale.

 

And, like intensive agriculture elsewhere in Canada, it has been actively

promoted by the provincial government.

 

In Ontario, intensive hog barns can hold 3,500 or more pigs. A typical chicken

operation will have thousands of fowl crowded into cages. Cattle feedlots and

intensive dairy operations can involve hundreds of cows jammed into small

spaces.

 

What is common to all is manure. Animals packed into factory farms produce

literally tonnes of it. Ontario's 3.8 million hogs alone produce as much raw

sewage as the province's more than 10 million human inhabitants.

 

And while there are stringent laws dealing with human waste, the rules for

animal manure are almost nonexistent.

 

For factory farmers, the most efficient method of dealing with manure is to

store it in holding tanks or open-air pools. Eventually, the waste can be spread

onto fields as fertilizer. The manure is supposed to decompose, enrich the soil

and improve the quality of crops.

 

This, at least, is the theory. But as Paul and Anita Frayne, a farming couple

near Goderich, discovered to their dismay, reality can be different.

 

Two years ago, the Fraynes and others in Ashfield Township banded together to

fight the spread of factory hog farms into their area. They feared the manure

from the farms would leak into drinking water.

 

Ultimately, they were proved correct. This spring, two hog operations were

charged with illegally discharging waste.

 

But to get the provincial government to investigate, much less lay charges,

required literally years of agitation.

 

" It's been abysmal, " says Paul Frayne. " A goddamned crime. "

 

In the meantime, the hog barns multiplied. In 1998, there was one intensive hog

operation in Ashfield. Now there are 10, each producing tonnes of liquid manure

annually.

 

Yet there are almost no provincial rules for dealing with the stuff. Farmers are

provided with guidelines for storing and spreading manure. But the guidelines

are voluntary.

 

If a farmer wants to spread his manure in winter, so that it runs off the frozen

land straight into the Great Lakes, there is nothing to stop him. If he prefers

to keep his liquid manure in an open earthen pit rather than a steel container,

that's up to him, too.

 

Certainly, there is no law even suggesting that animal manure be treated as

strictly as human waste.

 

True, it is illegal for a farmer to dump raw sewage into a stream. But an

inspector has to catch him. As the Fraynes found out, cutbacks imposed by

Queen's Park mean there are almost no inspectors.

 

Should a municipality try to fill the gap by attempting to regulate intensive

agriculture, its bylaws may be overturned. That's what the rural residents of

Biddulph Township, north of London, found in 1998, when their municipal council

tried to limit the size of intensive hog operations to 2,000 animals.

 

A factory farmer who wanted to put 3,000 pigs in his barn took the council to

the province's so-called Normal Farm Practices Protection Board. There, after a

one-day hearing, the bylaw was summarily overturned.

 

This particular legal wrinkle comes courtesy of all three parties in the

Legislature. The Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats all endorsed beefing

up Ontario's so-called right-to-farm law to allow the provincially appointed

board to overrule municipalities deemed to interfere with " normal " farm

practices.

 

Biddulph was the first casualty under the new law (although the township is

appealing in court).

 

The farm practices board has now been asked to overrule a bylaw restricting

intensive hog operations in Trent River, near Trenton, even though this

particular law already has been upheld by the courts.

 

Up till now, the Ontario controversy has centred on intensive hog operations.

Few paid attention to Ontario's declining cattle industry.

 

Changes in federally regulated freight rates encouraged the industry to shift to

Alberta.

 

As a result, the number of Ontario feedlots - where cattle are fattened up

before slaughter - plummeted.

 

All of which adds an element of grim irony to the Walkerton tragedy.

 

Walkerton itself is in the middle of Ontario's cattle country.

 

There are five feedlots within a five-mile radius of the town, according to Stan

Eby, president of the Ontario Cattlemen's Association.

 

Four are small, with a capacity of about 200 animals each. One holds 2,500.

 

In the small lots, the manure is piled. In the larger one, it is liquefied and

stored in a holding tank. In all cases, the manure is supposed to be spread on

fields.

 

Again, there are no rules. No one requires farmers or feedlot owners to

neutralize dangerous bacteria in their manure before spreading it.

 

If a farmer wants to spread manure before a heavy rain, one that might wash it

into the water system, there is no one to stop him.

 

And yet, as the people of Walkerton discovered, cow manure may contain a new and

deadly strain of bacteria, E. coli 0157:H7.

 

Industry knew this. So did governments. The Cattlemen's Association Web site is

filled with references to E. coli 0157. It has been an identified threat in

Ontario since 1994.

 

A recent study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found that one-third of

U.S. cattle contained the killer strain.

 

So why are we surprised by Walkerton? In a province literally awash with

untreated animal manure, a province in which the toxic waste from large-scale

farming is assumed to be somehow more virtuous than that of, say, large-scale

chemical firms, this tragedy - or something very much like it - was bound to

occur.

 

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