Industrialized farms must treat rural America better, commission says

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A report by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production does not see an end to “intensive” livestock-raising practices, or even the confined feeding operations that characterize much of the beef, pork and poultry industry today.

But commissioners said they want to see improvements in animal safety, human health, the environment and rural America as a result of their recommendations.

Rural America’s social health has declined because of “what has happened over the last 60 years with the increased mechanization of farming operations,” said Holy Cross Brother David Andrews, a commission member and former executive director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, at an April 29 Washington briefing during which the recommendations were released.

With the increased concentration of feeding operations, “you’re having just as many hogs, but fewer farmers,” Brother Andrews said.

As the nation’s top meat marketers buy up their smaller rivals, Brother Andrews said it was time to apply antitrust legislation. “The capacity for market power is something in American history that has been addressed throughout the years,” he added.

Industrialized farms, according to Brother Andrews, have brought about a decrease in the number of independent family farms, and even those farmers are under pressure to raise animals under contract to the big livestock firms under onerous conditions -- including not sharing contract details with other farmers.

The 15-member commission met over two years and deliberated for more than 250 hours to reach consensus on its recommendations. One recommendation is to phase out, and later ban, the nontherapeutic use of antimicrobial drugs.

“There are very few new antibiotics in the pipeline,” warned Dr. Mary Wilson, who teaches at Harvard University’s medical school, and there’s “a growing problem of resistance” to those antibiotics in use on industrial farms. About half of all antibiotics are used to promote growth rather than fight disease. The E. coli outbreaks tied to spinach, Wilson added, show that “animal waste is entering the human food chain.”

Commission chairman John Carlin, governor of Kansas 1979-87, said animal wastes, largely untreated and stored in artificial lagoons, are three times the volume of human waste. Carlin said some estimates have put the figure at 10 times that of human waste.

The waste is “concentrated to the point that it makes it very difficult to handle it in an appropriate way without causing too much risk to public health,” Carlin said. The problem is attributable, he added, to “lack of regulation, lack of oversight and lack of enforcing what regulations exist.”

An Iowa farm wife, Jane Clampitt, invited by the commission to speak, said her family’s way of life is threatened by the growing encroachment of what have been derisively called “factory farms.”

Her activism started only last summer after she learned that a neighbor had obtained a permit to start a 6,000-hog confined feeding operation.

A 4-H Club leader and mother of three, Clampitt told Catholic News Service that her Iowa county, Buchanan, ranks eighth among the state’s 99 counties with 161,000 hogs that excrete 14 million gallons of manure stored on 4,000 acres of land -- when it doesn’t run off or leach onto others’ property. “The stench in the morning is unbelievable. I certainly can’t hang up my clothes to dry outside,” she told CNS.

The Clampitts’ 130-year-old house has only a shallow well. “My parents could drink directly out of that well,” she added. “Now, I have to tell my children they can’t play in the water.”

Other commission recommendations included:

-- Improved disease monitoring and tracking.

-- Better regulation of industrialized farm animal production.

-- A phaseout of intensive confinement practices.

-- Increased competition in the livestock market.

-- Improved research in animal agriculture.