Larry Powell Powell is a veteran, award-winning journalist based in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. He specialize in stories about agriculture and the environment. For decades, he worked for broadcast outlets in all four provinces in western Canada. This included a 5 years stint as Senior Editor for CBC Radio News in Saskatchewan. He is authorized to receive embargoed news releases on important, global stories, through the Science Media Centre of Canada, the Royal Society, Nature Research and the World Weather Attribution Network. He's a member of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists and a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2020, Powell joined an international team of writers providing articles for the Swiss-based online journal, Focusing on Wildlife - celebrating the biodiversity of Planet Earth. In June, 2014, he was a panelist at a world conference in Winnipeg entitled Holding
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THE MANURE PILE OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
The public needs to be made aware that the factory hog industry
continues to damage Manitoba's environment.
Experts Say:
Let's Face It. Manitoba's hog industry is destructive to the environment says experts,and the return of small scale, mixed operation farming is needed to combat the influence of industrial hog operations in the province. You can't raise animals in factories and be environmentally benign says Joe Dolecki, professor of environmental economics at Brandon University.
Eva Pip,a biology and aquatic toxicologist at the University of Winnipeg,
points to manure phosphorus run-off as the main contributor to the algal bloom problem in Lake Winnipeg. If you have 10,000, 20,000 or more hogs just in one operation, that's all completely raw, untreated waste….that's the equivalent of a small city. In traditional agriculture,pigs are only one aspect of a mixed farming operation,meaning that manure is easily recycled back on to the fields and utilized, without excess problems. In Industrial hog agriculture you have so much waste that it is impossible not to end up polluting. Pip added.
In the fall of 2007,a report* from the George Morris Centre (GMC) estimates that a total of only 1382 direct,and 3394 indirect jobs are attributable to hog production in Manitoba with another 3713 direct and indirect jobs created in the packing component. The industry total (8488) represents about 57% of the number (15,000) claimed in recent Manitoba Pork Council advertising.
The clear, yet unmentioned, implication is that job creation from hog production is minimal and is hardly sufficient to inspire the re-population of rural Manitoba, as the industry claims.
For the record,and job comparison; in 1980,14,200 Manitoba farmers were
raising pigs. ( lots of jobs there )
*That report is titled, "A Pig in a Poke".
It's a fitting label for the hog welcoming mat initially spread out by the
Filmon Conservative government; translated as
"An Offering or Deal that is foolishly accepted without being examined first".
My translation is; "The Manure Pile of Modern Civilization."
Just one more value added concept,as initially proclaimed by the Filmon
Conservative government.
This hog industry is a meat exporting business. Manitoban's consume about 6% of their production. The rest is shipped away,leaving us and our water sources to deal with all the waste and pollution that is produced and left behind. Is it… Hog Industry economics vs: 'The health of Lake Winnipeg and
Manitoba waters'? Think about your answer very carefully, before you commit a response.
Growth comes at a cost that is more difficult to quantify. The success of Intensive Livestock Operations (ILOs) — often disparagingly referred to as “factory farms” — that feed the processing plants in Brandon and Neepawa, comes on the backs of small, rural communities and rural families already struggling with demographic change and trying to live a normal way of life in an invasive and polluted environment.
It has taken nearly 5 years for the Manitoba Hog Industry and our new Conservative government to formulate a plan to their liking and now they are preparing to bombard the province with even more factory hog barns. According to A. Dickson. the General Manager of the Manitoba Pork Council (MPC) another 50 to 70 hog barns are required to produce 1.2 million finishing hogs per year to satisfy the Maple Leaf and HyLife hog slaughter plants at Brandon and Neepawa plants.
As I see it, this "NEW Plan" is a lot more S*#t and Stink!, plus a complete disregard of our water sources and Lake Winnipeg. ….welcome to Manitoba…. "The Manure Pile Capital of Modern Civilization"