Manitoba's Decker Hutterite Colony says, several dead hogs spotted recently on a public roadway, nearby, died of natural causes.

by Larry Powell

Hog carcasses in two dumpsters on a side road near the
Decker Colony, northwest of Brandon, Apr. 24th.

I spotted these carcasses on April 24th.

My initial attempts to phone the colony about this (then accessible by appointment only due to Covid-19), failed. Today, the Colony's Barn Manager, David Waldner, called me back (May 6th). He says the hogs died of natural causes, not disease. In his words, "Hogs die." Sometimes one gets a broken leg, for example, and has to be put down. But most of the animals in the dumpsters, were what he calls "standard mortalities," not the result of disease.

He says the company which picks up the carcasses, usually comes about once a week. But, due to mechanical issues, it was delayed. As a result, they sat there for longer than normal. Because of that, he explains, the bodies were bloated. And this likely makes it appear as if there are more than the 20 which he estimates were in the dumpsters.

Waldner says he "absolutely shares concerns" others have for the welfare of animals. He adds, the Colony had a veterinarian visit their facilities in the past month or two. 

The Decker Colony. (All photos by PinP.)

He says the Colony houses from eight to nine thousand hogs at the moment.

Waldner rejects speculation from critics that the crowded conditions used in "intensive livestock operations," like his, may have contributed to the mortalities.

And he doesn't believe other ways of raising animals, would be feasible. He says letting animals run loose, "free-range" comes with its own set of problems, including the weather and the risk of them catching disease from other sources.

Waldner says Decker Colony ships its live hogs to the Maple Leaf slaughterhouse in Brandon. The dead-stock, such as the ones shown here, goes to a rendering plant in Winnipeg.

Meanwhile, a long-time critic of the industry in Manitoba, John Fefchak, brought this story to the attention of the Government of Manitoba. The Auditor-General has responded, saying, it will be looked into. 

-30-

What could our post-pandemic world look like? It depends on you and me!

by Larry Powell

Like everyone else, I’m worried. But not just about the Covid-19 pandemic. 

It’s what the future holds once it ends that scares me, too. Man’s assault on our planet simply cannot pick up where it left off when the virus hit. It’s true that our economy cannot remain at this level of lockdown forever. But, if we just come “roaring back, full tilt” when it’s over, we’ve learned nothing. And civilization as we know it will resume its relentless slide, once again. 

So what have we learned?

Lives can be saved just by slowing the frantic pace of human activity. Pollutants spewing from industrial plants, ground vehicles, jet planes and ocean vessels have dipped dramatically due to the slowdown forced by Covid. And they’re not just greenhouse gases which are dangerously heating up the Earth, spawning violent storms, rising sea levels and devastating floods (think Fort Mac.) that have gone down, significantly. They’re also the kind that get into your lungs and kill perhaps a million or more of us each year -  with asthma, stroke, heart disease, lung cancer and acute respiratory diseases (source - WHO).  

Some are even saying that this “great cessation” may be saving more lives than Covid is claiming! 

Meanwhile, many wild creatures, historically under full frontal assault from humans who’ve either been hunting them or destroying their homes, are beginning to tentatively reclaim some spaces once overrun by us.

What else should we be learning? Well, it's been shown now - we can actually hold virtual meetings "in place," online, instead of boarding climate-destroying jets to the other side of the Earth for a meeting or convention. And, if we have to (and we are), we can actually survive without the Olympic Games, the World Cup, the NHL, NBA or the CFL for a bit! Perhaps when the smoke clears, we can actually "get by" with an Olympics every four years, instead of two and a World Cup once in four. 

Maybe minor hockey associations can even find ways of reducing the number of kids we load on buses, sending them on lonely and dangerous trips to tournaments far away. Maybe more games, closer to home might be in order? 

And maybe we don’t need to travel to a “sunspot” once or twice a year to bask on the beach or attend another “destination wedding.” Maybe a “staycation” or backyard event might prove just as enjoyable.

And only the dimmest among us will not know by now, how effective and deadly a role passenger jets and cruise ships play in spreading pandemics like this. The cruise line industry is probably one that could "go under" forever with no loss to our quality of life. These morbidly obese "tin cans" have been floating petrie dishes for way too long.

And here’s the most ironic lesson of all - one we should have learned long ago. You can’t force people to work in crowded conditions like meat-packing plants -  the very conditions livestock themselves are raised in - without consequences. Thousands of such workers in North America are getting sick - and scores are dying, of Covid. If this isn’t proof-positive that long-standing warnings about intensive livestock operations (factory barns) are valid, then what is? The WHO and the CDC (and many other health authorities) have been trying to tell us that, cramming large numbers of animals into big buildings where they can scarcely turn around, is an invitation to disease. 

Why should people be any different?

One needn’t look further than Manitoba to explain what I mean. It's been a terribly cruel and wasteful chapter in this province's history. *Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED), a highly infectious virus, invaded many crowded, intensive, confined, factory hog barns a few years ago, claiming the lives of many helpless piglets. I say “many” because the industry refuses to give a number and the provincial government says, it doesn’t know! This is in keeping with its “hands-off” attitude toward an industry that runs largely free of any rule that might protect you and me from serious harm. To Premier Pallister and his team, such rules amount to nothing more than “pesky red tape” that need, with Trump-like enthusiasm, to be done away with quickly.

A plethora of animal diseases kill millions of animals, worldwide, yearly - some directly - others through deliberate culling of healthy animals to prevent spreading. Sometimes, they spread to humans, too, with lethal results.

So we can’t be too smug about far away places that sell tame, wild and "farmed" animals, alive or dead - high-risk places for the spreading of disease. Surely we have our own form of “wet-markets” here in the west - where we do much the same with hogs, cattle, chickens and even wild “farmed” fish - cram them together for maximum profit. 

Finally, is it now as far-fetched to envision a future in which we all consume less (or no) meat, given the long environmental shadow that livestock casts over our world? Maybe now is the time for just such a momentous decision!

If we look upon our present, pandemic troubles only as something to put behind us, so we can take up business at the same, reckless pace as before, we are missing the point. This is, or can be, a golden opportunity to build a cleaner, greener, safer and kinder home - one we can share in tolerance and respect with both our fellow humans, our natural surroundings and all other living things. 

* Like Covid-19, PED, too, is a coronavirus. 

Please also read:

Beyond Covid 19 - Defeating the virus is just the beginning!

11,000 air pollution-related deaths avoided in Europe as coal, oil consumption plummet

CREA

Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air

A PinP photo.

The measures to combat the coronavirus have led to an approximately 40% reduction in average level of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution and 10% reduction in average level of particulate matter pollution over the past 30 days. This has resulted in 11,000 avoided deaths from air pollution. Story here.

Meteorologists say 2020 on course to be hottest year since records began

The Guardian

A PinP photo.

Global lockdowns have lowered emissions but longer-term changes needed, say scientists. 
Story here.

WARNING: LANGUAGE IN THIS VIDEO MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME. Bill Mahr reminds us how our contempt for nature and the way we produce food is biting us back.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney tours Fort MacMurray, site of major spring flooding - fails to see his own handiwork amid the damage. (Opinion)

by Larry Powell

Kenney was out inspecting the town of Fort MacMurray and region (above) this morning, where major flooding has resulted in a mandatory evacuation order going out for the entire downtown area. Big trucks and low-lying buildings are reportedly submerged. 

This is the same Premier who "dissed" a reporter recently for daring to ask if this might be the time to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable, sustainable energy. Kenney was especially shocked that the journalist was a member of the Calgary press core, who are apparently all supposed to be cozy little members of the same club, parroting Kenny's anti-science lies about the consequences of continuing to exploit the tar sands. 

Fort Mac - 2016. A Creative Commons photo.

This is also the same Premier who is spending millions of tax dollars from his own citizens, including desperate, unemployed oil workers, to fund a "war room," spreading mis-information about the consequences of a changing climate (more floods, wildfires, rains and droughts) and slandering environmental groups in the process. 

Until this man joins the 21st century, realizes that fossil fuels are "oh-so-20th-century" and begins helping people to re-train for work in alternative, renewables energy projects, he'll get zero sympathy from me. Barely four years ago, catastrophic and historic wildfires decimated the same region, consuming many homes and businesses and raining havoc and misery down on hundreds of local citizens. 

Until we start to hold politicians like this accountable and call them out for the dangerous policies they advocate, these tragedies will only deepen.

In the age of Covid-19, these events are surely the last things we need right now!

                                                 -30-

Beyond Covid 19 - Defeating the virus is just the beginning!

by Larry Powell
The task of building a safer, healthier planet, surely, will only begin anew once we have defeated this beastly pandemic. So, are there lessons we can learn from Covid that we can actually use to blunt the assault of that other existential threat - manmade climate change?

Smoke obscures the sun in one of the increasing number of
wildfires in recent years - infernos which are starting earlier,
lasting longer and burning more intensely.
A Wikimedia photo.

The steps being implemented globally to counter the deadly virus, Covid 19, have surely been sweeping, drastic and unprecedented. 

And rightly so.

While we could argue over which crisis is more grave, one important reality seems clear. As with every other contagion to have attacked human civilization in past, Covid 19, too, will pass. 

Sadly, if we do not take steps which are similarly drastic to the ones now happening during the pandemic, that will not be the case with the climate crisis. This time, we must resolve to change in ways that are sustainable and ongoing.

Sadly, events unfolding before Covid clearly showed, we were simply not taking the bold and decisive steps to avoid climate disaster that we are now taking to combat the virus. Covid 19 reared its head just last year. The origins of the climate crisis emerged at least a-century-&-a-half ago at the dawn of the industrial revolution. And the signs of climate breakdown have been manifesting themselves with terrifying clarity for generations - longer, more severe and deadly storms, floods, droughts, wildfires, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and dying oceans. 

Only the proud, the wilfully blind or the ignorant will not have heard the warnings of our best experts by now - if we do not take reduce or eliminating our use of fossil fuels forthwith, parts of the planet will morph into "hothouses," where even the healthiest among us, will not survive.

Covid 19 has resulted in the drastic limiting of air travel, closure of polluting industrial plants, and banning of large gatherings on a scale that is historic and unprecedented. Ironically, these are all steps, if taken years ago, that would have likely helped blunt the climate crisis, too. 

Instead, we've been going ahead full-tilt with building more pipelines (including the one in BC that's trampling indigenous rights in the process), extracting more fossil fuels (including ones most damaging to the environment), and electing leaders who either deny the science, promote policies which lead to further, widespread destruction of the rain forests and oceans, or all of the above! Those efforts have surely been nothing short of misguided, vapid or wilfully harmful.

The very things climate scientists have been warning us against,  are now unfolding, as I write this. Flooding has devastated Fort MacMurray, Alberta, a scant four years after wildfires raged through, destroying thousands of homes and businesses. 

The tragedy of the Australian bushfires emerged in all its horror, for all to see, scant months ago.

Yet our news media remain shamefully reluctant to even ask whether any of this might be because of manmade climate change. So the residents (or their leaders) don't talk about it, either. To me, it's the elephant in the room...hard to ignore...but, they're doing it!

They simply don't (or won't), see the connection between unlimited air travel, unlimited and unfettered events like the World Cup and the Olympics, and increasing greenhouse gas concentrations that are leading us down a calamitous road. 

Eerily, some of the very steps being so desperately taken to beat down the virus - closing industrial plants and limiting air travel and large crowds - are among those which will help alleviate our climate crisis, too. Sadly, those measures will need to carry on after the virus has gone, simply because the ones taken, so far, are short-term and will not be enough to bring about the kind of transformation needed.

After all, the relentless burden of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has not "taken a pause," to wait for Covid to end.

All of the disastrous climate phenomena I've already mentioned, are continuing, unabated. (Sadly, even tho greenhouse gas levels are now dipping dramatically due to Covid-related lockdowns of industry and travel, it will not slow down the heating of the planet for some time. So, folks, our job has just begun. And we, like in the pandemic, are all in this together!

Please also read:

What could our post-pandemic world look like? It depends on you and me!