Pork industry's "one percent illusion" debunked

For months, a pseudoscientific, low-ball estimate by the Manitoba Pork Council of the amount of phosphorus its industry contributes to Lake Winnipeg has gone essentially uncontested in the media. The power of suggestion has even led credulous reporters to depict is as the result of published studies. Yesterday the big lie was duly debunked on the op-ed pages of the Winnipeg Free Press.

The one per cent illusion
Pork industry shirks its responsibility for water woes

Thu Jan 25 2007

By Alan Baron

LATE last year, the Manitoba Pork Council astounded many Manitobans with full-page newspaper ads proclaiming that hog manure contributes a mere one per cent of the total phosphorus load to Lake Winnipeg.

Shortly after, one of my colleagues obtained an unpublished document outlining the assumptions upon which the MPC estimate is based. Upon reading these Technical Notes by Don Flaten, a University of Manitoba soil scientist, it becomes immediately obvious that the Pork Council is seeking to perpetrate a one per cent illusion upon Manitobans.

As Flaten himself cautions in the document: "The one per cent estimate is not a precise figure; it's a rough estimate with some substantial assumptions."

Substantial assumptions indeed.

The most substantial of these assumptions is that all agricultural sources of phosphorus -- from synthetic fertilizer applied by grain farmers to liquid hog wastes disposed of by industrial hog barn owners -- move at an equal rate into Manitoba waters, especially Lake Winnipeg.

Applying this assumption to data from the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board's 2005 Interim Report and other sources, the MPC makes the following calculations.

Of the total phosphorous load to Lake Winnipeg from all sources, Manitoba agriculture contributes 14 per cent. Of the agricultural phosphorus applied in the province, 85 per cent comes from synthetic fertilizer. The remaining 15 per cent comes from manure, 55 per cent of this from hog manure. Therefore, the MPC calculates: 14% x 15% x 55% = approximately 1%.

Unfortunately for the Pork Council, the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board itself refutes the MPC's fundamental assumption. At page 25 of its interim report, the board makes a point of stating that, in Manitoba, phosphorus in the form of synthetic fertilizer has been applied to land generally in balance with what crops use. Indeed, the data in the report actually show an overall net negative balance of phosphorus on lands fertilized with synthetic phosphorus.

This is not surprising because the high cost of synthetic fertilizer limits the amount that individual grain farmers can economically apply. What it means is that, at least in theory, province-wide synthetic fertilizer use is, on balance, contributing zero per cent.

If this is so, what then happens to the Pork Council's one per cent?

Obviously, manure's importance would increase and could actually contribute up to 100 per cent of the agricultural phosphorus making its way into Lake Winnipeg. Using this, the appropriate calculation would then be 14% (from all agricultural sources) x 100% (manure's contribution) x 55% (hog portion of all manure) = 7.7%.

Let us put this figure into perspective. According to Manitoba Water Stewardship, the nutrient crisis currently threatening Lake Winnipeg has resulted from a rise in the lake's phosphorus of just 10 per cent over the past 30 years. As with climate change, there is a tipping-point where even small amounts of added nutrients may provoke a cascade of problems, such as those we are witnessing in Lake Winnipeg.

The Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board reports that of all the phosphorus entering Lake Winnipeg, most comes from out of province (the lake's watershed is huge) and from natural processes beyond our control. When we remove the sources of phosphorus from outside Manitoba from the equation, the hog industry's impact becomes more striking and significant. By looking at what is happening only in Manitoba, agriculture as a whole contributes 33.3 per cent of the phosphorus to Lake Winnipeg and the hog industry's share is 18.3 per cent.

Keep in mind that the Pork Council's estimation methodology is simplistic at best. There are many other factors such as manure spills, topography, soil texture and productivity that must be taken into account in any objective estimate.

Moreover, the MPC relies largely on averaged data from 1994 through 2001, collected prior to the massive expansion in the hog industry in Manitoba. Manitoba Water Stewardship's latest (2006) phosphorus estimate assigns to all of Manitoba's towns, cities and industrial activities combined -- everything we do besides agriculture -- just nine per cent of the phosphorus entering Lake Winnipeg. Agriculture's contribution is now estimated to be 15 per cent.

When taken together, this all means that the Pork Council's one per cent claim simply has no credibility. Indeed, if the one per cent illusion was fact, then why is the intensive livestock industry the only food production system that the government has had to regulate? Why has the hog industry been "singled out" for a pause and a Clean Environment Commission review?

Clearly, the province recognizes that over-applying nutrients on land is the key factor in increasing the potential for nutrients to move into water. Indeed, the stated objective of its Water Quality Management Zones proposal is "to protect water from nutrients that may arise from the over-application of fertilizers, animal manure, and municipal wastewater sludge to adjacent lands beyond the amounts reasonably required for the benefit of crops and other plants within the immediate growing season."

The City of Winnipeg has committed to cutting its share of phosphorus loading to Lake Winnipeg from six per cent to four per cent. What is the hog industry proposing to do to reduce its contribution, apart from asking for and successfully negotiating regulations that allow massive amounts of surplus nutrients to be applied to the land?

Clearly, the Manitoba Pork Council is trying to avoid public scrutiny of the industry with full-page ads insisting that "water quality is everyone's responsibility." They have conjured up the one per cent illusion to try to convince Manitobans that the hog industry's contribution is not significant enough to warrant any change in the industry's production practices or rates of expansion.

However, public relations campaigns do nothing to save our most precious public resource -- water -- from further degradation. Nature is speaking to us now more loudly than ever, and Nature never lies. But is anyone actually listening?

Alan Baron is co-chair of Citizens for the Responsible Application of Phosphorus. CRAP is a grassroots organization of rural and urban individuals, community groups and scientists formed to research and provide public comment on issues specific to the relationship between phosphorus land application and water quality in Manitoba.

On eve of sustainability review, a challenge to government accountability

On the eve of the first public meetings of the Clean Environment Commission's hog industry review, activists fire a shot across the bow of the provincial government:

For Immediate Release
January 21, 2007

13 1/2 YEARS NEEDED TO FIND HOG DATA - GOVERNMENT CLAIMS

As the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission (CEC) embarks on the first round of its pork industry review this week, the NDP Government has revealed that it cannot provide vital information on the industry's environmental record until the year 2020.

The revelation came in a letter, received by Ruth Pryzner, a farmer and former Councillor in the Rural Municipality of Daly. Manitoba Conservation's Access and Privacy Co-ordinator signed the letter, which is dated December 22, 2006.

Last November, Pryzner submitted a number of Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) requests to Manitoba Conservation for basic environmental data relating to the Pork Industry, in order to prepare a submission to the CEC review.

The letter to Pryzner stated, "The department requested an extension of 13 years and six months to fully complete your requests. The Manitoba Ombudsman concurred with this request...." Normally, extensions of FIPPA response time requirements are for 30 days.

Pryzner's reaction: "Either they don't have this information, which raises a real issue of competency, or they want to keep it hidden from the public, using FIPPA and the Ombudsman as shields, which clearly undermines democracy, transparency and accountability of government, and the public's right to know. In either case, the situation is totally unacceptable and represents a disservice to the public interest."

Included in the request were annual soil test data, manure management plans, inspection reports, well drilling logs and permit applications for each hog operation licensed by the Province.

"This information is absolutely essential for a serious assessment of the environmental sustainability of the pork industry in Manitoba," Pryzner said. "Without the actual environmental data, the CEC will be prevented from properly executing its mandate, and the exercise will be a waste of time, money and energy."

She added, "If it will take 13 1/2 years for Conservation to supply this information, then obviously the moratorium on hog expansion ought to be extended until 2020 so that the CEC can obtain the information required to properly complete its work."

Glen Koroluk, a community organizer with the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition, agrees: "Manitoba Conservation does not appear to have either the capacity or the desire to provide vital information on the pork industry, which the public is lawfully entitled to receive in a timely fashion. Indeed, the department still does not even know where all the hog barns and lagoons are located throughout the province. It's scandalous."

"This stonewalling by Manitoba Conservation only serves to compromise the integrity of the CEC review process, even before it begins," he said. "This is not what the people of Manitoba expect from its provincial government on this important issue."

In this context, Koroluk noted: "We are further disappointed that Minister Struthers is still reluctant to call full-blown hearings for the hog industry review." He added, "without powers of subpoena, sworn testimony, cross examination, the ability to call for motions and the support of the Manitoba Evidence Act, this review will be nothing more than a pre-election gesture designed to shore up faltering public support because of the NDP government's neglect of the environment."

For further information and interviews, contact:

Ruth Pryzner (204) 328-5385
Glen Koroluk (204) 296-2872 (cell) or (204) 943-3945
Beyond Factory Farming Coalition (www.beyondfactoryfarming.org)

Copies of the FIPPA information response can be obtained from Mr. Koroluk at the opening of the CEC meetings, Monday, January 22, 2007, 12:30 pm Friedensfeld Community Hall (4 kms south of Steinbach).

Vegetarian the new Prius

From Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegetarian-is-the-new-pri_b_39014.html

For those who are vegetarian, for those thinking about it and for those who want a different perspective on the issue of global warming, I think you will all find this article above interesting.

The price of pesticides in southwestern Manitoba

A study conducted by a University of Manitoba student for her Master's degree thesis suggests that the insecticides sprayed in rural southwestern Manitoba pose a small but statistically significant health hazard to people living in the area. Today on CBC Radio Noon, the author of the ambitious, data-crunching study, Jennifer Magoon, emphasized that the slightly increased rates of birth defects and other disorders she documented applied to the population in general. Her data didn't allow her to tease out the possibly much greater effect on people exposed to the chemicals up close and personal, whether occupationally or because they live in an insecticide hotspot. A southwestern Manitoba farm family's close encounter with a crop duster this fall suggests the acute consequences, at least, can be pretty frightening.

A turning point for Manitoba agriculture?

Manitoba has never been closer to the possibility of turning the corner away from the socially discredited industrial agriculture of the late twentieth century to the humane, sustainable and socially responsible agriculture taking root (no pun intended, but happilly accepted) throughout the industrialized world. A done deal - aided and abetted by the governments of Winnipeg and Manitoba - to build a mega hog-slaughter plant in a Winnipeg industrial park generated so much public resistance last year that the done deal has now become, in all probability, a dead deal.

Perhaps cynically, perhaps sincerely, the provincial government - facing an election, likely this spring or summer - has not only lost its enthusiasm for the hog plant, it has imposed a "pause" (a moratorium lite) on the hog industry and honoured a 2003 recommendation from the Clean Environment Commission by announcing a public CEC review of the sustainability of the hog industry.

That review could very easily become a tool for the government to greenwash the hog industry unless Manitoba citizens become fully engaged in the process, insisting that the industry be held up to modern standards of environmental sustainability and social responsibility. That process has begun. In public meetings next week and via written submissions until Feb. 2, the CEC will be listening to what Manitobans have to say about what the scope of the review should be. Currently, its mandated scope is woefully narrow: environmental sustainability. As important as this aspect of the industry is, so are its many other consequential impacts: public health, the survival of small-scale family farms, worker health and safety, government transparency and accountability, animal welfare - the list goes on.

If you care about any of these issues, get involved - and stay tuned.