Pork Lobby: Our Poop Doesn’t Stink… as Much!

WNAX gets me reading about pig poop and new National Pork Board propaganda saying swine farms don’t smell as bad as they used to.

The study, funded by the Pork Checkoff and conducted by Harper Consulting in consultation with Southern Utah University, found that North Carolina pig farmers have significantly increased feed efficiency over the past 17 years. Long-term, continuous improvement has resulted in trending reductions in nutrient content in manure lagoons at the farms. Specifically, data gathered from more than 106,000 samples at the 182 participating North Carolina pig farms showed a reduction of 35% to 78% in the nutrient content from hog finishers in primary lagoons, and a reduction of 17% to 68% in primary lagoons for sow farms. Also, the study showed a reduction of 22% to 54% in ammonia levels [National Pork Board, “Study Shows Pig Farmers Improving Their Environmental Footprint Through Efficiencies,” 2019.10.15].

The study notes that ammonia emissions are still up in North Carolina, but that’s likely due to “increasing human growth and associated emission sources like automobiles, industry and human waste processing.” If North Carolina smells worse, it’s people poop, not pig poop!

Or so the National Pork Board paid its consultant to conclude. Harper Consulting makes clear at the top its study was commissioned to push back against data showing North Carolina’s swine farms are “a major and increasing source of ammonia”:

Industry Summary: Swine production and manure management and storage have been implicated as a major and increasing source of ammonia (NH3) emissions in North Carolina, with increasing environmental impact. Further, reports have stated that ammonium (NH4+) deposition, as measured by the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP, a program established to determine long-term trends in NH4+and other nutrient deposition in the United States), increased about 100% during periods overlapping the swine-production expansion period (1990-1996) in North Carolina,without considering deposition trends before or after the industry expansion or other changes that would have contributed to NH4+depositions.As a result of this and other concerns, the North Carolina legislature enacted a moratorium on new swine farms in 1997. The swine industry questions this conjecture.Because of a lack of emissions data, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) initiated studies across North Carolina to determine NH3emissions from livestock operations under a USEPA Air Consent Agreement with the livestock industries. These studies were undertaken from 2007 to 2009, as a National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS) funded by participating producers. These NAEMS studies estimated that swine NH3 emissions were 1.5 times larger from finisher and 18.3 times larger from sow production systems over what had been measured by a USDA study 10 years prior. The NAEMS authors suggested their increased estimates were likely caused by different measurement approaches and climate conditions but ignored other factors that affect emissions. The swine industry challenges the accuracy of the reported increase in emissions from swine farms since over this period the industry made numerous changes to improve feed efficiency which should have reduced emissions [Harper Consulting, “Changes in Ammonia Emissions from North Carolina Swine Lagoons Associated with Improved Production Management,” National Pork Board, 2019.08.01].

The pork industry spends a great deal of time rebutting scientific studies:

A study published in 2018 by the North Carolina Medical Journal concluded that families living near hog CAFOs saw higher rates of infant mortality and deaths from anaemia, kidney disease, and tuberculosis. Another study, from 2014, found these issues “disproportionately affect” people of colour: African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos are far more likely to live near CAFOs.

The North Carolina Pork Council declined an interview request, but has in the past criticised the study from 2014. In comments submitted to DEQ last March, the council also noted that the 2018 North Carolina Medical Journal study came from a research programme at Duke University that received funding from a critic of factory farming.

The industry insists that health concerns are exaggerated. “We don’t think these types of symptoms or things are going on in the communities where we do business,” Kraig Westerbeek, a senior director at Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer and the state’s dominant player, said in a deposition in reference to an older study that had found increased depression, anger, and confusion among neighbours who experienced hog-farm odours. “There are studies that can say almost anything,” he added [Barry Yeoman, “‘It Smells like a Decomposing Body’: North Carolina’s Polluting Pig Farms,” UK Guardian, 2019.08.27].

Yes, studies can say almost anything, when they are paid for by industry and face no peer-review. Now instead of following through on a 2000 agreement with North Carolina to get rid of open manure lagoons, Smithfield Foods and its pork lobby are trying to blame other human activity for the smell of their CAFO poop.

Related Marketing: In other propaganda, the National Pork Board provides a guide to marketing pork to Hispanics, : “The music is right. There’s a shared passion between us. It’s Time to Tango.”