Thou Shalt Not Intensively Farm

That Irish pork scare and the outbreak of swine flu have raise some
difficult questions for the pig farming industry. These incidents of
course are just the latest in millenia of bad press. The Bible set the
tone early. 'Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall
ye not touch; they are unclean to you. ' (Leviticus 11.8) As reviews
go, it's hardly good for business. And yet, we continue to partake in
the sins of this particular flesh. If the snake in the Garden of Eden
had an odor, it would surely be that of grilled rashers.

These bacon bombshells have exploded in a contemporary newscylce that
is starting to take on an ever more apocalyptic tone. Is there
something in the Book of Revelation about pork famines and global
piggy pestilence? Yet, snuffle about a little in the undergrowth and
you may unearth an altogether different truffle of truth, one which
points to the malign hand of large-scale industrial farming practices,
rather than the hand of god, in bringing about our current porcine
plagues (too hammy?).

Across the globe, pork products account for some 38 per cent of the
250 million odd metric tonnes of meat produced each year. This
represents a five-fold increase in meat consumption on the middle of
the last century and estimates from the UN say this will climb to 300
million metric tonnes buy 2020 as the taste for meat develops
alongside the economies of emerging markets. To meet this demand the
raising of livestock has become industrialised along factory-like
processes. However, from a number of angles, this mode of production
is being challenged as a false economy; one with potentially hazardous
side-effects.

Domestically, the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food released its first report on the contamination of Irish pork
produce at the the end of May concluding that the source of the
contamination was “contaminated oil operating a burner being used to
dry bread prior to its inclusion in animal feed”.

What the report alludes to but does not address is the much larger
question of just what we are prepared to allow into the food chain as
the industrial farming industry seeks ever cheaper and more plentiful
animal feed. Some of what the offending feed processing plant in
Carlow was licensed to handle included “waste from...coffee, tea and
tobacco preparation and processing...paper and cardboard
packaging...mixed packaging; edible oil and fat.”

It's a simple case of what an old college professor of mine would call
'garbge in, garbage out'. We know now that each of the three major
recent food scares – Belgian dioxins, BSE and foot and mouth – all
resulted from impurity in animal feed. But do we really need another
large scale food-scare before we further refine our lists of what is
and isn't fit for the trough?

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has just upgraded swine flu
to a full blown pandemic status and health experts are looking back to
the viruse's origins in Mexico for clues to its etiology. The virus is
seen a quite similar to a combined human/ avian/ swine flu previously
detected in North Carolina in the US in 1998 that killed huge numbers
of pigs though did not make the leap to humans.

At the time North Carolina was home to, among other things, 10 million
pigs. Researchers considered it likely that the virus had mutated in
the hospitable environs of the cramped and filthy super-sties where
thousands of hogs wallowed together. The virus was able to develop
increased resistance to antibiotics as it was exposed to the low level
preventative doses of drugs that constituted part of the pigs' regular
diet. A similar explanation has been put forward to account for the
emegergnce of avian flu from intensive poultry farming in China.

Now there are murmmerings of a viral epicentre in the Mexican town of
La Gloria where hundreds of residents were struck down by an unknown
respiratory illness in February – before the current swine flu had
been identified. The village happens to be homes to the Granjas
Carroll pig production facility which houses 950,000 pigs. The plant's
parent company, American corporation Smithfield Foods has stated that
none of the pigs at its La Gloria facility have shown clinical
symptoms of swine flu. Still, questions remain about the role of
industrial farming in incubating new and dagerous viruses and while it
would appear that the threat of this swine flu is less than originally
feared, this should not lessen the urgency with which we pursue the
answers.

To some, these stories of mutating viruses and oil guzzling hogs are
the stuff of dystopian science fiction. In fact it is using precisely
this premise that a novel online campaign has been set up to expose
and campaign against heavily industrialised animal husbandry. At
www.themeatrix.com you can journey into The Meatrix where Leo the
chosen hog and his teacher Moopheus reveal “the truth about where your
food really comes from”.

Meanwhile, in the face of such tribulations, we may return to the good
book, for solace and perhaps from some answers too. As the Lord says,
in what appears to be a clear endorsement of free-range farming
principles, “I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from
your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a
thousand hills” (Psalm 50. 9-10). Amen.

Pig Facts
In 2007 Ireland produced 188,000 tonnes of pigmeat
The pig industry is estimated to be worth €368 million in exports to
the economy
7,000 people are employed in the sector, 1,200 of whom work on farms
There are roughly 500 pig producers in the State producing 3.6 million pigs