The Pig Business Blog

We are delighted that South Derbyshire District Councillors have listened to their constituents and have voted unanimously to oppose this pig factory farm proposal. We hope that the County Council will follow their recommendation and refuse to open the floodgates to mega pig farming in the UK

Jim Davies, a local resident and member of Foston Community Forum who attended the meeting said that his reaction was that of ‘utter relief, particularly for local families who would be closely affected by the development’.

The meeting was attended by all members of the planning committee and numerous local residents. Following a lengthy appraisal by planning officer Tim Denning who wrote a report recommending that the council accept the proposal, the chairperson Lisa Brown said that a few members of the committee  wanted to speak. Amongst them was Councillor Julie Patten who came out very strongly against the development, quoting the report by Planning Consusltants DPDS commissioned by Foston Community Forum. Other councillors also stood up and spoke, one of which was Trevor Southerd who said that the proposal was ‘obnoxious’ and that there were too many unknowns. He went on to say that the development ‘was not a farm’, and that he was fundamentally opposed to it.

A third councillor came out against the development and said that it represented a threat to the capital investment of taxpayers, ie Foston Hall prison. Another stated that the locals would effectively face  a ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ around the development.

Councillor Peter Watson said that it was an agricultural and industrial development, not a farm, and that he was fundamentally opposed to it.

A motion was then proposed that the Planning Officer’s recommendations should be rejected. It passed with unanimous support. The committee agreed that they would write to the County Council to confirm that they oppose the proposal and recommend that the County Council do the same.

The planning consultant’s report was apparently crucial in the decision as it raised issues that were not previously considered. You can read the report in full report here

The Facts

• This site is only 130 metres from a women’s prison and natal unit as well as other residential buildings.

• Midland Pig Producers have been claiming 97% efficiency for the removal of odour and ammonia from the slurry, but verification tests showed that fine particle filtration was only 73% efficient at times. Source p.23

• Even if claims to stop up to 80% of odour, 90% of ammonia and 90% of germs and endotoxins are accurate it means that odours of the equivalent of 5,000 pigs, and germs and endotoxins equivalent to that of 2,500 pigs would be emitted.

• In their statement to Derbyshire County Council, the Health Protection Agency states: ‘Recent research has found that those living up to 150m downwind of an intensive farming installation could be at risk of adverse human health effects associated with exposure to multi- drug resistant organisms’. Source p.27  The prison is only 130 metres from the site.

• The alleged sustainability of the development is based on the anaerobic digestor which requires 45,000 tonnes of waste to be driven to the site annually by HGVs, requiring 84 lorry movements per week.

• There has been overwhelming local opposition, with over 13,000 objections.

• GGD Nederlands, the umbrella organisation which advises and informs  over 400 Municipal Health Services in Holland, has advised that intensive farms should not be built closer than 250 metres from receptors, regardless of whether they will provide mitigating measures such as filtration and a biodigester.

Please see the newly published report by Planning Consultants DPDS who outline in detail why the application should be refused.

Pig Business Statement re: proposed mega pig factory farm in Foston, Derbyshire

28^th October 2011

Intensive mega- piggeries such as the one being proposed in Foston, Derbyshire for 25,000 pigs are not the direction in which British farming should be heading. They cause pigs to suffer and are a danger to people’s health. This is an industrial scale development on greenfield land. The alleged sustainability of the development is based on the anaerobic digestor which requires 45,000 tonnes of waste to be driven to the site annually by HGVs, which will result in significant noise and air pollution. There has been overwhelming local opposition, with over 13,000 objections and 10,000 people signing our online petition.

Regarding the Environment Agency’s position, please note that they state that ‘the requirements for a permit are outside the scope of this consultation’ and that ‘Local views will be sought as part of the permitting process and given the extreme proximity of some receptor dwellings the proposed mitigation measures for noise, vibration, odour and light will need to reviewed and updated as time goes on in line with technological advances to meet public expectations.’ Source

After receiving thousands of letters about the potential risks to human health, Derbyshire County Council added the Health Protection Agency to the list of consultees, who stated that ‘the application does not provide detailed analysis and risk assessment of potential point source and fugitive emissions to air, of odour; particulate matter; ammonia; bioaerosols; or emissions from the proposed CHP plant.’ These potential health risks, and the risk of antibiotic resistance, are enormous.

The HPA goes on to say that: ‘Recent research has found that those living up to 150m downwind of an intensive farming installation could be at risk of adverse human health effects associated with exposure to multi- drug resistant organisms’. Source p.27

This site which will be just 130 metres from a women’s prison and natal unit as well as other residential buildings.

Tracy Worcester, Director of Pig Business says: “Although this planned farm claims it will be more environment and animal welfare friendly, the pigs will live in a cocktail of gases from biodegrading faeces, and will need constant dosing with antibiotics. Overuse of antibiotics in factory farming has already helped cause many human diseases like e-coli, salmonella, campylobacter and the pig strain of MRSA to become resistant to antibiotics. Almost everyone who lives in the area is up in arms as the pathogens are not completely destroyed by the anaerobic digester and can escape through the double filter into the surrounding environment.”

Midland Pig Producers have been claiming 97% efficiency for the removal of odour and ammonia from the slurry, but the manufacturers’ brochure for the air scrubbing equipment which MPP plan to install in the pig sheds- the Dutchman MagixX system, claims to stop up to 80% of odour, 90% of ammonia and 90% of germs and endotoxins (pdf attached).

This means that odours of the equivalent of 5000 pigs, and germs and endotoxins equivalent to that of 2500 pigs would be emitted.

Please see the newly published report by Planning Consultants DPDS who outline in detail why the application should be refused.

We hope that at the meeting on the 1^st of November 2011 South Derbyshire District Councillors will join the Parish Council, local MP, Soil Association, Friends of the Earth and others in opposing this proposal.

Pig Business press release. Issued September 22, 2011

STUFFED!

A new drive to highlight the dangers of Britain’s newest pork ‘factory’ has been launched in the run up to the Christmas season.

Stuffed! exposes plans to build a giant pig breeding unit in the UK, with Derbyshire council currently considering the application.

Designed, it is claimed, with the latest in technology and animal welfare, the sad truth is that the animals that enter these steel prisons will never see a green field, walk on grass or behave naturally: the pigs will literally be stuffed away for their entire lives, out of sight and mind.

The application by Midland Pig Producers is for a “breeding unit for 2,500 sows near the village of Foston”.  However when they have had their litters, there will be up to 25,000 pigs in the intensive unit  which will be just 130 metres from a women’s prison and natal unit.

It has already caused a local backlash with concerns about potential health hazards and fears that the plans herald a new and dark dawn of intensive agriculture that could wipe out the UK’s small livestock farms.  Dominic West, star of The Wire and the nephew of a small- scale pig farmer, is among   thousands who have expressed their concerns at the Foston proposal.

“They’re going to have 1,000 pigs a week transported from this farm and to say there’s not going to be a smell, and that there’s not going to be traffic issues, there’s not going to be disease issues, seems to me an extraordinary claim,” he said.

Campaigners have already successfully fought off an application for two huge dairy farms in Lincolnshire, one of which would have been 66 times larger than the average UK herd of 120 cows.

Pig waste emits a cocktail  of  gasses  including  ammonia and  hydrogen sulphide  mixed  with  antibiotic  resistant  bacteria  and  organic  particles. This can have disastrous consequences for peoples’ health if it escapes into the environment.

The new Foston unit is designed to minimise the smells, noise and waste that intensive pig farming creates. To achieve this, the unit is sealed and ventilated with a double filter system.  The design includes an anaerobic digester to convert the methane gas from the pigs’ biodegrading effluent into heat, which in turn helps power the system. The end product from the digester would be sold to neighbouring farmers to use as fertilizer.

Animals reared in such “zero-grazing” factory units are kept inside throughout their lives. When the sows give birth they are stuffed again – this time into steel stalls which allow them just enough room to turn through 360 degrees and no more. And this is considered “humane” under the UK’s animal welfare rules.

Tracy, Marchioness of Worcester, a leading campaigner against such practices,  says: “Sadly this is what the UK animal welfare laws deems to be a humane breeding unit, while in reality, we are torturing animals before we eat them”

Tracy’s film Pig Business also exposes the dangers of   intensive pig farming to human health and rural livelihoods, and she dismisses claims that pathogens cannot escape the Foston unit.

“Although this planned farm claims it will be more environment and animal welfare friendly, the pigs will live in a cocktail of gases from biodegrading faeces, and will need constant dosing with antibiotics. Overuse of antibiotics in factory farming has already helped cause many human diseases like e-coli, salmonella, campylobacter and the pig strain of MRSA to become resistant to antibiotics. Almost everyone who lives in the area is up in arms as the pathogens are not completely destroyed by the anaerobic digester and up to 40% can escape through the double filter into the surrounding environment.  The only people who are not objecting are the local farmers who buy the dried fertiliser.”

Midland Pig Producers have stated that economies of scale from the 50,000 pigs produced annually at the Foston unit would help compete against the large-scale foreign imports flooding the British market and which are not subject to the UK’s welfare standards.

A statement issued by the company said: “We would like to reassure people that we operate in accordance with the strict DEFRA guidelines and Assured Food Standards. Health and safety has been taken into account throughout the design process and we should stress that there are no airborne diseases originating from pigs which transfer to humans.”

All aspects of the operation, it said, would comply with environmental regulations, including light and noise pollution and gas emissions. The buildings would be flushed every 48 hours, and the air filtered twice before being released into the atmosphere.

BPEX, the pig industry body, said the Foston proposal would be “a brand new state-of-the-art unit” – a statement that appears as meaningless as the NFU’s support for what it calls “sustainable intensification” of agriculture.

There is no such thing as “sustainable” intensification. It is just intensification in a global completion to produce ever cheaper food at the expense of our health, the environment and animal welfare.

“We should protect our farmers to produce quality over quantity and put health above profits.  The extra cost to consumers could be compensated by our eating less meat, thereby reduce problems of obesity, heart disease and cancer,” says Tracy.

Animal welfare groups have helped to make people aware of the dangers and cruelty involved in intensive poultry farming. But as we sit down to our Christmas dinners we should spare a thought for pigs too and “all the trimmings” which they help provide.

Ends

Tracy Worcester
(Pig Business Director)

Press Release- 22 August 2011

Food Sovereignty, a European answer to the crisis!
Krems – Austria – 22nd August 2011

After 5 days of intense, inspired and constructive exchange, the Nyeleni Europe 2011, European Forum for Food Sovereignty, closed on Sunday. The Forum adopted the first European Declaration on Food Sovereignty.

Over 400 delegates from European countries committed to strengthening their collective capacity to reclaiming community control over food system, to resisting the agro-industrial system and to expanding and consolidating a strong European movement for Food Sovereignty.

Over 120 organisations and individuals, representing civil society and social movements, discussed the impact of current European and global policies. Together they developed a comprehensive platform and a set of principles to achieve food sovereignty in Europe. The Forum emphasized the contribution of voices of young people, woman and food producers, whose concerns are often overlooked.  This diversity and richness of experience enabled the Nyeleni Europe 2011 Forum to identify a common framework, and to define a joint action plan based on a democratic and participatory process.

The Declaration proclaims, “we are convinced that a change to our food system is a first step towards a broader change in our societies”. The Forum delegates strongly committed to taking the food system into their own hands by:

• Working towards an ecologically sustainable and socially just model of food production and consumption based on non-industrial smallholder farming, processing and alternative distribution.
• Decentralizing the food distribution system and shortening the chain between producers and consumers.
• Improving working and social conditions, particularly in field of food and agriculture?
• Democratizing decision-making on the use of the Commons and heritage (land, water, air, traditional knowledge, seeds and livestock).
• Ensuring that public policies at all levels guarantee the vitality of rural areas, fair prices for food producers and safe, GMO-free food for all.

At this time of political volatility, social and economic crisis, the delegates of the Nyeleni Forum for Food Sovereignty reaffirmed their vision of unity that emphasized the right of all peoples to define their own food and agriculture policies and systems, without harming either people or precious natural resources, as Food Sovereignty implies.

That’s why we demand food sovereignty in Europe now.
The Steering Committee of the Nyeleni European Forum
***
The full text of the declaration is available here: Nyeleni Europe Declaration
***
For more information please contact the following Nyeleni European Forum Steering Committee members:

• Genevieve Savigny (FR, EN): 0033 625551687
• Irmi Salzer (DE, EN): 0043 6991182634
• Javier Sanchez (ES) : 0034 609359380
• Luca Colombo (IT, EN): 0039 3483988618
• David Sanchez (ES, EN): 0034 91 306 99 00/21

La Via Campesina in Movement… Food Sovereignty Now!

The international peasant’s movement La Via Campesina, that has 200 million members from 70 countries, has launched a new video presenting its struggle for peasant’s agriculture and food sovereignty all around the world.

An exceptional turnout of people gathered in Burton on Trent town hall on Thursday 23rd  June to attend the film screening and public debate on the proposed plans to build a giant pig farm in the village of Foston. The meeting was jointly organised by Pig Business and The Soil Association, the UK’s leading charity campaigning for planet-friendly food and farming.

The debate follows an application put forward by Midland Pig Producers (MPP) to build a pig farm which would house 2,500 sows and 20,000 piglets. If the plan were to be approved this would be one of the UK’s largest pig farms, with the average size of large-scale intensive pig farms in the UK currently resting at around 500–900 sows.

Months of debate between MPP, animal welfare campaigners, environmental bodies, and farmers preceded the public meeting, which drew the focus of the debate to the local Derbyshire residents – the people who will feel the impact of the mega farm on a daily basis if the proposed plans were to go ahead.

Within the audience were residents from Foston and the surrounding area who were extremely vocal in expressing their anxieties about the proposals. Concerns were voiced on how their quality of life would be affected by the inevitable smells and noise pollution, and how the transportation of 1000 pigs a week to slaughter would affect traffic in the area. Following the recent new stories connecting MRSA and E.coli, with intensive farming, many people also expressed concerns about the potential health implications.

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director, spoke at the event: “The Soil Association is against the introduction of mega farms into the UK and our objections are largely based on health: the risks to pig health and indeed human health. There are real concerns that unless antibiotics are used more sparingly we’ll find a range of human disease that we just can’t treat. We’ll go back to a period – which none of us are old enough to remember – when all sorts of common diseases were lethal, and that’ll be true for animals as well as people.”

Jim Davies, a local activist who has been at the spearhead of the objections, said: “I haven’t got issues with Midland Pig Producers, but what I have got issues with is what they are proposing. It’s too big. It doesn’t need to be this size. The technology in all of this is really untried in the UK – we are a great big guinea pig in Foston and we’re having it tested on us. All I can say to people is to continue to object. If you’ve written a letter then if needs be write another. There are so many issues in all of this that affect everyone within the community and beyond. Say your bit and object.”

Tracy Worcester, director of Pig Business the film and Campaign, said: “I made a film called Pig Business that describes the true costs of cheap pork which is flooding UK supermarket shelves from the Continent where, according to Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) 90% of the farms are not obeying EU animal welfare legislation. Instead of trying to compete with these cheap imports, our government should be ensuring our family farms be paid to reflect their benefits to society i.e. biodiversity, high animal welfare, protection of the environment, conservation of rural landscapes and rural communities.”

Click here to see a film of Dominic West, star of the TV show The Wire who grew up in local area, showing his support for the campaign.

Click here to watch our short film that summarises the impacts of the overuse of antibiotics and antimicrobials in factory farming and the potential consequences for human health.

Click here to register your object to the Derbyshire County Council. The local MP, Heather Wheeler and The Environment Agency have already objected alongside over 7500 others. We only have until July 11th to respond to the planning application so please make your voice heard now.

Pig Business reply to a recent article in the Yorkshire Post:
All eyes on ‘revolution’ in pig farming, Yorkshire Post 9th May 2011

Dear Sir,

Foston Pig Farm

The ‘green circle’ initiative, which has been widely included in Midland Pig Producers publicity material, as well as in the Environmental Statement that accompanied their planning application, needs some clarification. A letter from Carter Ruck, lawyers for MPP who threatened to sue the Soil Association if it did not withdraw its objections to the mega farm, describes the scheme as being trialled ‘with the specific purpose of including locally grown beans to mix into our client’s pigs’ diet.’ Does MPP commit to not using any imported soya? Most soya comes from South America where it is commonly grown on cleared Rainforest or Cerrados habitats, poisoning the soil with pesticides and depriving local people of land on which to grow their food.

The Environmental Statement also describes the sows’ living conditions. The floor incorporates an ‘innovative concrete and plastic slatted floor which allows all pig waste to pass through into the water tanks below’. The slatted floor system is not an innovation, it is used by almost all factory pig farms in the world. The tanks will not hold just water, you can be sure. The toxic fumes from the untreated faeces and urine in the ‘water tanks’ cause 25% of factory farm workers in the US to suffer permanent lung damage.

‘The large areas of storage under the buildings together with a further water storage tank will provide water or slurry storage’ Is this the 75 X 25 metre uncovered tank shown on the plans? Could this be new way to describe a slurry lagoon, a dreadful cesspit of untreated waste which breeds flies, spreads disease and emits toxic fumes which poison neighbours? As tanks like this age the soil underneath them can settle causing them to leak, contaminating the water table with pig waste and nitrates.

If, after all there turn out to be the same problems of smell, disease risk and contamination as there are with almost all other intensive pig farms, the people who will suffer most will be the inmates of Foston Hall Prison. Their cells and yards are downwind from the prevailing westerlies, and their windows open towards the slurry and water tank, a likely breeding ground for flies which a recent US report has found can spread antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Earlier this year the British Government was found to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights by denying voting rights to prisoners. Have the prisoners at Foston been informed of the application, and has the planning committee considered their views?  If the prisoners are denied an input into the process, the council might find itself in breach of the Convention and liable for damages to prisoners whose rights have been denied them.

Your article emphasises that the new farm will meet RSPCA welfare standards which insist that pigs have access to straw or similar materials and that when farrowing, the sows must have ‘clean, dry straw which is well shaken up, or other suitable bedding’. However MPP’s plans ‘to deliver sufficient product, probably chopped straw mixed with feed, to each pen in the shed to allow rooting and foraging behaviour’ may fall short of this requirement as chopped straw may not be sufficiently manipulable to meet either the EC Pig Welfare Directive or the more stringent RSPCA Freedom Food Standards.

Finally, because the piglets will be weaned at only 3-4 weeks, before their immune system has properly developed, the pigs are likely to require routine preventative antibiotics, a common feature of intensive indoor farming. (Organic farms usually wean at 40 days, nearly six weeks.) The World Health Organization identified widespread use of antimicrobials outside human medicine as a ‘serious concern given the alarming emergence in humans of bacteria, which have acquired, through this use, resistance to antimicrobials.’ Although MPP’s lawyers have claimed that the bio-digester process produces an odourless, pathogen- free fertiliser, the Soil Association has pointed to a report that shows that the temperature inside the bio-digester is not hot enough to kill Clostridium difficile, a dangerous disease which has been found in British pigs and which may be passed to humans.

Yours sincerely,

Alastair Kenneil (Pig Business Co-Director)

Pig Business Director, Tracy Worcester, spoke at the ‘Brussels Spring Briefing’, a conference organised by the Parliament Magazine in partnership with the European Commission’s Representation in the UK on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 in Westminster. Her talk was part of the roundtable debate session entitled; ‘EU and the Countryside: Greener, fairer, better?’ Here is what she said:

Pig farmers in the EU have suffered a ‘winter of discontent’ with low supermarket prices for pork, high protein feed costs, a health scandal caused by animal feed contaminated with dioxin, and the recent discovery that flies are spreading antibiotic resistant bacteria from intensive farms to neighbouring urban areas.

The crisis underlines the vulnerability of the factory farming system which relies for its profitability on imported protein (soya) feed, polluting waste dispersal, direct and indirect subsidies, illegal treatment of animals and the reliance on antibiotics to keep the pigs alive

Destroys rainforest and contributes to green house gasses

Intensive farms rely on soya based pig feed, much of which is imported from South America where it is grown on cleared rainforest or ploughed-up Cerrados, a unique and diverse ecosystem which is being destroyed at the rate of 10,000 hectares every day to feed European livestock. The factory farming system’s reliance on shipping soya from countries 8,000 miles away makes it vulnerable to oil price hikes and to the volatility of the commodity market and is a huge contributor of Green house effect. In contrast, small independent farms usually grow their own cereal and protein on the farm, fertilise the fields with manure from the animals, do not pollute the air and water and rarely have to use antibiotics.

Impacts on human health

Pigs produce up to ten times as much faecal waste as humans so, with tens (often hundreds) of thousands of pigs in these sheds, there is a huge amount of waste emitting a cocktail of gasses (including ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, mixed with antibiotic resistant bacteria and organic particles) from the shed ventilation shafts, from the storage lagoon, and from the fields on which the solids are spread or the liquid sprayed.

About 25% of workers in US pig factories suffer permanent lung damage, usually through chronic asthma or bronchitis. Because the atomised sewage drifts downwind, neighbours of factory pig farms suffer running and burning eyes, sleeplessness, anxiety, respiratory and neurological diseases and depression.

The heavy use of antibiotics to prevent disease caused by early weaning of piglets and overcrowding is resulting in spread of antibiotic resistant diseases like e-coli, salmonella, campylobacter and the pig strain of MRSA.

Impacts on aquatic life

In many countries the untreated pig waste is sprayed onto fields which often become saturated. The waste, which on a small farm would be a valuable fertilizer, contaminates drinking water with nitrates and finds its way to lakes and the sea causing toxic algae blooms which kill enormous numbers of fish and marine organisms.

Destroys rural economies, food security and sovereignty

Large scale factory farms now have to compete with even bigger companies who aim to dominate a market by first capturing control of the slaughter capacity in a region. This vertical integration allows the industrial producer to control the whole process and to make its profit by selling finished meat products. This means it can pay very low prices to other pig breeders, who do not have slaughter capacity, and put them out of business.

Says Robert Kennedy Jr in the film, Pig Business, ‘the destruction of the small farm wasn’t casual it’s systematic. It is the intention, it is the way they make money, it’s the design of this industry.’

Subsidies in the EU

Small scale EU farmers along with farmers across the globe are facing competition from giant companies who, due to economies of scale are the prime beneficiaries from direct and indirect subsidies.

Direct subsidies are primarily in the form of export subsidies

Indirect subsidies include:

• Area payments to farmers for cereal crops for pig feed – the larger the farm area the larger the subsidy.
• Tariff free imports of Soya from South America

US Company Smithfield Foods Inc, the world’s biggest pork producer, was helped to move into Poland in the late 1990s by a taxpayer guaranteed loan of $25m from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that paved the way for further loans of $75m from private banks. As the Minister for Agriculture in Poland pointed out at the time,

It’s an unfair international competition- Polish farmers produce food of much higher quality… but they have huge difficulties in accessing easy, affordable credit to develop their farm… So nobody can say it’s a fair competition. I would call it a kind of distorted competition.

This EBRD loan allowed Smithfield to buy Animex, a former state slaughter house and processing operation. Although it was valued at $500 million thanks to a EU tax payer subsidised ‘modernisation’ upgrade, Smithfield bought it for $50 million.  A deal that Joe Luter, former CEO of Smithfield, boasted to his shareholders cost them ‘10 cents in the dollar’.

Big industrial pig companies operate a centralised highly mechanised system of production, processing and distribution that also depends on indirect subsidies like wars to safeguard the uninterrupted supply of cheap oil, environment protection measures to clean up their waste, government investment in research technology and education, plus the transport infrastructure like super highways and bridges. All these benefits allow TN pig companies to comb the EU in search of good investment climates.

Good investment climates for agribusiness means countries with cheap currencies, low wages, compliant governments offering favourable tax incentives, lax environmental and animal welfare standards and poor standards at work.

Poland was one such country whose neo liberal government initially welcomed Smithfield Foods in order to compete with cheap imported pork from giant pig companies operating in  EU15 countries. However, in 2003 a Polish government report showed that all 14 inspected Smithfield farms had violated environmental, construction, health and veterinary regulations. Smithfield’s low cost meat flooded the Polish market further bankrupting local small scale independent farmers. So, a new government in Poland tightened the regulations.

Smithfield response was to move part of its operations to Romania. Richard Poulson, CEO of Smithfield Foods said, “It has been an uphill fight in Poland and Romania is frankly a way for us to hedge our bets.”

Larry Pope, President and CEO of Smithfield Inc, explained the company’s strategy to develop low cost meat production in Eastern Europe and export into Western Europe. “……. we’ve got people in Western Europe who make 20 euro an hour when you’ve got people in Eastern Europe who make one and two euro an hour, you’ve got land in Western Europe, very hot place – land in Eastern Europe they will virtually give you. Plants in Western Europe are very expensive. Plants in Eastern Europe, they will virtually give to you for small dollars.”

Again Romania wanted to compete with the subsidized EU–15 pork flooding its market, so welcomed Smithfield.

Get big or get out is the motto in the EU as in the rest of the world.

In the UK, for example, in order to compete with cheap meat from giant producers operating in the EU market, a farmer’s cooperative is attempting to defy local opposition and persuade the council to give planning consent to build a 25,000 pig unit, by far the biggest in the UK.

CIWF found that most EU factory farms are operating below EU legal standards. Many authorities ignore the welfare directives so that their farmers can survive.  Thus undermining the higher welfare standards often operated on small scale farms.

Dumping on third countries

Because pork production in the EU benefits from these subsidies, there is a huge EU surplus which is exported to third countries below the cost of production. This is unfair competition and has the effect of either eliminating local producers in the importing countries or forcing them to compete by lowering the rules on animal welfare, the environment, agricultural wages and social protection.

Solutions:

The Common Agriculture Policy should remove all direct and indirect subsidies to large scale pig production/processing and increase payments to small farmers to reward them for public benefits which are not remunerated in the farm gate prices such as conservation of biodiversity, sustainable land use and the survival of rural communities.

We are calling for the new cap to encourage farmers to grow their own protein feed to reduce their dependence on distant producers and protect biodiversity and soil fertility by the protein crops nitrogen fixing properties. This would free land in South America to feed local people and prevent the import of GM contaminated animal feed crops to the UK.

In answer to my question at the Oxford Farming Conference in 2007 David Cameron said, “Just as we don’t accept cars that aren’t meeting our emission standards so we shouldn’t accept food that doesn’t meet our welfare standards.”

Now that he’s in power, pressure from banks and agri-industry, has perhaps prevented our Prime Minister from putting his money where his mouth is and challenging their free trade mantra.

Countries, in the EU, must be able to protect their farmers from low welfare and low cost products with tariff barriers. Food exported to a region below the cost of production is ‘dumping’, as it puts the importing country’s farmers out of business.

The Declaration:

1. Calls for the CAP post 2013 to provide increased support for farmers who move towards sustainable forms of pig husbandry respecting animal welfare and using local feed.
2. Calls for reforming a pork sector presently heavily dependent on imported protein feed and on exports of structural pork surpluses by introducing supply management of EU pork production, and regulating the market. This would include a ban of any form of export subsidy and an introduction of tariffs for imports of pork from third countries at prices below the EU average cost of production.
3. Calls on the EU to favours small and middle size farms with better distribution of farms among the regions and to adapt safety standards for small processing units to sell in their local market.
4. Calls on the EU to bring to an end the preventative use of antibiotics in pig farming.
5. Calls for improved enforcement of Council Directive on pig welfare 2008/120/EC that requires the provision of enrichment materials and prohibits routine tail docking.

This interview followed the US premier of Pig Business on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. 9th March. Full description and resources from this event can be found here.

‘Pig Business’ Documentary Director Tracy, the Marchioness of Worcester: MyFoxDC.com

Comment piece by Tracy Worcester

As reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy will be debated in the European Parliament this summer, three MEPs Jose Bove, Dan Jørgensen and Janusz Wojciechowski invited me to host an event entitled ‘The Hidden Costs of Factory Farming’ to inform their colleagues in the EU Parliament and Commission that ‘cheap’ meat would be very expensive if the factory farms were forced to pay their true costs.

Jose Bove, once a farmer himself, has for many years opposed genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture, and after being arrested for dismantling a MacDonald’s hamburger outlet that threatened to destroy his local town economy, is now a member of the European Parliament.

At the first of my trilogy of Government events held at the House of Commons, we showed clips from my film Pig Business. However, Bove insisted we screen the full length version. I was sceptical if busy MEPs and officials would bother to watch an hour long polemic, but to my surprise the 280 seater room was packed full with MEPs, EU Council and Commission officials, environmental, health and animal welfare NGOs, and the international press.

March 9^th, I will be holding a screening and panel discussion at the US Congress which is considering legislative proposals to improve farm animal welfare and restrict the use of antibiotics. Although adding antibiotics to pig feed to promote growth has been banned in the EU since 2003, it is still allowed in the US. Doctors and scientists are concerned that this practice is leading to new antibiotic resistant diseases which, like MRSA, pass from pigs to humans. A pilot study in Iowa found the pig strain of MRSA in 45% of the workers and 49% of the pigs.

Co-hosted by Bobby Kennedy Jr, nephew of John Kennedy the late US President, the Congress event comes at a time when the Environmental Protection Agency has retrieved some of the power taken from it by the Bush administration, and will apply stricter regulations to how factory farms dispose of their waste.

Smithfield and other factory producers store the waste in stinking lagoons and spray it on fields, a system which pollutes the coastline causing massive fish kills, and sickens neighbouring residents.

In March 2010 a court in Missouri ordered a Smithfield Foods subsidiary to pay local residents $11 million for “odours so offensive that they defied description,” said Stephen A. Weiss, a New York attorney who represented the families. He continues, “These corporations have chosen to invade traditional family farming communities and construct industrial operations that simply fail to respect the community and the land.”

The US still allows pregnant sows to be confined in steel cages so narrow that they cannot turn around or lie down properly. Some years ago Smithfield promised to ban sow stalls after a 10 year ‘adjustment’ period, but they have now reneged on this saying it would reduce their profit margin.

After the Congress Event,  I will be back in Brussels working on MEP, Janusz Wojciechowski’s suggestion that we invite a few  sympathetic MEPs to join us in compiling a declaration on the need for CAP to stop financing industrial farming, spend more on supporting traditional small and medium scale mixed crop and livestock farming and introduce method of production labelling. We will then endeavour to get all but the die-hard neo liberal MEPs to sign the declaration and ensure it is the focus of the CAP reforms.

In his Brussels speech after the screening, Jose Bove said, “following the deregulation of markets and open ports, come the big firms, like Cargill, Tyson and Smithfield and with them the concentration of production that is causing the elimination of small farmers.”

Bove continued, “If the CAP supports a system of agriculture that destroys the environment and makes poor quality industrial products, I do not see why Europeans would want to subsidise it.  Everyone knows that 75% of aid goes to 25% of farmers. This is unacceptable”

Janusz Wojciechowsk, another fighter for the survival of small farmers in the EU Parliament, chose to co-host the EU screening as much of the film was shot in his native Poland.  At the time I was filming in 2005 his political party was trying defiantly to resist the assault by the US giant Smithfield Foods on the livelihoods of Poland’s family farms and thriving rural communities.

Smithfield had taken advantage of the previous government’s neo liberal policies of free trade while Poland was in transition to a market economy, and Smithfield was wreaking havoc on their environment, economy and pigs by  buying up ex state farms for, what its CEO boasted, were ‘small dollars’.

Smithfield’s exploitation of cheap labour and lax environmental standards in Poland gave it the competitive edge so that many EU farmers must either get big and externalise their costs on to the broader community or get out of pig farming.

The Event was held to highlight the hidden costs of factory farming on pigs, people and the planet and of course the farmers themselves. The event followed  a ‘winter of discontent’ for pig farmers facing low supermarket prices for pork, high feed costs, a health scandal caused by animal feed contaminated with dioxin, and the recent discovery that flies are spreading antibiotic resistant bacteria from intensive farms to neighbouring urban areas.

Following the screening and presentations from, a panel of experts, there was a heated discussion that reinforced the film’s findings that factory farms across Europe disregard legal animal welfare standards, threaten human health by over- reliance on antibiotics and force traditional farmers out of business.

Andrea Gavinelli, Head of the Animal Welfare Unit of the European Commission, said after the event “The screening was a moment of transparency and reflection. It brought a clear message about what is really happening that people don’t know.”

A recent survey found that 50% of consumers across the EU believe that pigs are ‘fairly well treated’ and have no idea of the horrendous conditions suffered by pigs in factory farms.

I believe that pork should be labelled with the production method. Just ass eggs must according to EU law be labelled if they are from caged hens, the same rule could apply to pigs which are crammed into barren concrete and metal pens with no access to natural light or air? Consumers who have watched Pig Business say they will never buy factory pork again.

Not least due to the threat to human health as Coilin Nunan, advisor to the Soil Association, warned “human health is at risk because the routine preventative use of antibiotics in factory farms is causing an increasing number of diseases such as campylobacter and salmonella to become resistant to antibiotics”.

In the UK, primogeniture has kept the size of farms relatively large. However, it’s a different story in Europe as Friends of the Earth food campaigner, Mute Schimpf explained, “The average farm in Europe is 12 hectares. In order to develop a vision for food and agriculture policy, we need to think about the farmers in Europe and not about the lobbies and unions who only think about the competitiveness of bigger farms that frankly don’t need don’t need public support”

Gerald Choplin,  from European Coordination Via Campesina, which represents farmers from 70 countries, said, “In the EU there aren’t many farmers but there are too many pigs”. He continued, “Because of the very good attendance it was very useful debate and very helpful for our work not only against big factory farms and for small scale traditional farming methods, but the fact that there were many people from big business and from the Commission, it showed that they also felt obliged to hear the debate around a very different CAP”.

Though I am largely against giving powers to the EU to dictate rules on nations, when I hear our DEFRA minister Caroline Spelman argue that CAP support for farmers should be phased out, (following the American model of allowing family farmers to be bankrupted by unfairly subsidised competition), I pray that her free trade agenda will be over-ruled by the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Dacian Ciolos.

His proposals are to limit subsidies to industrial size farms and increase payments to farmers whose competitiveness is reduced by their obligation to adhere to higher EU standards, and for their provision of public goods, such as conservation of biodiversity, which are not remunerated by the market.  The giants should be taxed to remunerate society for the true costs of their production.

However, I prefer another option that pulls the unpopular term ‘protectionism out of the bin. I believe that food and agricultural goods should be exempted from World Trade Organisation (WTO) global trade rules so that all nations and regions have the right to protect themselves from low cost and low welfare imports.

Farmers could then be protected from the vagaries of the global economy and produce food for local markets. Governments could then procure high welfare and sustainably produced meat from local farmers for public services like schools and hospitals.

Tracy Worcester (Pig Business, Producer & Director)