IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 0
algae growth and can damage or alter natural habitats, for instance,
causing nitrogen-loving plants to replace the existing flora in a given area.
Methane is a significant greenhouse gas that is emitted by liquid manure
storage.
The most significant contribution to the reduction in greenhouse gasses
that farms can make is to change manure management. The change can go
in two directions: away from liquid manure and open lagoon storage
toward more costly and complex management systems, such as electricity
generation from methane, or toward ecologically sound and less complex
management systems, such as manure handling incorporating straw or
other natural bedding and composting. The latter direction is least costly
for small livestock farms and not only reduces greenhouse gases, but
replenishes the soil carbon.
V. Hog Factory in the Back Yard
Part Five: Hog factories have divided communities, neighborhoods, and
families. In most cases the people who feel the strongest impacts from hog
factories are people who have lived in their rural homes for most, if not
all, of their lives, many of whom farm or have farmed, with livestock, as
well.
Part Five describes the ways in which corporate hog factory owners have
used the public's sympathy for family farmers to obtain exemptions for
their activities from local zoning laws and from county and state
regulations. For example, thirty states have enacted laws exempting farm
animals from protection under their anti-cruelty statutes. "Strategic
lawsuits against public participation," or SLAPP suits, can be brought
against citizens who protest siting of animal factories in their
communities. In at least 13 states, agricultural disparagement laws,
popularly known as "veggie libel laws," protect food products and
production processes from "disparagement." The very laws enacted to
protect small farmers from frivolous complaints serve to protect corporate
hog factories from well-grounded complaints over their much larger
impacts on the environment and on public health and welfare. Such laws
erode democratic processes.
Public policies supporting hog factories and excusing them from bad
behavior also help create an illusion that hog farming is industrializing
because technological advances have increased the efficiency (that is, have
reduced per-unit costs of production) of larger, more concentrated
operations. How many of these efficiencies are based on the ease with
which public policies allow hog factory operators to pass off unwanted
costs of doing business onto neighbors and society (i.e., make others pay)
have not been quantified. It is becoming clear, however, that by helping
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