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An independent, secular, contemporary journal of political and environmental issues dedicated to peaceful reduction of human impacts on Earth

My boots crunched through crusted ice as I forged along East Main Street next to the JBS Swift slaughterhouse. Just a long block ahead the dark green waters of Beargrass Creek emerged from the concrete channel of the ‘improved’ South Fork, merged with the Middle Fork and formed the ‘final mile’ that runs past the flood pumping station through the greenway woods to the Ohio River. Where East Main crosses the creek on a bridge, a rail siding leads into the JBS Swift property.

The slaughterhouse receives delivery of live hogs from livestock trucks and kills as many as 10,500 animals per day according to statistics from its conditional use permit application. Walking along the holding pens I heard an occasional squeal as the pigs milled about in the confinement shed or were directed up the chute towards the stunning and bleeding room. I have walked this path many times over the last 20 years and the smells and noise have been much worse in the past. Today a strong whiff of pig manure wafted into the street, but the cold wind cleared the air as I neared the reconstructed bridge.

Behind the long white pig sheds, the red brick of the buildings rise up several stories topped with air pollution control and cooling equipment. The Butchertown Neighbors have been engaged in civil litigation since 2006 against the slaughterhouse, trying to contain its expansion and get it to shut down and move to a more rural location. To defend against the neighbor complaints, Swift has installed more aggressive odor control, built roofed sheds around animal handling areas and paid fines to the Air Pollution Control District. A part of the zoning action was an agreed investment in landscape plantings.

The civil litigation entered a new phase when Judge McKay Chauvin recently denied JBS Motion for Summary Judgment after a protracted exchange of memoranda challenging the neighbors ‘standing’ to bring the Complaint and some more obtuse procedural claims under the zoning code.

I am now a vegan. I had a heart attack last summer and had cardiac catheterization to clear a major heart artery. This fantastic and life-saving procedure happened at Norton Audubon. I can’t say enough good things. But part of being a vegetarian or vegan includes having questions about industrial meat production. As I walked alongside the plant and heard the squeals of the pigs, I couldn’t help but identify. Life is really a confined path where people in power shock you into forward motion, you lose contact with your family, and one day you see the end of the chute where your life’s blood will be drained.

Then I recall the delight I used to have to eat a ham sandwich dressed with cheese and lettuce and smothered with mayonaise on wheat bread. Cut diagonally and served with ruffle chips in the middle. I have dropped a lot of cash in delicatessens from Lexington to Philadelphia. In 1973, I was a livestock worker on a large Angus beef farm in central Kentucky. I had to scoop or use an electric auger to deliver silage in winter to a feed wagon towed behind a FORD tractor. I drove from the silo to the head of the long feed trough, then unloaded the feed into the trough. This was in winter with ice on the gravel road and I fought the tractor to keep the wagon from jack-knifing into the ditch. In the spring the young calves would be sold and loaded on trucks to go to fattening lots. For days the momma cows lowed around the barn, refusing to go to pasture, hoping their calves would somehow return. There is no doubt we produced anguish in those animals.

In 1994 or so, about the time the Cornerstone 2020 farce was cast into tablets, I searched for the next meaningful step, and joined EarthSave. The group was based on the understanding that the dietary choices of millions of people are having catastrophic impacts on the planet. The use of major percentages of the annual harvest of cereals and grains to produce a pound of animal flesh leads to unsustainable pollution of air land and water. The first world seduction into diets heavy with red meat increases income disparity and contributes to global warming. The USDA Diet Advisory Committee agrees.

In a Report released in February 2015, the USDA Dietary Advisory Committee, 20 years after EarthSave’s organizing, cautioned that it was true--what we put on our plates has global implications. Diets heavy in meat have major environmental and public health implications:

“About half of all American adults- II7 million individuals-have one or more preventable chronic diseases that relate to poor quality dietary patterns and physical inactivity, including cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and diet-related cancers. More than two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of children and youth are overweight or obese. These devastating health problems have persisted for decades, strained U.S. health care costs, and focused the attention of our health care system on disease treatment rather than prevention.”

“The major findings regarding sustainable diets were that a diet higher in plant-based foods, such

as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in calories and animal based foods is more health promoting and is associated with less environmental impact than is the current U.S. diet.”

2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S.Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“The DGAC concurs . . .that strong and consistent evidence demonstrates that dietary patterns associated with decreased risk of CardioVascular Disease are characterized by higher consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and seafood, and lower consumption of red and processed meat, and lower intakes of refined grains, and sugar-sweetened foods and beverages relative to less healthy patterns.” Part D. Chapter 2:

Diet related colon and bladder cancers have been explored in regards to carcinogens--such as benzo(a)pyrene-- that form when oily flesh is seared in stove top skillets, cooked in smokers or turned over flame brasiers. Rib lovers take heed.

“BaP mainly accumulated in the smoked casing, being four times in excess of the legal limit. This paper analyses the mechanism for preventing PAHs contamination during the process of smoking meat products.”

Benzo(a)pyrene penetration on a smoked meat product during smoking time.

The highest levels of BaP (up to about 4 ng BaP/g of cooked meat) were found in grilled/barbecued very well done steaks and hamburgers and in grilled/barbecued well done chicken with skin. BaP concentrations were lower in meats that were grilled/barbecued to medium done and in all broiled or pan-fried meat samples regardless of doneness level.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11313108

Even this year, 2015, I have smelled the JBS Swift plant from the front steps of my apartment in the original Highlands many blocks away. Nuisance odors are one of the chief complaints. The long transport trucks and the idling refrigeration trucks, their movements to and from the plant, and their rows parked and amounting to off-plant meat storage, are other contentious issues for neighbors.

Inside the plant, the actual process of killing and bleeding is subject to federal regulation and monitoring to assure ‘humane slaughtering’ and sanitary conditions for handling of the various products harvested. "The operation of killing hogs and eviscerating carcasses, [ ] is conducted under the observation of the USDA Federal Safety Inspection Service".  FSIS regulations can include remote video monitoring and recording of the killing floor action and immediate interruption if necessary by federal inspectors  to assure humane killing procedure. Animals are supposed to be shocked with electric current into instant insensibility and then bled to death before they can regain awareness.

“The global production of food is responsible for 80 percent of deforestation, more than 70 percent of fresh water use, and up to 30 percent of human-generated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  It also is the largest cause of species biodiversity loss.”

Part D. Chapter 5: Food Sustainability and Safety Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

2. Slaughtering shall be defined as: "The operation of killing hogs and  eviscerating carcasses, all of which is conducted under the observation of  the USDA Federal Safety Inspection Service".  CUP permit

Aug. 7, 1997

U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists

"If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, reported at the July 24-26 meeting of the Canadian Society of Animal Science in Montreal. Or, if those grains were exported, it would boost the U.S. trade balance by $80 billion a year, Pimentel estimated.

More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans,"

The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population.

Each year an estimated 41 million tons of plant protein is fed to U.S. livestock to produce an estimated 7 million tons of animal protein for human consumption.”

http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2013/12/livestock

“But a reduction in the size of the business isn’t going to happen soon, if ever. Urbanization and rising incomes mean that more of the world is converging on European and American levels of meat consumption, which is roughly 100kg a year (80kg in Britain, 120kg in America). At the moment, most of Africa and South Asia eats less than 20kg of meat a year. Even if parts of India remain vegetarian, shifting patterns of demand imply worldwide meat consumption will double by 2050.”

The Economist   Meat and greens

Dec 31st 2013, 18:28 by J.L.P.

  As I skulk along the outer boundaries of the abattoir, I imagine a burly contingent of the 1,200 workers dispatched to run out and gather me up as if I were an animal that had strayed, lifted up the gate with my snout and fled. I despair at the brutality of humans, indifferent to millions of animals being raised in confined and wretched conditions, merely to provide a meat option at the table.  Our ancient lust for the hunt and physical need for carnality--to be bathed in blood and stand triumphant over the kill-- runs through us-- like the ‘Jungle Line’ of Joni Mitchell song.

Earlier, I crunched along the floodwall past the James Starkey Sewage pumping facility. JBS Swift is a ‘significant industrial user’ (SIU) of the Louisville Combined Sewer. A main problem with sewers that overflow in wet weather is that unless the discharges are stopped at the plant, effluent from industrial dischargers also overflows to the creek and river. Before the Clean Water Act and earlier in the 20th Century the offal dumped into Beargrass Creek from Butchertown was so noxious that city government diverted the creek in a long straight channel to the Ohio River to its present outlet upstream of the Waterfront Park and Big Four Bridge. In the 1970s and 1980s MSD issued permits to SIUs that permitted continued discharges with no requirement to halt flows in wet weather. In recent years, more attention is paid to industrial effluents in wet weather overflows--but they still occur. They used to occur a lot more from the James Starkey pump station but capacity upgrades have netted reductions.

At the corner of Cable Street and the Floodwall I  zipped my jacket tighter and looked into the former staging facility for MSD that has been sold now to JBS Swift. The sale provoked the most recent controversy. It seemed to have been cooked up in the back room at MSD and served steaming hot as a finished course without prior consultation with the neighbors. Thus, a strategic site for expanded production passed into the ownership and control of JBS. This was not to the liking of the neighbors who filed affidavits complaining about semi-trucks idling and moving through the neighborhood along Adams Street and Story Avenue and parked in rows with refrigeration units roaring through the night. The Cabel Street lot backs up across a field to the interstate I-71 and I-264 roadways that run along the Ohio River. Truck and automobile traffic is incessant, flows that move the nations commercial output as the human population bulges on this tiny planet.

The floodwall is patched with paint covering over the graphic howls of marginalized people impossibly reduced to the status of urban livestock. Herded through bewildering elementary schools, shopping in vast consumer boxes, being fattened for the kill of mass incarceration, morbid obesity or consumer debt slavery. I am stunned by the garish gloss over a life brilliant in color and sound, euphoric and staggering in cosmic scope, but often utterly lacking in basic human decency for many. In the background a rhythmic pneumatic clunk sounds as another pig walks into the light.

BadwaterJournal.com

WHAT UNSUSTAINABLE URBAN GROWTH LOOKS LIKE

The attractive appearance of meat products gives no information to consumers about the way animals are fed and confined. There is a disconnect between  the inhumane industrial production methods and upbeat packaging meant to trigger purchases. The consumer should demand packaging be labeled to disclose if its a CAFO product and what type of feed was used.

The aim of confinement production methods is to maximize the efficiency of producing a pound of meat. Every method of cost saving is explored. For example, the PEDv corona virus is now confirmed to have spread throughout the CAFO network through supplies of feed pellets. The feed pellets were made using blood and plasma from the hog  slaughterhouses shipped in trucks to the pellet manufacturer. Co-mingling the blood and plasma of millions of pigs introduced the virus and mutations into the pellets that were then shipped to CAFOs and fed across the United States. Feeding abattoir hog tissue back to growing hogs has opened the door to viral infections.

In Kentucky, hogs are fed distillers grains, a left over product of whiskey brewing. That is sometimes blended with ‘beef tallow from beef slaughterhouses along with other ingredients. “Distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) can be included in diets fed to growing pigs in all phases of production, beginning at 2 to 3 wk postweaning, in concentrations of up to 30% DDGS, and lactating and gestating sows can be fed diets containing up to 30 and 50%, respectively, without negatively affecting pig performance.

J Anim Sci. 2009 Apr;87(4):1292-303.   Board-invited review: the use and  application of distillers dried grains with solubles in swine diets. Stein HH1, Shurson GC

When a pig climbs the chute at the abattoir to be slaughtered the USDA insists that the death be quick and certain beginning with an electric shock that stuns the animal unconscious followed by slashing the carotid artery to drain the body before the animal can regain consciousness. Whats not part of that narrative is the cruelty industrial hog production inflicts on these meat animals prior to the final moment. As a result of the confinement model of operation, mother pigs are kept in steel crates where the litters of piglets nurse on sows that are lame from lack of movement and lying in their excrement. Profit motive drives the design, but recent epidemic disease is causing significant losses of piglets. Between 2013 and the present it is estimated more than 8 million piglets and swine have been lost to Porcine Epidemic Diahrea Virus or PEDv. This corona virus has infected confined operations across the U.S. and spreads through fecal-oral contact.

In response to Kentucky Open Records request to the Kentucky Division of Water, BadwaterJournal received the lists of the 168 hog operations in the state that have received Kentucky No Discharge Operating Permits. In a sellout of the environment to the industrial animal operators, the state legislature approved rules that pretend large animal operations don’t discharge waste water to surface and groundwater. Under no-discharge rules there is no regulated point discharge outlet to a river as with a Clean Water Act pollution permit. There are no requirements for effluent testing since presumably there is no effluent. Instead fecal waste and washdown water are accumulated in large storage ponds or in concrete bunkers under the confinement building then sprayed across adjacent fields. The larger CAFOs are required to provide a comprehensive nutrient management plan CNMP that estimates pounds per acre phosphorus and nitrogen applied. Many runoff events to local waters have been reported.

The industrial production of meat products for the global consumer market has resulted in concentration camps of pigs, beef, turkeys, chicken and other animals. The animals are kept in unnatural confinement where fecal waste builds up and is then washed down with power sprayers into a pit or lagoon. Disease pathogens are mutating and adapting in the CAFOs and now killing millions of animals per year. The Center for Disease Control has not focused on phasing out inhumane CAFOs, instead the CDC tracks the mutations of new viruses intending to alert the general public when a virus jumps the species barrier and becomes infectious in humans. CAFOs are a reservoir for future human pathogens.

The U.S. hog and turkey CAFO operations are now seeing epidemic infections of confined animals. Human workers that have been in contact with CAFO turkeys infected with avian flu virus are being monitored in Minnesota. Outbreaks of avian flu have killed thousands of turkeys in Arkansas, Minnesota, and Ontario. The loss of millions of animals due to infectious viral epidemics may do what pleas to humane treatment have not--the loss of profits may deter capitalists from building large confinement facilities. 

Under Kentucky’s industry friendly Kentucky No Discharge Permit program, the Division of Water is not requiring reporting of animal mortality disposal--- though they have that authority to protect ground and surface waters. Deep lagoon  pits of manure harbor virus pathogens under the CAFO slat floors. City-sized CAFO torture chambers of doomed mammals were designed for maximum profit. CAFO operators searched out alternative cheaper feed sources—brewers solids from the bourbon industry and blood and plasma from the same slaughterhouses where pigs are killed-remixed with grain into feed pellets that included antibiotics. The industrialists tried to squeeze a dollar out of massive operations by ignoring nature and aesthetics and feeding blood and plasma products from the slaughterhouse. The crowded CAFOs pooled MRSA-Staphylococcus aureus bacteria rapidly transferring it to livestock workers and into the community.

Losing millions of piglets to disease, CAFO industrialists adopted aggressive biosecurity  practices—requiring transport trucks to wash down and decontaminate, workers  have donned moonsuits and limit access between CAFO buildings. Now studies show the pathogens are contaminating the air, land, water, wild animals and people living around CAFOs.

The CAFO industrial livestock model has proven a disaster for investors, a disaster for state water resources, and will likely prove an actual public health disaster when a newly mutated virus jumps the species barrier and causes a new human pandemic. It is a sublime irony that in trying to maximize profits by crowding animals into industrial assembly line procreation and Frankenstein science breeding, the super scientists instead, created the ideal breeding grounds for deadly infections. After more than 8 million piglets have died since 2013 to PEDV alone and as new infections of avian flu virus are causing states to kill millions of turkeys and chickens, a national conference to produce uniform CAFO regulations--or ban them- is critically needed.

The virus  affecting North American Swine has mutated multiple times to become a major killer of confined animals. The Corona virus circulating in CAFO swine, migratory birds, CAFO poultry, bats, domestic pets and human beings will sooner or later, trip the genetic combination, and a new pandemic will sweep across the states. This zoonotic cross species transfer is facilitated by animal crowding in their own feces in cages in CAFOs.  The first casualty in the war between profits and humane animal farming is truth about the spread and human health risk of CAFO PEDv and other zoonotic pathogens.  

In April, 2015, I filed Open Records requests in Kentucky to obtain information and statistics  about the spread of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDv). This epidemic has killed millions of piglets nationwide. Kentucky has seen rapid expansion of industrial scale swine CAFOs in the western counties. The sparsely populated rural area is dominated by agriculture including livestock and chicken franchise contract growing operations serving the national appetite for meat sandwiches.

The area is now fielding a gubernatorial candidate, James Comer, conservative Republican, who is the present Commissioner of Agriculture. Here is the response to my Open Records Request from his Kentucky Dept of Agriculture:

Mr. Hixson:

In response to your record request detailed below, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA) responds as follows:

1) The KDA does not have public records for the years 2013, 2014, and 2015 in its custody that identifies by name KDA staff that track, chart, record the extent of, or otherwise study or investigate Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus and similar viral epidemics caused by other infectious agents in this state.

Individual Answering:

Nicole T. Liberto; on behalf of Kentucky State Veterinarian, Dr. Robert Stout.

2) The KDA does not have public records for the years 2013, 2014, and 2015 in its custody that identify by name KDA staff who formulate reports and summaries for the Governor or Secretary regarding Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus and similar viral epidemics caused by other infectious agents in this state.

Individual Answering:

Nicole T. Liberto; on behalf of Kentucky State Veterinarian, Dr. Robert Stout.

3) 1) The KDA does not have public records for the years 2013, 2014, and 2015 in its custody that are Summaries or Reports written for and presented to the Governor or Secretary describing the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus infection and resulting mortalities In this state.

Individual Answering:

Nicole T. Liberto; on behalf of Kentucky State Veterinarian, Dr. Robert Stout.

The Open Records responses make you wonder how Agricultural Commissioner James Comer would do as a Governor of Kentucky

since he apparently has not received or demanded any in-depth report on the corona virus epidemic in the confined animal industry.  Zoonotic virus pathogens that cross the species barrier flourish in CAFOs.

80 percent mortalities of a 1,000 sow operation producing litters of 8 piglets would be 6,400 dead piglets with each cycle.

6,400 dead piglets amounts to a disposal problem. Multiply that times large farms with 21,000, 13,000 or 12,000 head of animals

and we have a hidden statewide pig mortality disposal problem that is either being landfilled or stuffed in holes on farms.

Concentration of Swine Production in the U.S.  - USDA