NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
SEPTEMBER 16, 1998
Why Hogs Smell
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: This is NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
I'm Linda Wertheimer.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: And I'm Robert Siegel.

Tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department
of Agriculture are expected to announce plans to rid the nation's
rivers of a major source of pollution: livestock waste. Chickens,
cows and hogs are said to generate more than a billion tons of manure
a year.

The new rules will apply to large-scale, factory-like farms. In
some communities, the issue of where those farms are located is a
controversial one, as commentator Michael Ivey found out quite by
accident.

MICHAEL IVEY, COMMENTATOR: One day, I'm out in the old Volvo in
southeastern Ohio, in the foothills of Appalachia, and stumble onto
the perfect country road, Route 83. All of a sudden, beside the road
is this sign with a big pink pig on it. Over the pig is one of those
red circles with the slash -- "no pigs."

A little farther south on 83 is Cumberland, Ohio, sort of like
Mayberry without the stoplight, and "no pig" signs pepper the place.

I go to this little store and ask the lady working there
something like, "What's the deal with the pigs?"

She clips my question, "Hogs. Hogs stink."

Now, thanks to this clerk, a question surfaced that's been
submerged deep in the dirty dishwater of my mind for years: why do
hogs smell so bad?

She slips me a phone number. "Call Dick, he'll be the closest
neighbor."

Well, I called Dick. He immediately sends me a letter.

Let's see:

"Mr. Ivey, we're not anti-farming but we are opposed to the
factory farms that are gaining ground in so many states. We feel that
these operations pose a threat to the environment, our health and our
way of life."

Well, apparently there's a guy from across the state of Ohio
planning to build a big hog farm close to Cumberland. Now, I'd really
like the address of this person proposing the farm, and sure enough,
there it is: Larry Baker, hog farmer. Well, in my tiny little
obsessive-compulsive brain, there's only one option: go to the other
side of Ohio, about 200 miles west of Cumberland, and pay Larry Baker
a visit.

SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK ENGINE

Larry, his wife Judy and their two sons presently live on and run
150-sow farrow to finish hog farm. What's "farrow to finish?" Well,
I didn't know until Judy Baker showed me the farrowing house.

SOUNDBITE OF HOGS SNORTING

JUDY BAKER, HOG FARMER: This is their hog heaven in here. When
a sow has her baby pigs, they farrow their baby pigs, like a woman in
labor. This is a sow in labor, the farrowing room, like a labor room.

IVEY: The delivery room.

J. BAKER: Delivery room. Yes.

IVEY: And you're the midwife.

J. BAKER: Yes.

LAUGHTER

IVEY: The "finish" part of "farrow to finish" is when the hogs
reach six months of age and are shipped to a processor or packer or
become breeding stock. The Baker sons, Jason and Jess, are seventh-
generation farmers, and have been showing prize hogs since before they
lost their baby teeth.

Well, now they're both in college and have told their parents
they want to remain in the family business. But their father Larry
says the family farm can only support one family.

LARRY BAKER, HOG FARMER: You know, I've fought this getting
large in our industry for five or six years. I said if we had to have
that many sows, we -- I'd just quit. But at that time when I said
that, Jason and Jess wasn't -- you know, we didn't know what they were
going to do. And you'll do a lot for your kids.

IVEY: The Baker farm has to expand. Their plan is to keep their
existing operation and construct a 2,400-sow farrowing facility --
that's just raising baby pigs -- across the state on cheap and
available land -- a reclaimed strip mine a mile-and-a-half south of
Cumberland. The Bakers told me that they had the experts help them
design the project. Larry showed me the path manure travels at his
present farm, beginning at the hogs and ending up in this giant mud
puddle -- but it ain't mud in there.

L. BAKER: This is the dreaded manure lagoon right here. And,
yeah, you get a little smell of it, but it don't travel. It don't
gut-wrench you when you walk up here.
IVEY: The manure lagoon is one of the most commonly used methods
of animal waste management, sort of a large pond where the waste
decomposes, and then it's sprayed or spread on croplands. Baker
admits this is a source of odor, and that the pork industry has had
its share of problems, due to leaking and even bursting manure
lagoons.

But he's confident that by using the latest technology and
construction techniques, the manure lagoon at the new facility will be
fool proof. Walking out of the hog lot, I finally had to ask Larry my
big question: why do hogs smell so bad?

L. BAKER: Reach over there and grab a handful of that raw
manure. It's going to smell. But on the other hand, when you go to
the bathroom in the morning...

IVEY: It's gonna smell.

L. BAKER: ... it's gonna smell. That's a fact of life.

IVEY: You know, I realize it's a fact of life that manure smells
bad, but is that why hogs smell so bad? I go back to Cumberland. The
co-chairwomen of the Concerned Citizens of Southeast Ohio, the people
who put up the "no hog" signs, take me to the future hog farm site.

Nancy Rader (ph) works full-time against the proposed hog
operation.

NANCY RADER, CO-CHAIRWOMAN, CONCERNED CITIZENS OF SOUTHEAST OHIO:
It's not an option for this to happen to our community. This is our
homes. We can't replace our homes. And we're not going to. This
just cannot -- cannot happen. We can't allow it to happen. And we
will risk everything we've got to stop it from happening.

IVEY: We walked the site. Now, this is high-rolling grassland,
and Cumberland is a mile-and-a-half away as the crow flies, and a
couple of hundred feet lower in elevation.

Jody Cordell (ph) said that the concerned citizens group's
biggest fear is for their drinking water.

JODY CORDELL, CONCERNED CITIZENS OF SOUTHEAST OHIO: This water
comes right down this little run, and his proposed lagoon is at the
head of it. And this runs from here down into this creek right there
beside the road, into the village of Cumberland.

IVEY: I called and spoke to the district conservationist at the
Natural Resource Conservation Service of the United States Department
of Agriculture. And he said that, yes, the watershed below the
proposed lagoon eventually drains into Collins Fork, a stream that
does flow to Cumberland; but that Larry Baker's manure management plan
and proposed manure lagoon meet or exceed all state standards.

I met with several other members of the Concerned Citizens in
Cumberland. They said that their community has already been ripped
apart just by the debate over the hog farm. They expressed their
fears on everything from the potential health effects of odor and fly
infestation to their property values.

And these people made a powerful case. I mean, let's face it.
We have this cultural soft spot for the farmer in our country, but in
the past few decades, hog farming has changed. Pork production has
become big business, with high environmental and social costs attached
to it; such big business that there's even been bidding wars between
states for huge operations.

The Concerned Citizens see this as states willing to sacrifice
their environmental quality. They told me about states that have
imposed moratoriums on these type of operations.

And Nancy Rader thinks that that's a wise move.

RADER: Until you know you're not going to endanger your
environment, call a moratorium, say: hey, let's put a hold on this.
You know, how much does it cost Mr. Baker to wait a year to get the
technology in place? I don't know. Is it worth it? Yeah, I think it
is, and I think the state of Ohio owes us that kind of protection.
Let's get the technology in place so we don't endanger, you know,
10,000 people so one guy can raise pigs.

IVEY: Maybe Larry Baker's proposed hot facility isn't a
particularly huge operation, but to these folks, he's a Trojan horse
dressed like Farmer Brown, and as soon as he sets up an operation,
many more will follow. They give me a quick education about
concentrated animal feeding operations. Now this is the practice of
confining livestock to smaller and smaller areas for production
efficiency, but of course, this also concentrates the waste products.

Waste products -- where am I? Honestly, I thought this pig story
would be a chance for me just to riff on our sense of smell. Instead,
it's like 911 Oprah Winfrey. Help!

No one is saying "don't eat meat," but the production of it
should be environmentally sound, which hasn't always been the case.
One instance in June, 1995, approximately 22 million gallons of animal
waste burst out of an eight-acre lagoon in North Carolina. And this
is twice the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Now, animal waste is nutrient rich, high in nitrogen and
phosphorus to name a few things. Have you heard of this micro-
organism pfisteria? Well, it's a proven fish killer, from the
Chesapeake Bay to Florida. And scientists believe that it appears
when there are excessive nutrients in the water. And they know --
they know it poses a real health risk to people.

I get wind that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention --
the CDC -- would be holding a workshop in Washington, D.C. on the
public health issues related to concentrated animal feeding
operations; sixty-five or seventy experts in one room.

BEA SEIDELL (PH), NATIONAL MILK PRODUCERS: Bea Seidell, National
Milk Producers.

TOM GOMEZ, USDA ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE: Tom
Gomez, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

KATHLEEN GENZHEIMER, STATE EPIDEMIOLOGIST: Kathleen Genzheimer,
state epidemiologist.

IVEY: I talked to the head man. Dr. Richard Jackson is the
director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC.

DR. RICHARD JACKSON, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL
HEALTH, CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL: I became interested in this issue
of these large feedlots over the last several years. But the actual
looking at health effects from these sites has been pretty limited.
We know that there's contamination of water and we know the
contamination of water can carry risks. We know that there can be air
pollution effects. And we know that when the air smells bad, people
feel bad.

IVEY: According to government statistics, nationwide there's 130
times more animal waste produced than human waste. Now, annually that
comes to about five tons of animal manure produced per person in the
U.S. And there's a hog farm under construction in Utah that's
designed to produce 2.5 million hogs per year. This one operation
will produce more waste annually than the city of Los Angeles.

I spoke with Dr. Paul Sundberg of the National Pork Producers
Council just after he addressed the CDC workshop. I asked him about
the pork producers' response to the environmental impact and threat to
public health posed by all this animal waste.

DR. PAUL SUNDBERG, NATIONAL PORK PRODUCERS COUNCIL: We are
responding, because we've had environmental dialogues with the
government. We're doing all the programs that have been outlined.
We're trying to respond. But the danger is knee-jerk reaction, and we
don't want a knee-jerk response. What we want to do is we want to
know what we're doing, because we don't want to put producers out of
business.

IVEY: Dr. Sundberg said that the risk to human health from
environmental concerns related to agriculture need to be measured by
scientific investigation, and that's the information that needs to be
passed on to the policymakers.

And, oh, yeah, before I left the CDC workshop, I found Dr. Susan
Schiffman (ph). She's a member of the North Carolina Swine Odor Task
Force; has been studying odors for years. The doctor says the odors
given off by hogs and their decomposing waste -- hog odors -- consist
of about 400 different chemicals, and that they're basically in a soup
of about 150 gases -- hydrogen sulfide and ammonia -- they're not even
the nastiest ones.

And that, my friends, is why hogs smell so bad.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Linda Wertheimer, Washington DC; Robert Siegel, Washington
DC
Guest: Michael Ivey

Content and programming copyright (c) 1998 National Public
Radio, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by Federal Document
Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc.
Formatting copyright (c) 1998 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein
may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio,
Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without prior written permission. For further information please
contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954.