From: Debbie Neustadt
I received this on a listserve. Sorry that the spacing is bad. I tried to fix
it and a few of the spaces would not delete.
News from the Net
Date: 10/28/98
Publication: Wall Street Journal
Headline: Regulation of Corporate Hog Farms
Emerges as Key Issue in Heartland
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB90953382419239000.htm
October 28, 1998
Regulation of Corporate Hog Farms
Emerges as Key Issue in Heartland
By BRUCE INGERSOLL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HEARTSTRONG, Colo. -- Pig politics has become big politics
in Tuesday's elections.
From Kentucky to Wyoming, rural activists are banding
together with environmental groups to bring hog factories under
tighter regulation and to
halt the industry's westward migration. In congressional
and gubernatorial
races throughout the American heartland, at least 20
candidates are running hard on planks to curb corporate farming. And
industry is fighting back.
Among the most closely watched battles is an antipork ballot initiative in
Colorado. After wearing out their welcome in the Midwest, several of the
largest U.S. corporate pork producers have moved into eastern Colorado, a
regulatory vacuum without government oversight. Now in areas such as this
ghost town of the 1930s, the influx of huge hog farms threatens to foul the
ground water with nitrates and the air with the stench of hog smog. The
megafarms raise thousands of hogs under one roof, flush tons of hog manure
into lagoons and then spray the waste water onto nearby field.
A coalition of farmers, animal-welfare activists and environmentalists
collected enough signatures to put hog regulations on the Nov. 3 ballot.
"We've got to put some controls on them before it gets to the aquifer and
contaminates our water with nitrates," says Marvin Pletcher, a 37-year-old
Yuma County farmer and cattleman who lives five miles north of Heartstrong.
Hogs vs. Hunting
The industry has countered with a rival proposal that would make it
unconstitutional to single out hogs for special regulation. "For us, this is a
defining moment," says Al Tank, Washington lobbyist for the National Pork
Producers Council. "If we cannot expand here, we'll go elsewhere.
The [Canadian] prairie provinces and Brazil already are soliciting U.S.
producers
In certain respects, the ballot duel here is an outgrowth of a battle between
National Hog Farms Inc. and Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz in the late
1980s. The hog company, owned by the wealthy Bass brothers of Fort Worth,
Texas, acquired a vast ranch that Mr. Anschutz had dreamed of adding to his
45,000-acre hunting preserve east of Greeley, Colo., on the South Platte
River. After losing a court fight and a local referendum, Mr. Anschutz found
himself sitting on the porch of his baronial log lodge, only a few miles
downwind from 15,000 sows and their annual progeny of 300,000 hogs.
So he built another retreat farther downwind, even more palatial with a golf
course and a trout stream wending through the cottonwoods. But frequently,
there is still no escaping the stench, says Adam Wells, one of his huntsmen.
Now Anschutz Corp. has contributed all but $16,000 of the $268,000 raised by
the coalition behind the antipork ballot effort. That money has enabled it to
saturate Colorado's airwaves twice with several days of television spots,
augmenting $57,000 in radio advertising underwritten by two environmental
groups.
Colorado Candidates Agree
The industry cites Mr. Anschutz's contributions as proof he is pursuing a
vendetta against National Hog, a unit of National Farms Inc., Kansas City, Mo.
"His thirst for vengeance doesn't diminish with time," says National Farms
President Bill Haw.
James Monaghan, political strategist for the coalition,
says Mr. Anschutz's willingness to pay for TV ads reflects his concern for
Colorado's water resources. Mr. Monaghan's coup is a 30-second spot in which
the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gail Schoettler, and her GOP foe, Bill
Owens, take a break from bashing one another to join outgoing Democratic Gov.
Roy Romer in endorsing the hog-regulation initiative.
The pork industry raised $427,000, more than half of it
from out-of-state producers such as Farmland Industries Inc. and Seaboard
Farms Inc. But after spending $365,000 on a petition-signature drive, polling
and campaign consulting, it has little left for media. Some big producers fret
about missed opportunities to trumpet the industry's record of no bad spills
in Colorado and the boom times it has brought to welcoming communities. The
polls have voters strongly embracing the antipork initiative and rejecting the
pro-pork one.
Pork Battles Elsewhere
The issue is cutting elsewhere as well. In North Carolina, Democrat John
Edwards is making much of GOP Sen. Lauch Faircloth's record on the
environment, including authorship of a 1995 bill that would have exempted
hog-factory farmers -- including, notably, Mr. Faircloth himself -- from
having to protect wetlands.
In Illinois, tighter hog regulation is a frequent refrain in the governor's
race. The Democratic candidate, Rep. Glenn Poshard, favors giving local
communities veto power over megafarm sites, while his Republican foe, Illinois
Secretary of State George Ryan, would only give them a voice.
Meantime, in a tight congressional race, Democratic Rep. Lane Evans advocates
a "national strategy" to keep corporate producers from seeking out states with
lax rules. "Lane always thinks Washington knows best," says Republican Mark
Baker, who favors letting state officials take the lead.
Missouri's attorney general, Jay Nixon, last month filed an amicus curiae
brief in federal court to bolster a lawsuit brought by 60 farm families
against pork giant Premium Standard Farms, alleging a slew of waste spills.
Mr. Nixon, a U.S. Senate candidate in an uphill battle against GOP Sen.
Christopher Bond, contends the company "runs a Jurassic pig operation."
In South Dakota, rural activists have put on the November ballot a
constitutional amendment that would effectively outlaw corporate livestock
production. Despite opposition from agribusiness groups and GOP Gov. William
Janklow, the initiative still has a shot at passing.
Road Warrior
Mr. Tank, the pork-industry lobbyist, finds what he calls the hog hysteria
"phenomenal" -- and utterly unwarranted. Some candidates have created the
misimpression that the industry is unregulated and undisciplined, he says,
when actually it is spending millions of dollars an odor-control research and
doing a "good job" of meeting waste-management standards.
He takes some encouragement from the setbacks of antipork politicians. In the
Kansas primary, for example, GOP Gov. Bill Graves won renomination easily,
even though his conservative challenger, David Miller, aired an ad portraying
him as getting in bed with a pig. The ad had been inspired by state approval
of three Murphy family hog farms in western Kansas.
Corporate producers can't rest easy, however. As they hopscotch westward, they
are being hounded by a legion of enemies they made elsewhere. None is more
dogged than Cindy Watson, a state legislator from Rose Hill, N.C., who
recently lost out to a Murphy grower after being bombarded by pork-industry
ads.
Mrs. Watson has become a road warrior, addressing rural activists in Georgia
and Iowa, and advising Oklahoma GOP Gov. Frank Keating on corporate pork
issues. Mr. Keating, who is expected to win re-election next week, later
signed what may be the nation's toughest regulatory bill on hogs. In Colorado,
Mrs. Watson is starring in a TV ad scripted by Mr. Monaghan about the "trail
of problems" left behind by big producers.
Copyright ? 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
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|Created By: |Allison Cobb |Created On: |10/28/98 09:54:59|
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|Last Modified By:|Allison Cobb |Last Modified On:|10/28/98 09:55:57|
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Daniel J. Whittle
Attorney
North Carolina Environmental Defense Fund
2500 Blue Ridge Road, Suite 330
Raleigh, NC 27607-6454
919/881-2601 (phone)
919/881-2607 (fax)
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