The silent and deadly menace of the Factory Hog Industry gets recognition. Government action is needed.
When the Manitoba Conservative government rolled out the welcome mat to the invasive hog Industry in the mid 1990's, Premier Filmon always emphasized that there would be further "Value Added compliments and benefits " to Manitobans. And he was right!
For the past 20 years amid the anger, frustrations and anxiety of rural residents this hog Industry, with the blessings of provincial and municipal governments have built their huge hog producing factories nearly anywhere that suited them.
This kind of intensive hog production impacts the quality of living for humans, causes air pollution-noxious odours, toxic gases and drug pollution. As well, antibiotics, growth-enhancing chemicals and other veterinary drugs end up in the animals themselves and enter the environment through their manure and urine, contaminating the water, the soil and our food. Then of course there is the situation of manure itself. A hog complex will produce feces equivalent
to the population of a small city...all untreated and incorporated unto the land, eventually finding its way into water sources and Lake Winnipeg as the end designation.
But wait…now there is more…for in addition to causing immense animal suffering, factory farms are spawning dangerous superbugs that current antibiotics are powerless against.
In May,2016, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research reported the first U.S. case of Colistin-resistent infection, involving a patient in Pennsylvania. Also that month, researchers at USDA and Health and Human Services reported finding Colistin-resistant E. coli in a pig intestinal sample.
Because Colistin is a last resort drug for treating superbug (multi-drug resistant) infections, these discoveries signal we are that much closer to what has been referred to as a post-antibiotic era, where people will die from once-treatable infections.
The question that needs to be addressed by our government is “Why are they allowing this Industry to continue raising hogs in a fashion that endangers the very lives of people?”.
John Fefchak, Virden, MB
