BY TOBI COHEN, OTTAWA SUN, 2003.06.22

Pulling up to Luc and Louise Secours’ Bainsville farm one would never guess it was home to as many as 6,000 piglets at any given time.
It’s located on a large chunk of property a kilometre or so east of their
family farm home which stands perched atop a small hill next door to their chicken coop along Concession 2 in tiny South Glengarry town.
Walking up the gravel road toward one of three large barns there’s no need to watch out for dung as one might on a more traditional farm.
I’m invited to enter the closest barn with the Secourses, Luc Menard, whose company owns the livestock, and their technical adviser Stephane Neron.

Just inside the heated barn lie several pairs of coveralls and large rubber boots, which we’re all required to change into for sanitary purposes before entering the pens.

There are some 480 tiny squealing piglets in the room, which is divided into 16 concrete pens, each containing about 30 piglets. They’re now about 19 days old, weigh just 9 kg and were only weaned off their mothers the day before. They’d all just arrived from an 1,800-sow maternity farm in St. Isidore and will remain at the nursery about six weeks before heading to a finishing farm in Casselman which has a capacity of about 1,100 pigs. With an average life span of 125 days, the hogs are ready for slaughter once they reach 90 kg.

The pigs will be shipped to a Quebec-based slaughterhouse where they’ll be prepped for market. Quebec-based F. Menard Inc., which operates about 150 associate facilities and 50 Menard-owned facilities in Ontario and Quebec, produces some 32,000 sows a year. While one of Canada’s top five pork producers, that’s still much less than No. 1 producer Maple Leaf, which churned out an estimated 105,000 sows last year.

While in business in Quebec since 1961, F. Menard erected its first
operation in Ontario in 1992 — long before Quebec imposed a moratorium on new pig farming operations as a result of environmental degradation. He now operates five associate farms and two Menard-owned farms in eastern Ontario and has made an offer to purchase another in Pendleton which is currently under review.
To stem the spread of disease and ensure a quality product, Luc Secours said the pigs are typically moved through the system together.

“The new structure of agriculture is more modern in that we try to have all the pigs come from the same source,” he said.

Before each new batch of piglets arrives, the pens are cleaned, disinfected and heated for safety and comfort. As associate producers, the Secours own and manage the farm and look after
the animals . However, the pigs are supplied by F. Menard, which also
provides technical expertise and the feed which is specially formulated for each step of development by a full-time F. Menard nutritionist.
Operating the farm requires between 1,200-1,500 gallons of water each day supplied by an aquifer-fed well.

Outside the barn lies a huge concrete above ground pool filled with liquid manure. Measuring 12 ft. deep by 100 ft. in diameter, the pool holds nearly 491,000 gallons of manure — enough to store all the waste produced at the nursery farm for an entire year.
Gravity sends the manure through the grate-floors of the pig pens where it’s mixed with water before being drained into a 30-ft. deep 1,000-gallon septic tank. Once the septic tank is full, the manure is pumped through underground pipes into the outdoor tank. The tank is emptied twice a year thanks to neighbour Peter Vanderburg, a cash-crop farmer who spends about $4,000 a year to take
the manure off the Secours’ hands and spread it on his corn, soybean and wheat fields.

“Because of the potash, the phosphorus and the nitrogen in the manure, it’s about as good as it gets,” Vanderburg said, noting pig manure is second only to chicken droppings, which are harder to come by.

Vanderburg spreads about 3,000 gallons of pig manure per acre every spring and fall over his 900-acre property.

“It’s the best fertilizer you can get,” he said. “It has the same cost to
spread it but it definitely outweighs the cost of buying commercial
fertilizer.”

Using the manure twice annually allows him to cut his fertilizer bill by
about 25%. While he’s typically used tankers or irrigation techniques which spread the manure by hose, this year he plans to use a virtually odourless injection technique that will see the manure knifed directly into the soil. Vanderburg said he hires professionals to spread the manure using specially designed equipment that measures the output of manure to ensure even spreading.
“There’s no spillage, there’s no waste, it’s about as accurately done as you want, not only for the environment but for growing your crops too,” he said, noting too much or too little manure in one area could destroy his livelihood.

For Vanderburg, who refuses to buy bottled water and gets his own drinking water from a well, he is careful to leave a 40- to 50-ft. buffer zone between his manure-soaked crops and nearby creeks and ditches as required. While he admits there’s usually a smell associated with irrigation, when worked in within 24 hours it’s usually gone in two days and has just a 1-km radius on a windy day.

“It’s part of the business,” he said. “Yeah, there is a smell to it but it’s
dealt with in the quickest way possible.”
While the Secours’ manure tank appears safer than some of the dung piles seen on other farms while driving through the rural countryside, nothing is foolproof.

Just this past April a Meuneries Cote-Paquette farm in Asbestos, Que., sent 120,000 litres of liquid manure into the Nicolet River after a pipe carrying manure from a barn to a storage tank broke. The farmer immediately dug two large holes to prevent further flow towards
the river and ensured the pipe was quickly repaired. Consequently, Meuneries Cote-Paquette plans to erect three large hog farms
just outside Ottawa in Sarsfield, St. Albert and Ste-Rose-de-Prescott.
The company would not return the Sun’s phone calls. However, Luc Menard said such accidents can be prevented by regularly inspecting one’s lagoon.

Keith Robbins of Ontario Pork, which represents hog producers across the province, said there’s about 18 spills a year in southern Ontario where hog farming is most concentrated. Accidents, he said, likely have less to do with the size of an operation and more to do with manure management practices. It seems the image many still hold of Old MacDonald’s farm where squealing pink porkers bask in outdoor mud pens is an archaic one.

Even smaller hog farms consist of austere barns that provide shelter to the overcrowded animals who in most cases never get to see the light of day. Sixth generation farmer Bruce Hudson is among today’s smaller hog producers. In addition to a small herd of 120 cattle and about 800 acres of corn, soybean, wheat, and bean crops, he, his brother and father raise about 170 sows from farrow to finish on his Kinburn farm. With just 3,000-3,500 sows per year, their market share is much smaller than the likes of F. Menard and Meuneries Cote-Paquette, but he admits his practices are similar.

Like the larger players, unpredictable climate change and the increased
potential for disease mean his pigs must be self contained inside a barn, though a much less impressive barn that doesn’t cost $220,000.
His male piglets are castrated to improve the taste of the meat, which could be adversely affected by hormones. They receive antibiotics to prevent infection and tails are trimmed to keep them from biting each other for entertainment. The pigs remain with their brothers and sisters throughout each stage of development to stem disease and ensure they are receiving the correct feed for their age — more protein for the young and less as they get older.

Menard, however, can afford new technologies such as feed that contains phytase, an environmentally friendly enzyme that reduces the amount of phosphorus in the pigs’ stool. With rows of maternity sows each in their own tiny stall, Menard strives to produce a genetically superior product through artificial insemination, while Hudson’s sows continue to reproduce the old-fashioned way with boars raised specifically for this purpose.
Hudson’s piglets are weaned off their mothers at four weeks as opposed to just 18 days and are ready for market at 105 kg or five-and-a-half months. Manure is pumped out in much the same way to one of two concrete and steel lagoons capable of storing up to 400,000 gallons of liquid manure which he spreads with a drag-hose system over his own crops twice a year.

Marion Myers, a smaller pork producer and the local representative for
Ontario Pork, suggested people should perhaps be “less worried” about large producers which can afford the best staff and the latest technologies.
“I think the larger ones have too much money invested,” she said. “I know there was a spill down in Quebec but then again there was foam that got into the water in Metcalfe so, you know, I guess over the course of human nature there are always accidents that will happen at some point. Nothing in life is guaranteed.”

While Sarsfield, Pendleton, Ste-Rose-de-Prescott and St. Albert residents are fuming over the invasion of these new neighbours, many of those who live around existing hog farms have few complaints.
“They haven’t been too intrusive as of yet at their current size,” said one Bainsville resident who lives close to one of the area hog farms but did not wish to give her name.
“The minority always makes the loud scream but I really see no problem,” added Ron Brown, another area resident who suggested the Domtar pulp and paper plant in Cornwall “stinks more than any pig farm any day.”

South Glengarry Mayor Dave MacDonald said mega-hog farms have been operating in his area for the last five-six years during which time he’s heard no complaints from area residents. Still, not all residents were pleased when they first smelled their new neighbors. One Bainsville resident shared the same concern many South Nation residents, where the municipality simply announced that permits had been issued to hog farms. While the resident, who did not wish to be named, hasn’t experienced any problems with his well water yet, he, along with at least one other resident, is greatly bothered by the constant smell and the threat of water contamination.

While large-scale farming operations such as those run by F. Menard have come under considerable fire in recent months, Menard maintains his farms are state-of-the-art and that his company goes above and beyond ministry guidelines when it comes to environmental and other standards.
“There are risks of pollution but when it is done well, there are no
problems,” Menard said. “There are risks to more modern agriculture … We have 10 times less farmers who are producing food for 10 times more people so we have to increase farming.”

According to Ontario Pork, there are about 4,000 pig farmers in Ontario
ranging in size from one to 25,000 hogs. While the majority are situated in southwestern Ontario, more than 40 producers currently operate within the Ottawa-Carleton, Lanark, Glengarry and Prescott-Russell areas. Robbins said he couldn’t account for all the area hog farms as local chapters only keep track of those which produce hogs for the Ontario market. Companies like F. Menard and Meuneries Cote-Paquette, he said, “take all their feeder pigs and then market them all back in Quebec.”

While many fear such practices bring little financial benefit to the
communities in which they operate, Robbins said that’s not the case.
“Yes, there will be some jobs created in Quebec but there’s also some jobs that are now created in Ontario because you’re going to have to have veterinarians locally to assist that herd and those types of things,” he said. He also disagrees with the notion that Quebec’s moratorium on new hog farms has resulted in an influx of Quebec-based operations in Ontario which usurp the province’s resources leaving nothing but environmental damage in their wake.

For Louise Secours, who earns 10cents per pig per day, the big benefit to the local economy seems obvious. While it cost her and her husband about $900,000 to erect their hog farm and although they are required to pay the bulk of utilities and other business costs, she said it has been a lucrative endeavour even though she wouldn’t
divulge the couple’s net income. Many argue agriculture has followed the same trend that’s brought about big-box stores, bank mergers and media monopolies. Whether the result of government subsidies that favour larger operations or simply a decreased interest in farming, it seems the family farm has had difficulty competing and as such is slowly being snuffed out of existence.

The increased presence of large-scale hog operations, said Robbins, isn’t the result of more people opting for the other white meat, but is rather a simple shift of balance. Ontario’s 4,000 producers pale by comparison to the 20,000 producers that existed in 1980, he said, yet the number of hogs produced is similar when you consider population growth and exports which account for half of all hogs produced in Canada.
According to the Canada Pork Council, Ontario produces about $6.9 million market hogs a year, slightly less than Quebec which produces about 7.1 million. On a nation-wide scale Canada produces about 26.2 million hogs every year, a quarter that of the United States where some 2 million pigs are churned out every week.

While some European nations are now trying to revert back to the Old
MacDonald farming model, North American governments appear set on the factory farm method and even small producers are starting to accept it.
“I don’t think anybody resents them,” said Hudson. “If we could do it
ourselves we’d be doing it … We try to keep up the technology but I mean dealing with old barns and the likes of that, you’ve got to deal with what you have. As long as they follow the rules like everybody else I don’t see a problem.”

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Posted by FFC on July 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Animal health,Consumers,Family vs factory farming,Housing,Innovation and technology,Pork,Regulations
Tags :: activists, agriculture, Consumers, environment, Farmers, misconceptions, Ontario, pigs, Pork
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