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Down
on the Farm:
The Supersizing of America's Livestock Farms
Dayton
Daily News
December 2002
Part
1: For cheaper prices, are we risking our health, the
environment and squeeze out small farmers?
by Mike Wagner and Ben Sutherly, Dayton
Daily News Part
2: Activists label megafarm methods cruel but farmers
argue tactics are humane
by Ben Sutherly, Dayton Daily News
Part
3: Megafarm fights to compete — Big farms driving
small independents out of business
by Ben Sutherly, Dayton Daily News
Part
4: Nasty turf wars erupt — Explosive megafarm
growth often pits communities against farmers
by Mike Wagner and Dale Dempsey, Dayton Daily
News
Part
5: States face tough choices
by Ben Sutherly, Dayton Daily News
Part
6: Lucrative megafarm market lures Europeans — Foreigners
pulling up roots and migrating to America in droves
by Ben Sutherly, Mike Wagner and Laura A. Bischoff, Dayton
Daily News
Glossary
of terms
• Megafarm:
Used generically, but states all have different terms for
large-scale livestock farms. The most commonly used label
is CAFO, the acronym for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation.
In Iowa, megafarms are called “confinements.” In
Pennsylvania, they are called “advanced farms.” Megafarms
are typically defined as those having 1,000 animal units,
or 100,000 chickens, 55,000 turkeys, 2,500 hogs, 1,000
cattle or 700 milk cows.
• Animal
units: The equivalent of one beef cow is an animal unit.
Under this definition, an animal unit would consist of
0.7 milk cows, 2.5 hogs, 55 turkeys and 100 chickens.
• Concentrated
Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs): A farm housing at least
1,000 animal units.
• Lagoon:
An excavated, diked or walled structure or combination
of structures designed for the treatment or storage of
manure. In many states, lagoons must be designed and constructed
in compliance with Natural Resources Conservation Service
specifications.
• Manure
management plan: A plan to manage the amount, form, placement,
and application of animal manure to prevent pollution,
maintain soil productivity and achieve realistic yield
goals. A nutrient management plan includes a whole range
of plant nutrient sources such as chemical fertilizers
and biosolids (sewage sludge) as well as manure.
• Broiler
chickens: Meat chickens that are raised for seven to 10
weeks before they are slaughtered, processed and distributed
to supermarkets and restaurants. Unlike laying hens, broiler
chickens are not housed in cages but raised on the floor
of chicken houses.
• Vertical
integration: The control of multiple aspects of food production,
including animal production, processing, distribution and
marketing.
• Integrator:
A company that uses vertical integration as a business
strategy.
• Breaker
plant: A plant that processes eggs for use in products
such as cake mix and salad dressing.
• National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Program (NPDES):
A federal program that grants the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency and delegated state EPA offices the authority to
regulate discharges of pollutants from sources such as
factories and municipalities. In 1976, the U.S. EPA issued
regulations still in effect today for large farms as part
of its implementation of the NPDES program.
• Grower:
Typically a farmer who raises meat chickens. Growers often
contract with large companies like Tyson Foods, Inc. to
run large chicken operations.
• Filter
strip : Strip or area of vegetation often situated
at the edge of a field or along a waterway that is used
for removing sediment, organic matter, and other pollutants
from stormwater runoff.
Part
1: For cheaper prices, ar we risking our health, the
environment and squeeze out small farmers?
by Mike Wagner and Ben Sutherly, Dayton
Daily News
For
three years, Ohio regulators didn’t know what was
going on inside the long white barns of the state’s
largest cattle farm.
They
didn’t know the farm was storing uncovered piles
of manure, stacked higher than a basketball hoop, on a
cement slab outside.
Or
that rain was washing some of that waste into the nearby
Little Miami, a national scenic river.
They
didn’t know about Ohio Feedlot Inc. even though its
9,000 cattle generated about 131,000 tons of manure a year,
almost double the amount produced by Dayton’s 166,000
residents.
They
didn’t know because the owner didn’t tell them.
Regulators
didn’t discover the long-closed Clark County feedlot
had reopened until a prospective buyer contacted the Ohio
Environmental Protection Agency to see whether the 185-acre
farm met state regulations.
“We
couldn’t keep up with the large farms,” said
Jim Simpson, an Ohio EPA supervisor in the agency’s
Dayton office. “They just kept coming and snowballed
us, and that’s what happened with that feedlot.”
Livestock
farms across America have gone the way of Wal-Mart and
the retail industry, building superfarms at the pace Wal-Mart
and its discount cousins build superstores. But the supersizing
of livestock farming, while revolutionizing food production
in America, has overrun regulators, caused untold harm
to the environment and public health, created an uproar
over the treatment of animals and squeezed many small farmers
out of business.
Even
the very definition of livestock farming has been shaken.
Chicken
houses the size of two-car garages have given way to metal
buildings longer than a football field with tens of thousands
of chickens inside. Hogs are kept in metal-gated pens on
concrete slats, a thousand animals under one roof.
Fifty
years ago, the average egg farm in Ohio had fewer than
100 birds; now it has close to 10,000. A single operator,
Buckeye Egg Farm, has 14 million chickens spread over four
counties.
Giant
companies like Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms are contracting
with farmers to expand operations and eliminate overhead.
For farmers, the choice has become painfully simple: Get
bigger or get out.
Large
livestock farms are one reason Americans can buy a dozen
eggs for 99 cents, a gallon of milk for $2, a pound of
bacon for $3 and a ribeye steak for under $5.
But
they are also the reason school bus driver Bernadine Edwards
has to close her farmhouse windows even in the dead heat
of the Kentucky summer. She is surrounded by 82 chicken
houses packed with 2 million birds.
They
are the reason Ron Osterholm, a health official in Cerro
Gordo County, Iowa, successfully pushed for a yearlong
ban on livestock expansion in his county. Before another
farm comes in, Osterholm wants to test the air near the
largest farms to determine their risk to public health.
And
they are the reason the Illinois River in Oklahoma is turning
bright green.
A
nine-month Dayton Daily News examination traced many problems
on large farms to lax standards, uneven enforcement and
rules that vary from state to state.
Even
finding the farms that states are supposed to regulate
is nearly impossible. Most states require permits for farms
that have at least 100,000 chickens, 55,000 turkeys, 2,500
hogs, 1,000 beef cattle or 700 milk cows. But states can’t
enforce regulations on farms they don’t know about,
and many states don’t know how many megafarms they
have.
Some
don’t even look.
In
Virginia, the Department of Environmental Quality waits
for farms to apply for a permit. “We don’t
run up and down the road looking for them,” said
Scott Haley, an environmental planner for the department. “Occasionally,
we find operations through complaints.”
Added
Rich Powell, a geological scientist for the Surface Water
Quality Bureau in New Mexico: “You’ve probably
figured out that most of the people who should be permitted
are not permitted.”
Just
18 of the 46 states with megafarms have conducted a formal
inventory or survey to find them, the Daily News examination
found.
The
regulatory climate has helped lure Dutch farmers who have
opened dozens of dairies in the Midwest. Ohio officials
are concerned: Five Ohio dairies have already been warned
about environmental violations.
The
Daily News traveled to 11 states and the Netherlands, and
compiled a comprehensive database of megafarm regulations
in every state. The examination found:
• Megafarms
are rapidly replacing small and midsized livestock farms.
Government statistics show megafarms grew 47 percent
from 1982 to 1997, while small and midsized farms declined
25 percent. Put another way, about 2,600 megafarms replaced
339,000 smaller farms. But the number of large farms
now is likely much higher. In Ohio, the number of megafarms
more than tripled in the last decade, to 139 farms.
• State
after state is overhauling megafarm regulations, but
operators can still go years without facing inspections,
must violate rules repeatedly to risk harsh penalties
and are exempt from many environmental standards. Half
the states don’t require megafarms to meet air-quality
standards and just four states enforce limits on toxic
gas from large farms.
• Megafarms
increasingly operate like factories yet skirt federal
standards designed to protect the public and the environment
from industrial pollutants. A federal lawsuit in Kentucky
seeks to have 80 chicken houses regulated as industrial
plants, claiming their ammonia emissions pose a public
health threat. Buckeye Egg reported releasing 3.3 million
pounds of ammonia in 2000, ranking it among the state’s
top factories, power plants and other industrial sources.
• Pollution
investigations linked to Ohio’s livestock farms
are on the rise. Livestock farming was suspected in 311
investigations since 1993, up 29 percent from the previous
decade. In 2001 and 2002, the state linked 81 incidents
to livestock operations — more than from any other
source, including oil spills and sewage. An estimated
74,000 fish were killed in those incidents.
• At
least 24 people in the Midwest have died from inhaling
hydrogen sulfide and methane from manure since the 1970s,
including fifth-generation Michigan dairy farmer Carl
Theuerkauf and four members of his family, who collapsed
one by one in 1989 after breathing methane gas from a
manure pit. But the death toll from manure may be much
higher. Cryptosporidium, a microorganism found in animal
waste, killed 104 people and sickened 403,000 others
in Milwaukee in 1993 in an outbreak some blamed on manure
from nearby livestock farms. A local health department
and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also
suspected that manure caused seven miscarriages in a
small farming community in Indiana between 1991 and 1993
by contaminating wells. “I thought the water I
was drinking was good water,” said Melissa Dickerson,
who was 22 and pregnant for the first time.
• “Big
Chicken” often equals less regulation. Twenty-three
states exempt dry-litter poultry operations — the
bulk of their chicken farms — from regulations
that other megafarms must follow. They include Iowa,
the nation’s top egg-producing state; North Carolina,
the top turkey-producing state; and Georgia and Arkansas,
the top two producers of meat chickens. The exemption
rankles officials in some neighboring states. Oklahoma
and Arkansas are embroiled in a border war about pollution
runoff from chicken houses in Arkansas to scenic rivers
in Oklahoma.
“Yes,
we are getting cheap food, but we’re being sold a
bill of goods,” said Don Stull, professor of anthropology
at the University of Kansas. “If we look at the real
costs — costs to the environment, costs of the loss
of the family farm and costs to rural communities — what
price are we really paying for that?”
Those
who operate and defend the farms say the problems have
been blown out of proportion.
“A
lot of people are trying to take the big farms down with
all this factory farm crap,” said David Holcomb,
a poultry farmer near the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. “We
feed the nation. We give it the cheapest and safest food
we have ever had. And yet so many people want to destroy
us.”
Farmers
also bristle at criticism that animals are mistreated on
large livestock farms.
“What’s
good for the health of the chicken is usually good for
the farmer’s pocketbook,” said Marcus Rust,
whose family runs Rose Acre Farms of Seymour, Ind., the
nation’s second largest egg producer.
Most
high-rise egg houses pack up to eight chickens to a cage,
with each bird allotted a space roughly equal to half a
sheet of notebook paper. But Rust said cages are healthier
for chickens because farmers can control the birds’ diets. “The
chicken is a scavenger,” he said. “They eat
whatever they can find.”
Under
pressure from animal welfare groups, the United Egg Producers
in June introduced new standards for the industry, including
one that increases the minimum cage space for chickens
up to 40 percent by 2008.
“That
brings us more in line with European regulations,” said
Joy Mench, an animal science professor at the University
of California at Davis and a member of UEP’s advisory
committee.
Ohio,
like many states, is rewriting rules for its megafarms.
But the state also switched regulators, transferring most
of the regulatory authority that was under the Ohio EPA
for more than 25 years to the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
The
Ohio Farm Bureau, the lobbying voice of agriculture and
a generous contributor to state candidates, pushed hard
for the bill, which passed in 2001.
“It
was something that was extremely important to us and perhaps
was one of the most important bills that we’ve worked
on,” Farm Bureau lobbyist Larry Gearhardt said. “We
spent a tremendous amount of time trying to massage the
bill and have it drafted the way it should be to run a
good program.”
The
federal government on Dec. 13 is expected to announce stricter
rules for governing megafarms. Under drafts of the proposed
rules, the U.S. EPA would require that more farms be permitted
and that they be inspected more frequently. The rules also
would prohibit the spreading of manure and wastewater within
100 feet of surface water, and would require large meat-producing
corporations to share environmental responsibility with
the farmers they employ.
A
spokeswoman for the U.S. EPA said the agency would not
comment on any findings in the Dayton Daily News story,
citing the pending announcement of the new rules.
Fred
Dailey, director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture,
which took over most of the state’s authority for
regulating megafarms in August, said he’s committed
to cleaning up problems. The department’s livestock
environmental permitting program has 13 employees, including
six who do inspections.
“We
don’t turn a blind eye,” Dailey said. “There’s
no future for the livestock industry in this state unless
it’s properly regulated.”
Jim
Buchy, the assistant director for the Ohio Department of
Agriculture and a former state legislator, said megafarms
are a necessary response to market forces.
“We
have this pristine view of mom and dad on a farm with 80
acres and a few milk cows running around, a few chickens
running around, a barnyard and a couple of pigs,” he
said.
“That
type of agriculture disappeared over 50 years ago.”
Dirty
Water
Before
the hog and chicken farms in northern Darke County got
big, Jeff Schlecty would draw his bow and arrow, aim at
a carp in the Wabash River and hope he didn’t hit
a small-mouth bass.
“There
were so many nice bass, you really had to watch,” Schlecty
said.
If
the 33-year-old Schlecty went fishing in the Wabash now,
he likely wouldn’t catch a single small-mouth — because
there might not be any left.
Two
Ohio EPA water-quality studies on the rivers, creeks and
streams that feed the Wabash tell why small-mouth bass
are vanishing.
“The
water in those areas is not in good shape, and the primary
cause of the (pollution) is not septic tanks, treatment
plants or fertilizer — it’s manure, mainly
from large farms,” said Robert Miltner, an aquatic
biologist for the Ohio EPA. “The problems with manure
and farms have been building for many years, and this confirmed
what we believed all along. We didn’t find a single
small-mouth bass in the Wabash River.”
The
Wabash begins near New Weston, an hour’s drive north
of Dayton, and winds 475 miles through Ohio and Indiana
before emptying into the Ohio River near Evansville. The
Ohio portion of the river is the state’s “most
degraded watershed,” according to the EPA report.
“It’s
unlikely the Wabash will ever support healthy aquatic communities,” the
report states.
EPA
researchers tested for fish quality, bacteria and other
contaminants during 18 months in 1999 and 2000. The studies
found the poorest water quality in northern Darke and southern
Mercer counties — an area with hundreds of small
and medium-sized livestock farms and 71 of the state’s
139 megafarms.
Acre
for acre, those two counties produce more eggs than anywhere
else in the United States.
Since
the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the nation’s
rivers have been getting cleaner. But that’s not
true of the Ohio portion of the Wabash.
Ohio
regulators say chicken, hog and dairy farms — some
of which regulators have directly linked to fish kills
and other pollution problems — are the principal
reason the Wabash River is so polluted.
In
many spots along the Wabash, manure from farmland can wash
directly into the river. In Indiana, the Wabash also cuts
through farmland but a green buffer — visible from
the air — protects the river from the runoff.
“There
is nothing there — no buffers on either side,” said
Rick Wilson, a megafarm inspector for the Ohio EPA, as
he looked down from a small plane above the river in Mercer
County. “Trees, grass or some kind of buffer protects
the water and aquatic life from (manure), from runoff,
but it’s just not there.”
Tom
Menke, a consultant for more than 100 of Ohio’s megafarms,
didn’t dispute the poor water quality in the area,
but he said it is due more to septic tanks and sewage from
treatment plants.
Larger
livestock farms produce millions of gallons of manure,
which is often impounded in lagoons or pits beneath barns.
The manure is then pumped into tanker spreaders or through
a dragline pulled by a tractor and injected into the soil.
Sometimes the lagoons overflow or leak. Other times, farmers
apply too much manure or put it on frozen or saturated
soil, and excess nutrients seep into rivers.
Ohio
wildlife officials linked the deaths of 333,000 fish during
the last decade to livestock.
Small
and midsized farms cause a majority of the fish kills linked
to livestock in Ohio, but several megafarms have repeatedly
violated pollution laws. Those farms were also responsible
for some of the largest fish kills.
Between
1994 and 1997, Cal-Maine Foods egg farms in Darke County
were cited three times for spilling chicken manure and
chicken parts into rivers and streams, including a 1994
incident that killed 49,000 fish in the Stillwater River.
The Mississippi-based company is the nation’s largest
egg producer.
“Handling
manure was not a high agenda item,” said Fred Adams,
Cal-Maine’s chief executive officer. “But in
the last few years, it has become very, very important.
We do whatever is necessary to comply with laws. The biggest
challenge we had some 10 years ago is recognizing it’s
a top priority.”
Sunnyside
Farms near Fort Recovery was cited six times in the last
decade for discharging chicken manure and water used to
wash eggs. The farm is owned by Midwest Poultry Services
of Mentone, Ind., the nation’s 10th largest egg producer.
Robert Krouse, Midwest Poultry’s president, said
the company has taken steps to improve how it puts wash
water on fields. He also said the company is monitoring
those field applications more closely.
Daylay
Egg Farm of West Mansfield was ordered to pay $60,000 in
August for repeated mishandling of manure and wash water
at four egg megafarms in Union County between October 1995
and July 2000. In July 2000, one of the farms discharged
chicken manure into the Scioto River, killing an estimated
$2,400 worth of fish. The state reduced the penalty after
Daylay, the nation’s 24th largest egg producer, agreed
to invest in improvements to prevent future environmental
problems. The company declined comment over the telephone.
Buckeye
Egg has consistently run afoul of pollution laws, angered
neighbors about fly and odor problems and caused harm to
the environment.
In
1983, a Buckeye Egg farm in Licking County spilled chicken
manure into a creek, killing nearly 150,000 fish; two spills
in 1999 killed 17,500 fish. Dailey, the director of the
Ohio Department of Agriculture, sent Buckeye Egg a letter
in August detailing 87 environmental violations. The farm
is still in business, but its owner, Anton Pohlmann, returned
to Germany and put the company up for sale.
“It
only takes one bad actor in a state, and probably every
state has at least one company that’s a chronic violator,
that has ignored all the best management practices of livestock
production,” said Paul Lasley, rural sociologist
at Iowa State University.
Not
all violators are megafarms
In
August, 11, 790 fish died after cow manure spilled into
a tributary of the Wabash River and eventually reached
the river itself in Fort Recovery. The discharge came just
three months after a May 9 investigation at the same dairy
revealed an overflowing manure storage pond. Recent rains
had kept the farmer, Michael Fullenkamp, from withdrawing
liquid manure from the pit and spreading it on fields.
Fullenkamp declined comment on the incidents.
EPA
records show the Fullenkamp dairy had 350 cows, 400 replacement
heifers and housing for about 50 calves — a big farm,
but not a megafarm.
“I
think the image is that if you weren’t a large farm,
you wouldn’t be a polluter,” said Neil Diller,
chief financial officer for Cooper Farms, which processes
more than 4 million turkeys a year in Ohio. While that
perception is inaccurate, Diller said getting bigger raises
the environmental stakes.
“The
bigger operators have to be better operators because when
something goes wrong, it’s a lot bigger wrong,” he
said.
“It’s
a thin line we walk all the time between being efficient
and being responsible.”
Farm
or factory?
The
thundering buzz echoed through the Kentucky cornfields,
and grew louder as Leesa Webster walked the long dusty
driveway that connects her property to her mother’s.
“It
sounds like an airport or something over there,” Webster
said, pointing to the top of a steep hill.
Over
the hill was a chicken farm. It’s the kind of farm
where the whirr of industrial-sized fans in warehouselike
buildings can be heard a mile away. The kind where hundreds
of thousands of chickens are herded onto a conveyer belt
and boxed into crates.
The
kind where forklifts load the crates onto a converted school
bus that drives them to the slaughterhouse.
Chicken
operations like this Tyson Chicken farm south of Owensboro,
Ky., fuel the debate of farm or factory.
Larger
operators often post employee information in English and
Spanish and have workers punch time cards and wear hairnets.
On cattle and hog farms, engineers design manure pits capable
of holding tens of millions of gallons of liquid manure.
And on some farms, the owners spend thousands of dollars
to cool and heat their buildings.
At
the Tyson farm, each broiler chicken house is typically
400 to 500 feet long and contains 20,000 to 25,000 broiler
chickens. The houses are dimly lit more than 20 hours a
day to help stimulate eating around the clock. Unlike egg
farms, where chickens are kept in cages, broilers are scattered
about the floor of the house, a huge canvas of white. Each
house typically has two six-ton feed bins.
Large
poultry companies like Tyson are known as integrators.
They own the chickens from the time they hatch until they
land in the frozen food section of a grocery store.
The
people running the houses are known as growers, but they
consider themselves farmers. The view isn’t always
shared by those who live near the chicken houses.
“There
is no farming going on down there,” said Webster,
holding her nose to block the stench of dead chickens.
Today’s big farms may resemble factories, but they
aren’t regulated like them.
Only
a fraction of today’s megafarms operate under a federal
permit to minimize water pollution. Those wanting to erect
a megafarm don’t have to have the land rezoned. And
federal standards for workplace safety are enforced only
on farms with more than 10 employees. Automation allows
many megafarms — even some large ones — to
stay below that number.
Kelley
Donham, an occupational and environmental health professor
at the University of Iowa, said many large farms view regulations
as an obstacle to doing business. He said that mentality
can make it difficult for public health officials to work
with farms in a proactive manner.
“They
don’t want regulations,” Donham said. “They
say, ’Show me the bodies, show me some kind of disease
that this causes. Otherwise, don’t talk to me.’”
Yet
researchers have documented that working inside large livestock
operations can be hazardous. An Iowa report released this
year said at least 25 percent of workers in hog megafarms
report respiratory health problems. Some workers spend
70 hours a week inside confinement buildings, breathing
manure fumes from hundreds and sometimes thousands of livestock.
Worker
health risks could be reduced through management practices,
engineering controls, use of personal protective equipment
and health surveillance, the report said.
“However,
such programs are exceedingly rare in today’s (megafarm)
industry.”
A
real threat
The
doctor slowly moved the ultrasound wand across a pregnant
Melissa Dickerson’s abdomen.
There
was no heartbeat.
A
routine check-up three months into the 22-year-old Dickerson’s
pregnancy turned into tragedy.
Dickerson,
pregnant for the first time, tried to do everything right.
She knew she should drink lots of water, so she did. What
she didn’t know was that the well water was contaminated
at the family’s farm near LaGrange, Ind., a town
with 2,300 people and four working traffic lights.
“I
had no idea what was going on," said Dickerson, now
a 31-year-old mother of two sons. “I just wanted
to know why it happened because I didn’t want another
miscarriage.”
Two
neighbors suffered the same loss. The three women, all
living within two miles of each other in LaGrange County,
had a total of seven miscarriages between 1991 and 1993.
All three women got their water from wells and lived within
one mile of a farm with 450 hogs. The LaGrange County Health
Department and the CDC concluded the wells were contaminated
by manure from the hog farm — a conclusion the hog
farmer denies.
Until
now, the women have never been interviewed.
“I
don’t want to reopen a very painful time in my life,
but I do think it’s important that women are reminded
to check the water they are drinking, especially during
pregnancy,” said one of the women, who didn’t
want to be identified and had two miscarriages during the
two-year period. “There was a lot of pain for everyone
during all that.”
The
miscarriages intensified the national debate about whether
manure poses a real health threat to humans.
Manure
provides a vital source of nutrients in soil. But manure
also can be deadly if contaminants seep into drinking supplies
and cause high nitrate levels. Babies one to four months
old are particularly susceptible and may develop blue baby
syndrome, a blood disorder associated with high nitrate
intake.
Pinpointing
the source of bad water is difficult. Local health officials
didn’t suspect the LaGrange County miscarriages were
caused by contaminated well water until a local resident
tested his well and found dangerous levels of nitrates.
County
Health Department Director William Grant interviewed 19
families and concluded three women were drinking bad water.
The Double D Hog farm appeared to be the main source of
contamination, but there were other farms in the area and
several septic tanks located near the aquifer.
“We
were able to conclude that the nitrate levels in that area
where the miscarriages were occurring were more than double
compared to the households where women were having healthy
births,” Grant said. “We took a lot of heat
from our findings.”
No
one took more heat than David Beiswanger, former owner
of the Double D hog farm, who said Grant and the government
were wrong to blame him.
“There
were some people in our little town running around telling
people I was a baby killer and that my farm was killing
unborn children in this area,” said Beiswanger, 49,
who sold the farm in 1997. “Imagine what that felt
like for me.”
Grant
and the CDC concluded that waste went into the aquifer
through a crack in Beiswanger’s manure pit. Beiswanger
replaced the pit but denies it had a leak. He said digging
up the pit was “the biggest mistake I made because
it made it look like I needed to replace it when I didn’t.”
Fertilizer,
other farms or the sheer age of the wells could have polluted
the groundwater, Beiswanger said.
“It’s
possible that there was some problem with my farm, but
I’m supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and
none of them — Grant or the CDC — had any proof
that I was guilty of anything,” he said.
An
expert who assisted Grant during the investigation believes
there was a direct link between the miscarriages and manure.
Dr.
Solomon Isiorho, a professor of Geo Sciences at Indiana-Purdue
University, was already conducting an extensive water-quality
study of more than 600 wells in LaGrange County when he
learned of Grant’s investigation.
Isiorho
tested the wells in the area of Beiswanger’s hog
farm.
“Based
on what I had in front of me, there was no other reason
as to why these women were having miscarriages,” he
said. “The chemistry of the water suggested that
there was nothing else in the water besides nitrate.”
No
one was watching Dave Long was proud that hardly anyone
knew he had reopened Ohio Feedlot Inc.
He
used wood chips instead of sawdust for bedding in the cattle
stalls, and the system did such a good job of controlling
odor and flies he won an entrepreneurial business award
from Wittenberg University in 2001.
“No
one even knew we were out here,” he said. “We
ran a clean operation.”
Ohio
Feedlot may have been the state’s first megafarm
when it took in 20,000 beef cattle in 1968. But business
dropped off and the feedlot shut down for seven years in
the 1990s. State officials didn’t know Long had reopened
the farm until a prospective buyer, Smithfield Foods Inc.,
contacted them to see if the farm was in compliance with
the state’s environmental regulations.
Long
said he didn’t think he needed a permit because his
cattle were under roof. He also said the manure that washed
into the Little Miami River was from Garick PayGro, the
composting company next door. He said he allowed PayGro
to store manure on the slab.
“I
knew it was going in (the river),” he said, “but
that was PayGro’s manure — not mine.”
But
officials for PayGro, which is headquarted near Cleveland,
said the company never stored manure on Long’s property.
“The
manure was not ours. Dave Long stored manure on the concrete
slabs because he had nothing to do with it,” said
Gary Trinetti, president of the Garrick Corp. “We
would never tell somebody to put all this manure on their
property if it were our manure.”
Trinetti
said the only time PayGro purchased manure from the feedlot
was during a five-month period in 2000. Carl Kipp Jr.,
technical director at PayGro and one of the co-founders
of Ohio Feedlot, said the concrete slab was built in the
mid-1980s. He said manure piles stored on the slab were
typically about 50 feet wide and 10 to 15 feet high.
He
said Long stored manure on the slab for three years.
“I
would see it out there every day,” Kipp said. PayGro,
which was fined $4,000 in 1992 after a manure spill into
the Little Miami killed 5,467 fish, recently applied for
a federal pollution permit that will allow the Ohio EPA
to more closely monitor the composting facility.
Cathy
Alexander, a supervisor in Ohio EPA’s Division of
Surface Water, said state officials don’t know how
much manure seeped into the Little Miami during the three
years Long owned the feedlot. But a water test in August
2001 found ammonia levels downstream of the farm were four
times greater than upstream.
“It
really doesn’t matter to us whose manure it was,” Alexander
said.
Smithfield
finalized the Ohio Feedlot purchase in October. This time,
the EPA demanded that the owners obtain a federal permit
to operate as a megafarm.
The
troubles at the feedlot show how difficult it is for states
to track farms that expand and change constantly. Ohio
EPA Executive Director Christopher Jones admits that his
agency did not make regulating megafarms a priority for
two decades. “When you had to deal with issues like
large farms, you would go after them when there were complaints,” he
said.
But
Jones said during the past four years the EPA became more
aggressive by inspecting farms and tracking their compliance
with state environmental regulations.
Farmers
like Bill Siefring, who owns an egg farm near Rossburg,
say tougher regulations penalize all megafarmers for the
abuses of a few.
“I
think there needs to be things in place, but to make them
so strict that it makes it where you don’t want to
be in the business — I don’t know if that is
the direction to go either,” Siefring said. “When
we first got in this business in 1986 or 1987, you could
still operate and do things without a lot of people looking
over your shoulder. Now it’s like everybody and their
brother’s looking over my shoulder.”
Staff
writers Ken McCall, Laura A. Bischoff, Dale Dempsey and
Martha Hickman Hild contributed to this report.
continued on next
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