FACT SHEET: ILOs and Water

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Fact Sheet: Intensive Livestock Operations (ILOs) and Water - 2005

At one time, crop and livestock production were complementary enterprises on mixed family farms, with the number of animals kept in
proportion to the number of acres that grew crops for the animals’ food. As well, most of the nutrients originating from those animals were returned to the soil in the same area.

Today, most cattle, hogs and poultry are concentrated in large holdings (such as giant feedlots of 20,000 cattle or more, mega hog barns of 5,000 to 20,000 hogs or more, poultry batteries of 100,000 birds or more) on small land areas, and are raised under intensive conditions resembling manufacturing processes. The animals’ feed is often grown far from these ‘animal factories’ and the manure is spread or sprayed onto fields and pastures as raw, untreated liquefied slurry in quantities that exceed the nutrient needs of crops.

Using hog manure as an example, the combination of the composition of the manure, the massive amount of manure produced, and the inexpensive way in which it is disposed, creates an enormous threat of pollution to both surface and ground water – the source of drinking water for most Canadians.

Composition of the manure

Compounds in hog manure, many of them toxic or pathenogenic, may include: water, hog urine and feces, hormones, human waste, hog carcasses, cleaning chemicals, insecticides, weed seeds, volatile organic compounds, salts, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and manganese (common in all manures), metals (cadmium, zinc, nickel, lead, iron, manganese, boron and copper are added to hog food to promote growth and prevent disease), vaccines, subtherapeutic levels
of antibiotics (to increase the growth and to keep the animals alive under the unnatural confined living conditions), antibiotic-resistant bacteria,
parasites, and other bacterial and viral pathogens such as the now familiar cryptosporidium, salmonella and e-coli.

Quantity of manure

One 5,000-sow farrow-to-finish hog factory, producing 2,400 piglets per week, 52 weeks per year, uses 50-55 million gallons of drinking water
per year. The animals will drink some of this water, but most of it will be used to flush the manure out of the barns into lagoons or holding pits beside the barns. 40 million gallons of liquid manure is produced per year, all needing to be spread or sprayed on nearby fields and pastures for disposal.

In Canada, there are more than 13 million cattle, 11 million pigs, half a million horses and mules, and close to a million sheep and goats. With the
proliferation of industrial-sized livestock operations comes an unprecedented volume of animal waste.

Although Canada spends billions of dollars to treat human sewage, the far greater volumes of animal manure produced on factory farms receive no
treatment at all.

Manure Disposal

When liquid manure is spread or sprayed onto land, particularly around abandoned, uncapped wells, or if heavily incorporated into shallow or welldrained soils, groundwater is at risk for pollution. It can take nature from 10 to 10,000 years to cleanse or recharge aquifers after pollution or depletion.

Nitrogen pollution of water increases the nitrate content. Nitrates in drinking water cause methemoglobinemia, or “Blue Baby Disease”,
which results in digestive and respiratory problems and in severe cases, brain damage or death.

Liquid manure contains a higher proportion of phosphorus to nitrogen in relation to crops’ ability to absorb these nutrients. When manure is applied at rates in excess of a crop’s phosphorus requirements there is a build-up of soil phosphorus, which is susceptible to running off in heavy rain or spring snow melt, contaminating surface water.

Phosphorus pollution contributes to eutrophication — algae proliferation, death of fish, and surface water degradation. There is a suspected link
between blue-green algae toxins and Alzheimer’s disease.

The long-term routine use of antibiotics in animal feed produces antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria in the animals’ gut, “superbugs” which, along with traces of the antibiotics, pass through the animal into the manure to be spread on the surrounding fields, and may end up in drinking water supplies. If a superbug is making you sick, the search for an effective antibiotic against this illness could quickly become a critical issue. There is now worldwide recognition of the urgent need to ban the overuse of
antibiotics and protect the ones that are still effective.

Solutions

Livestock production does not need to be damaging to water supplies or quality. Straw bedding, pastured, and hoop house hog production do not
use liquid manure systems. These systems do not require routine antibiotics in the feed either.

“Learning to compost manure, reducing the water content and smell and killing germs is the way to start, before we build 20,000-hog farms,” says Dr. David Schindler of the University of Alberta, Canada’s best-known water pollution expert. He points out, “ Pigs share eight to 10 of the most common bacteria and parasites that infect humans. If these were humans that were crapping all over the landscape, the whole population would be up in arms. With the same pathogens and the same nutrients coming out of hogs and cattle, why are we tolerating them?”


Sources:

It’s Hitting the Fan, Environmental Defence Canada, 2002
http://www.environmentaldefence.ca/

The Price We Pay for Corporate Hogs, by Marlene
Halvorson, 2000
http://www.iatp.org/hogreport/indextoc.html

Environmental Problems, Hogwatch Manitoba
http://www.hogwatchmanitoba.org/enviro.html

How’s the Water, Perspectives on Water and Rural
Communities in Saskatchewan, by Cathy Holtslander,
Saskatchewan Eco-Network, 2001
http://www.stopthehogs.com/pdf/water-sen-brochure.pdf

Unnatural Law, Rethinking Canadian Environmental Law
and Policy , by David R. Boyd, UBC Press, 2003

Organizations working on water and factory farming issues:

Beyond Factory Farming Coalition
#501 - 230 - 22nd Street East
Saskatoon, SK S7K 0E9
Phone: (306) 955-6454
Toll free: 1-877-955-6454
Fax (306) 955-6455
Email: choltslander@canadians.org
Web: www.beyondfactoryfarming.org

GRACE Factory Farm Project Canada
http://www.factoryfarm.org/canada/
215 Lexington Avenue, Suite 1001
New York, NY 10016
Tel.: (212) 726-9161

Association for the Preservation of the Bouctouche Watershed
http://www.mondata.com/action/home.asp
Ste-Marie de Kent, New Brunswick

The Society for Environmentally Responsible Livestock Operations (SERLO)
RR #2, LCD1
Red Deer, AB T4N 5E2
email: admin@serlo.org
http://www.serlo.org/default.asp

National Farmers Union
2717 Wentz Avenue
Saskatoon, SK S7K 4B6
Tel.: (306) 652-9465
www.nfu.ca

Environmental Defence
317 Adelaide Street West - Suite 705
Toronto, Ontario M5V 1P9
Tel.: (416) 323-9521
www.environmentaldefence.ca

Stop the Hogs Coalition
Box 23,
Archerwill, SK S0E 0B0
Tel.: (306) 323-4938
www.stopthehogs.com

Fact Sheet author Elaine Hughes is an environmental activist from
Archerwill, SK and a member of the BFF Steering Committee.

This leaflet was produced in partnership with
the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE).

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Planned feedlot threatens South Saskatchewan River

http://www.canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=6450

February 16, 2011

Concerns are being raised over a planned intensive livestock operation in the rural municipality of Rudy, Saskatchewan (about 94 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon) and its impact on the South Saskatchewan River. The Council of Canadians shares these concerns.

CBC reported on November 1 that, “A controversial proposal for a feedlot near Outlook, Sask., has won approval from the local rural municipality — a move that took some opponents by surprise. An Alberta farmer, Stuart Thiessen, wants to feed up to 36,000 head of cattle on a lot in the RM of Rudy.”

“The RM was facing a possible referendum, but council decided land use decisions are up to the municipal council and went ahead with the approval late last week. Project opponent Sue Peterson said some people ‘were kept totally in the dark’ before that vote was held. She’s asking lawyers to go over everything, including the way council’s vote was conducted.”

Bob Patrick then wrote in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix “The approval of an intensive livestock operation in the RM of Rudy is problematic due to the potential for surface water drainage of high concentration contaminants into the South Saskatchewan River. …The South Saskatchewan is the only source of drinking water for Saskatoon and many other communities in the watershed. In a province where so much of the land surface does not contribute to the river’s streamflow, can the RM of Rudy truly be the best location for such an operation?”

He adds, “The rush for an intensive livestock operation in Rudy may create more negative outcomes than positive benefits. This is a time for careful planning to undertake full assessment of the hydrological characteristics of the area, consideration of broader cumulative effects of all sub-watershed development activity, assessment of alternative locations, and full collaboration with all groups, including First Nations, and communities that depend on the river for a water supply. The human cost of water contamination from an intensive livestock operation (or any other activity) is simply too high. The economic cost of advanced water treatment to ‘fix’ water quality problems after development will be out of reach for many communities that now depend on this water source.”

Patrick concludes, “In the face of uncertainty, the right decision on intensive livestock operations is to protect the water source for future generations in the region.”

It would appear that the RM of Rudy itself is very dependent on water. The RM’s website states that, “The Rural Municipality of Rudy may be the most intensively irrigated municipality in Saskatchewan. Hay, potatoes, peas, beans, canola, sunflowers and safflowers are examples of crops successfully grown in the municipality under irrigation. Hay processed at a dehydration plant in the municipality is sold internationally as high quality animal feed. Large hog barns in the area provide a market for the feed grain grown under irrigation. Excellent dairy and beef herds represent the cattle industry in the municipality.”

CKOM Radio reports that, “The (Saskatchewan) Ministry of Agriculture now must see that (Namaka Farms, the ILO proponent) has considered everything, including water quality concerns. …If the province gives the green light, the feedlot would become the largest of its kind in Saskatchewan.”

In May 2009, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow raised her concerns about the health of the South Saskatchewan River. The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported then that, “The river cutting through Saskatoon is at risk, says the United Nations’ senior adviser on water. The streams that feed the South Saskatchewan River are also at risk and the glaciers feeding these streams are declining rapidly, said Maude Barlow, who is also Council of Canadians chair.”

The web-links are at

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/entertainment/
Wake+source+water+protection/3780798/story.html?id=3780798,

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/
2010/11/01/sk-outlook-feedlot-1010.html,

http://newstalk980.sasklive.com/story/20101031/42560,

http://www.canadians.org/campaignblog/
?p=432 and http://www.outlet.sk.ca/rudy/.

MORE:

http://www.producer.com/Crops/Article.aspx?aid=22761