A
deadly virus, porcine epidemic diarrhea, or PEDv, is estimated to have
killed, on average, more than 100,000 piglets and young hogs each week
since it first showed up in Iowa in May 2013, wreaking havoc on the pork
industry.
The
number of hogs slaughtered this year is down 4.2 percent, according to
the United States Agriculture Department, to roughly 50 million from
more than 52 million in the same period in 2013.
That
drop drove up the price of bacon and center-cut pork chops sold in the
United States by more than 12 percent in May, compared with the same
period a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Prices
for bacon rose more than 15 percent, and pork chops were up almost 13
percent.
“I’ve
been a vet since 1981, and there is no precedent for this,” said Paul
Sundberg, vice president for science and technology at the National Pork Board. “It is devastatingly virulent.”
The
fatality numbers are so staggering that environmentalists have grown
worried about the effects of state laws requiring the burial of so many
carcasses, and what that will do to the groundwater.
“We
know there is a lot of mortality from this disease, and we’re seeing
evidence of burial in areas with shallow groundwater that a lot of
people rely on for drinking water and recreation,” said Kelly Foster,
senior lawyer at the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental group.
Waterkeeper
has asked the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer
Services to put a mass disposal plan into effect, and wants it to
declare a state of emergency.
On its website and YouTube, the
organization has posted photos of dead piglets barely covered with earth
and boxes overflowing with the bodies of young pigs, although it is
unclear whether all were victims of the virus.
Steven
W. Troxler, the state’s agricultural commissioner, has so far declined
to seek an emergency declaration, saying in a letter to Waterkeeper that
he thought existing disposal systems, including composting and the
shipping of carcasses to rendering facilities, were up to the challenge.
“We are not aware of any published scientific data that indicates any
groundwater contamination as a result of PEDv,” according to the letter,
which Mr. Troxler wrote in March.
Some
of the huge hog operations in North Carolina have become ensnared in
disputes over aerial photographing of farms, some of it unrelated to the
spread of the virus, and industry officials have expressed concerns
about the practice as well.
Three
state lawmakers had proposed a bill that effectively would require
state agencies to keep under lock and key any aerial photographs of
agricultural operations that include global positioning coordinates.
The
move echoed an effort by United States Senator Mike Johanns, Republican
of Nebraska, to impose a yearlong moratorium on the Environmental
Protection Agency’s taking of aerial photographs of cattle feedlots and
farming operations to monitor compliance with the Clean Water Act.
Mr. Johanns’s amendment, attached to a recent appropriations bill, was altered to require the E.P.A. to give the Senate more information about its aerial photography program.
Last summer, George Steinmetz, a photographer working for National Geographic, was arrested
in Kansas under the state’s “ag gag” law after using a paraglider to
take photographs of cattle feedlots and other agricultural operations
for an article on the food industry.
Precisely
how many pigs have died from the virus, which causes acute diarrhea
that is virtually 100 percent lethal for piglets two to three weeks old,
is unknown. The Agriculture Department did not require reporting of the
disease until June 5, and it does not collect data on how many pigs the
virus has killed, instead referring the question to the hog industry —
which does not like to talk about it.
The National Pork Producers Council does not have a figure of its own but said it had heard that about eight million pigs had died of PEDv so far.
The
U.S.D.A. said that as of May 28, nearly 7,000 samples submitted from 30
states to labs tested positive for the virus. Since May, there have
been reports of pigs afflicted with the virus in a 31st state.
“We do
know that it is a particularly persistent virus, and it can survive long
periods in less-than-ideal environments,” Joelle Hayden, a department
spokeswoman, wrote in an email.
Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack recently pledged $26.2 million for a variety of
efforts to fight the virus, including development of a vaccine.
The
largest amount, $11.1 million, is to be allocated to helping hog
producers with infected herds enhance their biosecurity practices.
The
money is badly needed. In an illustration of how indiscriminate the
disease is, the virus was found in Vermont in March on a traditional
farm with a small drift of pigs raised largely on pasture. “I was not as
surprised as one might think,” said Dr. Kristin Haas, the state
veterinarian.
“Even though in Vermont and most of the Northeast we don’t
have the same type of commercial swine operations that you find in Iowa
and North Carolina, there is still a tremendous amount of livestock
moving in and out of the state.”
Michael
Yezzi, proprietor of Flying Pigs Farm just across the border in New
York State, said farmers suspected that the virus arrived on a truck
from Pennsylvania. “It’s a very big concern because we have young stock
on the farm, piglets born on the farm and piglets brought in from
regional breeders,” Mr. Yezzi said. “We have to make sure the farms
we’re working with don’t have it, because it’s going to kill everything
under a certain age.
“Nobody
wants to lose 10 to 20 percent of their yearly supply of pigs, whether
that would be 150 for someone like me or 15,000 for someone in Iowa.”
Prevention
is no mean feat. At the Hord Livestock Company in north-central Ohio,
for instance, trucks returning from feed deliveries are cleaned and
disinfected and then the trailers are baked to 160 degrees for 10
minutes. Drivers wear disposable bootees, and farm supervisors are not
allowed to travel between Hord’s farms.
And
yet the company has just finished the four- to five-month process of
eliminating the virus from one of its farms and is working to disinfect
another and build up its sows’ immunity so they can pass it on to their
piglets in their colostrum. The two farms had different strains of the
virus, one more deadly than the other.
Pat
Hord, whose family owns the business, would not say how many of its
animals died from PEDv. “Even though the economic hit is definitely
significant, it’s probably the emotional side that’s the worst of it for
me and my family and the team here,” Mr. Hord said. “All we do every
day is take care of the animals the best that we can, but there’s
nothing you can do for them when this disease hits — it’s out of your
control.”
The
Hords, who also raise cattle, use composting to dispose of animal
carcasses, laying dead animals on a concrete slab, mixing in sawdust and
rotating the mixture as it decomposes to aerate it. Mr. Hord said
disposal of the increased number of dead pigs had not been a particular
problem. “The good news, if there is any in this,” he said, “is that
baby pigs are very small.”
Waterkeeper, however, says that the sheer volume of dead animals poses an environmental threat.
“They’re
very secretive about how many pigs have died in North Carolina, but we
estimate that it’s about two million over the last year or so,” said Rick Dove,
a retired Marine Corps lawyer who has taken aerial photos of pig farms
for Waterkeeper’s North Carolina affiliate.
“They can’t move those pigs
off the farm because it will spread disease, so they’re being buried in
ground along the coastal waterways where the groundwater level is high.”
State
regulation requires the bodies to be buried at least two feet
underground, which in many places means the dead pigs come into contact
with groundwater, Mr. Dove said.
The virus does not infect humans. As the corpses decompose, however, they can become hosts for bacteria and other pathogens.
Each
state has its own requirements for the disposal of carcasses. Iowa, one
of the largest hog-producing states, has a set of disposal methods for
use during emergency disease outbreaks. They range from burial and
rendering to use of alkaline hydrolysis, a highly specialized process
using chemicals and heat to break down tissues.
An Iowa State University publication
describing various processes for disposing of carcasses during an
epidemic estimated that it would take a pit six feet deep, 300 feet long
and 10 feet wide to hold 2,100 pigs, and the pit would need to be
covered with three to six feet of dirt in a site marked by GPS
coordinates and regularly inspected.
North
Carolina issued a warning to a pig operation for having an open burial
pit on its property, Ms. Foster, the Waterkeeper lawyer, said. The
organization brought the issue, which it documented with aerial photos
of the farm, to the attention of the state agriculture department.
The North Carolina Farm Bureau
contends that such photographs create unnecessary expenses for its
members.
“Third parties are making complaints to environmental
regulators, and using aerial photography to document what they say are
violations,” said Paul Sherman, director of the farm bureau’s air and
energy programs.
“The vast majority of those cases are unfounded, but
farmers still have to deal with it, it eats up a good part of a day or
two and often the same complaints come up multiple times.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com
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