Report has potential to mislead .

[Oscar]

Published in Regina Leader Post October 26, 2005 and meadow Lake Progress October 25, 2005

Report has potential to mislead …

On October 21, 2005, Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food released the Interim Report of the Spirit Creek Watershed Monitoring Committee (SCWMC) of the Rama and Hazel Dell area in east central Saskatchewan.

(See http://www.agr.gov.sk.ca/docs/events/Sp ... _Final.pdf )

According to the Report, “The SCWMC (August 2000) is a totally independent and non-bias committee appointed by (Agriculture) Minister Clay Serby and re-appointed by Minister Mark Wartman to direct and communicate the monitoring of intensive hog development to ensure the sustainability of the environment in the Spirit Creek Watershed.”

This Committee, assisted by Dr. Huiqing Guo, Assistant Professor with the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Agriculture and Bioresource Engineering, who coordinated Odour Monitoring; by Keith Head, Agrologist with Head and Associates Ltd., who coordinated Soils Monitoring; and by two Nasal Rangers hired to take air emission measurements at pre-determined locations throughout the watershed, consisted of primarily volunteer area residents...and, Florian Possberg, CEO of Big Sky Farms Inc.

For the first 18 – 24 months, they tested wells, dugouts, and spring run-off, took soil samples, recorded air quality, and set up a new weather station in the area as they collected data for a baseline before the hogs arrived.

At the same time, Big Sky Farms Inc. began building: the 6,000-sow breeder/farrowing barn, four nursery barns (capacity 19,200 animals), and the finisher barn (capacity 12,000 animals), located at three sites across this watershed, each with its own government-approved “earthen manure storage” – a 7-acre hole in the ground – and completed by December 2000.

In February 2001, the first sows arrived, followed in August by the feeders. According to the Report, this project produces 116,000 piglets per year (2,300 per week), as well as an estimated 20.5 million gallons of manure per year. This waste, using approximately 50 million gallon of our drinking water, is flushed out of the barns into the waiting cesspools before being spread, toxic and untreated, across the surrounding countryside.

The first “full scale manure spreading” at the Breeder and Nursery barns was carried out in the Fall of 2002 and at the Finisher barn in the Spring of 2003. The collection of well and dugout water samples in a 2 to 3-mile radius of each barn began in the Fall of 2002, the collection of odour emission samples began in early 2003, and the collection of post manure-spreading soil samples was done in 2003 and 2004.

Now, just over THREE years into Big Sky’s full operation, the Interim Report has been released, with the Full Report to follow shortly.

Wait a minute! In the case of water pollution, it could take several years for possible bacteria, salts, heavy metals, antibiotic-resistant pathogens, etc. in the manure to move into our sources of drinking water and make people sick, or worse. Yet, the study is over!

What’s the rush?

Could it be an attempt to dismiss Robert Kennedy’s recent remarks against corporate hog farms, calling them a "criminal enterprise"? Or, in response to the Auditor General’s 2005 Report on the impacts of hog farming which indicates that the federal Departments of Agriculture and of Environment do not know if their programs and activities are reducing the impacts of hog farming on the environment.”

(See the 2005 Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, released on September 29, 2005, Chapter 8 at:

http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports ... 908ce.html )

Unfortunately, any conclusions drawn from this Report - this early in the operation of these mega hog barns - must be considered premature, misleading and, potentially dangerous. To be credible and truly address our concerns about the environment and our health, we need an ‘independent’ study which would continue for at least another five years – then, give us an ‘independent’ Report!


Elaine Hughes

Archerwill, SK