The bodies are piling up fast.

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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/bu...gues-the-pork-
industry-and-environmentalists.html?_r=0

On Sunday, July 6, 2014 1:18:56 AM UTC-4, Another Mexican Disease wrote:
> The bodies are piling up fast.
>
> 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.

Interesting . . . So why is it that the past few months is the first time in several years I've been able to find bacon for $2/lb.?

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, VA

On Sun, 6 Jul 2014 06:47:39 -0700 (PDT), "
> wrote:

> On Sunday, July 6, 2014 1:18:56 AM UTC-4, Another Mexican Disease wrote:
> > The bodies are piling up fast.
> >
> > 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.
>
> Interesting . . . So why is it that the past few months is the first time in several years I've been able to find bacon for $2/lb.?
>
Look at the history! Prices always go down when they're culling the
herd, then they hike the price after a few weeks/months. It happens
with beef, chicken and pork. We're buying lean, thick cut bacon for
about $5lb now... but I'm betting it won't last for long. It's called
the law of supply and demand.

The commodity where decreased demand and increased supply doesn't
result in decreased prices is gas, which is yet another reason why we
need to stop relying so much on fossil fuels.

--
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.