Give Now  »

wfiu logo
WFIU Public Radio

wtiu logo
WTIU Public Television

Choose which station to support!

Indiana Public Media | WFIU - NPR | WTIU - PBS

Chicago Tribune: Illinois Pork Production Regulation Flawed

pig farm

How much does it cost to make cheap meat? Thanks to a recent Chicago Tribune Investigation, many Illinois residents are quickly finding out.

The Tribune reviewed more than 20,000 pages of government documents and found that the regulatory system designed to protect rural communities actually exploits state laws to build and expand facilities that mass-produce cheap pork.

The Illinois State Department of Agriculture is responsible for both promoting and regulating livestock production. Illinois is the fourth-largest seller of pigs in the U.S. The industry accounted for about $1.5 billion of the state's economy in 2012.

In the past 20 years, the state Department of Agriculture issued about 900 swine operation permits – and that pace continues to accelerate, as state data show that 80 percent of proposed large hog confinement projects were built.

Large hog confinements account for 88 percent of the pork business in Illinois, and contain 5,000 or more pigs. These facilities have created massive new environmental hazards. Pigs waste leaked and spilled into rural waterways, destroying more than 490,000 fish in 67 miles in just 10 years – the most waste caused by any industry in the state.

Reports of animal cruelty also went unchecked for some of the state's most prominent pork producers, with little more than a phone call to pork producers or executives to ask about the alleged abuse.

The Tribune says that at the heart of the issue is the ineffectiveness of the Illinois Livestock Management Facilities Act. The Act includes enough loopholes that pig farmers don't need to inform their neighbors when applying for, or building, a large hog confinement – even though decomposing swine waste releases chemicals in the air that cause respiratory distress and illness for neighbors for miles around.

Though the law requires most confinements to be built at least a quarter-mile away from the nearest home and a half-mile from the nearest town, Illinois does not allow local governments to impose additional standards or take into account wind and weather patterns, topography and facility features that affect the movement of airborne particles.

In addition to health and environmental effects, large hog confinements have economic consequences, especially for smaller hog operations. Smaller farms' contributions to the pork industry have dropped 83 percentage points since 1978.

Read More:





Support For Indiana Public Media Comes From

About Earth Eats

Harvest Public Media