- WASHINGTON - The U.S.
Agriculture
Department estimates that 50,000 hogs are fed garbage and waste restaurant
food every day - a practice the British government says it will outlaw
after blaming Europe's foot-and-mouth epidemic on contaminated meat that
was fed to hogs there.
-
- In the United States, the practice of
"garbage-feeding"
hogs is dying out because raising swine on corn and soybean meal produces
fatter pigs faster. But state veterinarians say there are still a number
of small "mom-and-pop" farms that feed swill to hogs for economic
reasons.
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- Under a 1980 federal law, farms that feed garbage to
pigs are required to be licensed and to undergo periodic examinations to
ensure that the swill is properly boiled at 212 degrees Fahrenheit for
30 minutes to kill viruses and diseases, and to check the animals'
health.
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- "The numbers (of garbage-feeding operations) are
very small,'' said Jim Rogers, a spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service, the Agriculture Department agency responsible for
animal
health issues.
-
- He said most garbage-feeding hog farms are located in
Puerto Rico, Texas, Arkansas and Florida, and most are smaller, family-run
farms with about 10 hogs each. Garbage-feeding farms with the largest
number
of hogs are located in Nevada and New Jersey, he said.
-
- The Agriculture Department estimates that of the 100
million hogs in the United States, about 50,000 are currently fed swill.
There are 2,700 licensed and regulated garbage-feeding farms in the United
States and Puerto Rico.
-
- Thomas Burkgren, executive director of the American
Association
of Swine Veterinarians, said if farmers follow proper procedures, there's
little chance of hogs picking up diseases from their food.
-
- "But if there's a breach, it's a huge risk - it
would put the entire industry at risk," he said.
-
- Burkgren said he would not recommend garbage-feeding
because modern formulated food produces heavier pigs. Hogs also are
particularly
susceptible to exotic animal diseases like foot-and-mouth and classic swine
fever, to trichinosis (worms) and pseudo-rabies.
-
- Terry Conger, state epidemiologist with the Texas Animal
Health Commission, said banning garbage feeding would only drive the
practice
underground. "That's just going to enhance the risk,'' he said.
-
- Conger said 613 Texas farms are licensed to feed leftover
restaurant and school food to hogs, and those farms are checked monthly
to make sure they're observing regulations that they re-cook the food
before
feeding it to the animals.
-
- "We're talking about farmers who are barely making
a subsistence living here," Conger said. He said the economics of
free food for pigs makes eliminating the practice difficult.
-
- Britain also set regulations on garbage-feeding,
requiring
the scraps to be cooked for four hours. But Agriculture Minister Nick Brown
disclosed this week that several regulations were circumvented when meat
contaminated with the foot-and-mouth virus was illegally sold to a
Newcastle
restaurant and ended up in swill used at a garbage-feeding plant in
northern
England. The hogs there transferred the disease to sheep and other
animals.
-
- Brown told Parliament this week the government intends
to outlaw garbage-feeding, currently used for about 2 percent of British
hogs.
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- A 1995 study for the U.S. Department of Agriculture
estimated
there is a 4 percent risk that uncooked swill feeding could bring
foot-and-mouth
to the United States.
-
- Feeding contaminated meat to pigs was blamed for some
of the 19th- and 20th-century epidemics of foot-and-mouth disease. There
has not been a foot-and-mouth epidemic here since 1929.
-
- Charles Kirkland, director of field forces at the North
Carolina Department of Agriculture, said garbage feeding is "basically
a dying practice" in the pig industry, despite environmentalists'
efforts to encourage recycling.
-
- He said about 70 North Carolina hog farms are
garbage-feeders,
most with 10 or fewer animals. North Carolina is the second-largest pork
producer in the United States, behind Iowa.
-
- "We know where they are and what they are
feeding,"
Kirkland said of the garbage-feeding farms. "It would defeat our
purposes
to outlaw it because some people will do it no matter what."
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