Opponents of the modern hog industry are bringing in U.S. activists to warn Winnipeggers against accepting the 1,100 jobs that go with the proposed OlyWest slaughter plant.
But industry proponents say nothing the detractors say is relevant to the Winnipeg project, because the American examples don’t apply.
The attacks on the OlyWest plant follow on the heels of complaints from a number of east-side Winnipeg businesses that have said they don’t want the plant near them. But the activists are attacking more than the plant and are aiming at the hog industry in general.
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“We really feel strongly that we should be paying serious attention to what’s happening in other jurisdictions and learn from that, so that we can promote what we consider to be long-term sustainable solutions for the hog industry here in Manitoba,” said Vicki Burns, executive director of the Winnipeg Humane Society.
“The ‘bigger is better’ attitude, which has grasped the agricultural industry for so many years, needs to change, and we need to go to smaller is smarter.”
Burns and other activists said small farms selling pigs to small-scale abattoirs would be better than large, industrial operations.
Fred Tait of the National Farmers Union denounced the OlyWest proposal, saying it would create a rash of hog barn construction in rural Manitoba.
“These plants mean for us in rural communities hundreds of huge livestock operations producing millions of hogs owned by large companies,” said Tait.
He said most of the plant’s pigs would come from the Hytek company in southeastern Manitoba and the Big Sky Farms company in central and eastern Saskatchewan.
“These are not about farming. They are about providing a place in rural Manitoba for corporations to produce hogs.”
The centrepiece of the news conference and the highlight of a public meeting in Winnipeg April 20 was Rick Dove, an anti-big-hog-farm activist from North Carolina.
He showed video of polluted rivers and bacteria-infected people and fish in his state, which he attributes mainly to hog barn pollution of air and water.
Dove said the same situation would occur in southern Manitoba if the OlyWest plant goes ahead.
Claims of water pollution often dog the hog industry, but nowhere as often as in North Carolina, where massive industry expansion in low-lying, wet areas with sandy soil led to many problems.
But expansion advocates say North Carolina’s conditions are not typical of the U.S. Midwest or the Canadian Prairies.
The Manitoba Pork Council called again for public support for the OlyWest proposal, saying it represented economic development that would help both Winnipeg and rural Manitoba.
“The need for another pork processing plant in Manitoba can’t reasonably be questioned,” said pork council president Karl Kynoch.
“We want to see more jobs for Manitobans and an increase in value-added processing right here at home.”
One pharmaceutical manufacturer has threatened to leave the city if the OlyWest plant proceeds.
The OlyWest project is going ahead slower than originally planned. Open houses first expected to be held in January now won’t be held until May, and Clean Environment Commission hearings, which must occur before the project gets the green light, won’t happen until some time in 2007.
Premier Gary Doer has described the furor over the plant as a case of good economics but bad politics.
