Out in Greene County, Iowa

“Sick” animal abuse in a local hog confinement is a moral failure now being told worldwide

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
September 17, 2008
COOPER, IOWA

There’s no way to put this nicely. We apparently have had a moral failure in a major hog production facility in Greene County, and the stories about what happened are right now spreading across the nation and around the world.

We who live in Greene County – especially those involved in pork production here – will be a long time recovering from this.

The organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) – considered a pariah and almost a joke by many people in agriculture – has suddenly gained big credibility publicly with a detailed revelation of shocking animal abuse here. News reports have stopped the hog industry and farm organizations in their tracks, and most farm leaders are calling for the same intense level of investigation and prosecution that PETA officials are.

PETA got a tip earlier this year that there were horrible incidents of abuse happening in a hog confinement operation in the southwest part of Greene County, just north of the towns of Bayard and Bagley, which are in Guthrie County. That tip came as “a whistleblower complaint from inside the farm,” PETA told the Associated Press.

The hog confinements involved have been owned since August 18 of this year by MowMar LLP of Fairmont, Minnesota. That firm bought the operation from Natural Pork Production II of Iowa for a stunning $7.1 million, according to records in the Greene County Courthouse in Jefferson. Few people here even knew about the change in ownership. Natural Pork Production II of Iowa is a company in nearby Harlan that built and opened the facilities in 2005, and has operated them until this summer. But the AP reported that actual management of the facilities, at least until recently, had been handled by AMVC Management Services, based in another neighboring town, Audubon. That apparently ended when MowMar took ownership, and hired as its day-to-day operator Suidae Health & Production, based in Algona, Iowa.

After getting the whistleblower tip, PETA then somehow managed to put two “undercover investigators” on the payroll of the hog operation during this summer of 2008, having them work surreptitiously as employees for a period from June 10 to September 11.

Greene County sheriff says he has started an investigation into possible abuse of hogs JEFFERSON, Iowa September 17, 2008 Greene County Sheriff Tom Heater said he met with officials of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) about their allegations of animal abuse in a local hog confinement, and that he has now started an investigation, the Associated Press reported Wednesday night. ‘‘They provided us with what appears to be some really good information,’’ Heater said. ‘‘Our next step is to secure interviews with potential suspects, and definitely make sure that there’s no further abuse occurring down there – that’s our main concern at this point.’’ Asked if crimes had been committed, Heater responded, ‘‘It appears that there were, yes.’’ That information was in the AP story that was published by the Chicago Sun-Times, where we first saw it, and other media outlets Wednesday night.

Yesterday, their stories and even video which they managed to shoot inside the hog buildings were shared with the AP in Washington, D.C.

The video, in one place shows a regular employee saying that when a sow is uncooperative, “I grab one of these rods and jam it in her asshole.” The AP also reported that while another employee was hitting a sow with another metal rod, he was yelling: “Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! … Take our your frustrations on ’em.” The employee then told the investigator, in the AP’s words, “to pretend that one of the pigs scared off a voluptuous and willing 17- or 18-year-old girl, and then beat the pig for it.”

More from the AP story: “At one point in the video, workers are shown slamming piglets on the ground, a practice designed to instantly kill those baby pigs that aren’t healthy enough. But on the video, the piglets are not killed instantly, and in a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. The video also shows piglets being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia.”

On its own Internet site, PETA told of another incident: “A supervisor shoved a cane into a sow’s vagina, struck her on the back about 17 times, and then struck another sow.”

There is more, some of it even worse, in the news coverage now circulating.

PETA announced that it plans to send the video to the sheriff in Greene County, asking for prosecution of 18 people on “animal cruelty violations.” PETA Vice-President Bruce Friedrich told the AP “the video shows eight people directly abusing animals,” the news organization reported.

Reaction has been immediate and very sharp.

“Putting a rod up a sow’s anus? You’ve got some sick sonsabitches out there,” said Tim Healy, the Greene County sanitarian and zoning officer whose job includes working for the county in processing the applications from hog producers to build and operate confinements.

Craig Lang, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, said in a statement posted at midday on the Farm Bureau’s Internet site: “Farm Bureau members are shocked, appalled and disgusted by these allegations. This is not the way today’s responsible livestock farmers operate. The people who abused those animals should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Consumers believe animals should be treated well and humanely and so do we.”

The AP quoted Lynn Becker, one of the owners of the MowMar company in Minnesota, saying that the abuses shown on the PETA video are “completely intolerable, reprehensible. We condemn these types of acts. If any animals were abused in the brief time we’ve owned the farm, if we still employ these people, every attempt will be made to investigate and initiate corrective action immediately.” He added that MowMar “provided animal welfare training to the staff when it took over the farm,” the AP said.

MowMar apparently supplies all the facility's finished hogs to Hormel Foods, of Austin, Minnesota. And on Wednesday, that company’s spokesperson Julie Henderson Craven told the AP what happened in the confinements was “completely unacceptable.”

Likewise, an AMVC spokesperson told the news organization that the video portrayed “unacceptable practices” and his company would join MowMar in investigating.

Healy, the Greene County zoning officer, said the MowMar facilities include three huge “farrowing barns” northeast of Bayard, which were authorized to hold about 6,000 sows producing about 100,000 baby pigs per year. The company also has two “gilt replacement buildings” closer to Bagley, and those are where “younger female pigs are raised that will eventually replace the sows in the farrowing barns.”

He said it’s his reasoned guess that the pigs would come out of the farrowing barns “at about 13 to 15 pounds each,” and “would be finished out at other facilities” before they are shipped to slaughter.

A strong, conciliatory response from MowMar, the recent purchasers of the hog confinement BAYARD, Iowa September 18, 2008 MowMar LLP, the Fairmont, Minnesota-based company which in late August completed a purchase of the huge hog confinement near here, issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon, September 17, acknowledging the allegations made earlier this week by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and saying big changes are being made in the operation. The company condemned the animal abuse that occurred in its facilities, and said there have already been firings becauses of the PETA disclosures. The statement from the company follows here, in full: MowMar farms, the new owner of a pig/swine operation featured in a video posted on the PETA website, stated that it is surprised and outraged over the images of animal mistreatment at this newly-acquired farm. As a family-owned farm operation with over 30 years in the swine business, MowMar farms does not and will not tolerate the mistreatment of any animals under our husbandry and we take these PETA allegations very seriously. According to PETA, the mistreatment of pigs at the farm site was filmed over a period of three months starting June 10. MowMar farms purchased the farm featured in the video less than a month ago and has retained a new management company to oversee the daily operations at the farm. MowMar was first made aware of these allegations just two days ago, Monday, September 15, when PETA notified MowMar that it wanted to meet. Representatives of PETA and MowMar’s farm managers had a frank and open discussion in a meeting this morning about what PETA discovered and the actions being taken to correct this unfortunate situation. These commitments by MowMar and the farm manager include: -- A thorough investigation has been initiated of the incidents, policies and personnel that were in place prior to the acquisition of the farm by MowMar. Employees who committed animal cruelty violations have been and will be terminated based on the findings of the investigation. -- An animal handling expert will be invited to come to the farm and conduct a review of the policies and procedures to insure there is an independent authority providing additional guidance and best practices. -- Any policies or procedures that are not consistent with MowMar’s policies and generally-accepted standards for the treatment of farm animals will be revised and strengthened. -- Current and future employees of MowMar and the farm management company will receive extensive training on our policies and the proper treatment of animals on our farms. -- Further, the effectiveness of video monitoring equipment is being researched as a tool to oversee all aspects of herd care. In conclusion, MowMar farms will continue to enforce a “zero-tolerance policy” with respect to the mistreatment or abuse of farm animals and is committed to correcting this inexcusable situation as quickly as possible. The company issued the statement through the National Pork Board, headquartered in Des Moines. Cindy Cunningham, spokesperson for the pork board, said in a follow-up interview Thursday that the “new management company” that MowMar has hired to do the daily management of the confinement barns here is Suidae Health & Production, based in Algona, Iowa. That company took over operation of the Bayard facility on August 18, when the recent sale of it was completed. Cunningham said Suidae has an association with a veterinary clinic in Algona, and that she assumes they are also managing several other hog confinements in the region. She also said she has “every confidence” that the MowMar owners “will be outstanding operators,” going forward. “I’ve known the hog producers who own that company for years, and they will do everything possible to run that facility the right way,” she said. “I know they are in there today, cleaning it up, and they will turn it into one of the best-run facilities anywhere.” – Chuck Offenburger

Large hog confinement buildings, which come with technology that would amaze people not knowledgeable about current-day pork production, typically cost $1 million or more. Still, the $7.1 million MorMaw paid Natural Pork Production II for the facilities near Bayard and Bagley was “surprising” to Healy. “That’s a whole lot of money,” he said.

Records of the transaction say it included $4.8 million for the actual property and facilities, and $2.25 million for “personal possessions,” which Healy said he assumes might be the pigs and hogs in the buildings at the time of the sale.

Natural Pork Production II was headed at the time of the development of the facilities by Gary Weihs, of Harlan. Healy said as far as he knows, Weihs is no longer with that company. Healy’s most recent communication with the company has been with a Dave Wittry.

SOME ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND. On August 30, 2005, we published a lengthy story here on Offenburger.com about Natural Pork Production’s new development in this area. That full story is still available in the Archives of “Chuck Offenburger’s columns” on this Internet site. A portion of that story follows here:

When you see and hear what’s developing around us in Greene County, you can’t help but conclude that the basic agricultural character of this great grain-producing county is now rapidly changing. And with it, life itself here is bound to change considerably, too.

Twelve miles west and just a little south of our Simple Serenity Farm, the largest hog confinement buildings I have ever seen are going up. That’s on Greene County Road E63, a mile east of Iowa Highway 25, about two miles north of the town of Bayard.

Three buildings there, each more than twice as long as a football field and 80-to-100 feet wide, will become home in the next month or so to about 6,000 sows. Artificially impregnated, they will begin producing well over 100,000 baby pigs per year, the first of them scheduled for birth this coming January.

The gleaming new steel buildings there in the southwest corner of the county are already breathtaking – in their size alone. The lead partner in the development, Gary Weihs, of Harlan in southwest Iowa, says the latest technology and expertise in manure management will come as close as possible to making the units not be breathtaking in odor, once they’re in production.

The company he heads, Natural Pork Production II, has another confinement “farrowing” operation, about the same size as this new one, already operating just east of Harlan. Weihs built a fabulous home on that same site, and he and his family live there. Passersby on Iowa Highway 44 there tell me the odor has not been offensive, at least yet.

Before construction started at the new site in Greene County, Weihs and his partners endured nearly two years of arguing – and the resistence of hundreds of people in this area. Ultimately, the county’s Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 in 2003 to recommend approval of the Weihs group’s permit application to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. If the county supervisors had voted against recommending approval, the DNR would likely have given it anyway, had Weihs appealed, judging by what’s happened in similar situations around the state.

Despite the squabble, the 49-year-old Weihs told me that “we’ll do our best to be good neighbors. We started our business in 1998, and as we’ve grown, we’ve always met with all the people concerned around our new developments. And we’ve bought a lot of houses from some of them who decided they’d rather not live there anymore. My thought is if you don’t want to live around hogs, you shouldn’t be living in the country.”

But there is an additional population dynamic happening in Iowa now, one that could challenge Weihs’ thinking. The 2000 Census and subsequent updates have reported that there are now more people living on Iowa farms who are not farming than who are farming.

He is somewhat a part of the back-to-the-countryside movement himself. After growing up in the Harlan area, Weihs left for 24 years of work in corporate management for Pepsi, Proctor & Gamble and Monsanto, according to a story by reporter Jeff Caldwell last fall in the Midwest Ag Journal. Weihs earned a Harvard University MBA degree in 1994. But he decided he wanted to raise his family in Iowa, and moved back to become the third generation in his family to go into pork production, but in a much different and bigger way than his father and grandfather operated. Using part of a business plan he wrote in graduate school, Weihs coaxed several other Harlan natives working elsewhere in business to move home and join him.

Healy noted there are “about 35” hog confinements of various sizes in the county in mid 2005, “and I think we’re likely to see more.”

Why?

The hog market is reasonably strong now, there has been enough prosperity in Iowa agriculture in recent years that there is investment money available, and the improving technology and expertise in manure handling is making hog confinements at least somewhat less objectionable to some people. Besides, across Iowa, which has five hogs for every human being, few people want to see the state lose the economic value in being the nation’s leading hog producer.

Some think that the presence of Weihs’ huge new farrowing facility in the southwest part of the county means that more hog finishing facilities will inevitably be built in the immediate area of it.

Not necessarily so, he said. “Basically, we’re just trying to meet the demand for baby pigs,” Weihs said. “The customers who buy from us all have existing finishing facilities. Normally they’ve been getting their new animals from outside of Iowa, a lot of them from Canada.”

That’s the end of the excerpt from our story in 2005.

UNTIL NOW, THERE HAD BEEN NO COMPLAINTS about the Natural Pork Production II operations in Greene County, according to Healy, the county’s zoning officer and sanitarian. He said on Wednesday that no odor problems have been reported at all.

But he said there has been no way of knowing what was going on inside the hog confinement buildings.

“Basically, nobody could get inside, from what I know,” he said. “When they were opening up, they talked about having an open house, but that never happened.”

He said the only time he was ever in the buildings “was before they had pigs in them. They drilled a couple of wells out there so they could have a water supply, and I was out there testing those, like I do for all new wells. I took a look around the buildings then, but again, there weren’t any pigs there then.”

There will undoubtedly be much more fallout from this shocking story.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to watch how this matter affects the hog industry in the months and years ahead. As indicated earlier, Greene County – nearly flat with great soil for grain production – historically has not had a lot of livestock, not nearly as much as neighboring Carroll, Guthrie and Audubon Counties, which are much hillier and less suitable for row crops.

As hog production has increased in the last few years in Greene County, many have welcomed the new economic impact and the new opportunities the industry is giving young people wanting to get into farming. Large-scale grain farmers have been investing in new hog facilities, not so much because they want the pork but rather they want the manure to use as fertilizer on their fields.

Of course, there have been some brutal arguments among neighbors over the siting of some of the new large hog confinement complexes. The City of Jefferson and Greene County recently took a firm stand together against a proposal for a big new facility just north of the city limits, with the Greene County Board of Supervisors going to court against it. Then the developers backed down and decided to build a much smaller facility that will not produce as much manure and other sometimes offensive waste.

And critics of large-scale hog production often argue that while the initial developer may operate in a fine way, what happens if the hog markets soften, or if there is a change of ownership?

It seems obvious that these shocking new disclosures of animal abuse will certainly not help the hog industry, in Greene County or anywhere else.

Probably the best thing the industry’s leaders could do immediately is to support the investigation and prosecution here. Then they should make a major new commitment to ethical animal husbandry, with a willingness to work much more openly and cooperatively with rural neighbors and nearby communities. Otherwise, they can probably expect very heavy new regulation from the local, state and federal levels.


You can write the columnist at chuck@Offenburger.com.