Editor, Times-Union: Please define hog management to me! Some people go the college for this, and I guess I don t understand. This is what I believe hog management is: A big Indiana hog producer/packer manages to convince an area farmer to purchase hundreds of acres of vacant farm ground in their area using their own money. Then, they manage to get the farmer to spend approximately $750,000 apiece for CAFO buildings, complete with manure pits, or lagoons, or both. Then, the corporation manages to get the farmer to house, feed, water, clean up after, give antibiotics to even the pigs that are not sick, give them growth hormones so they can have a faster turnover rate. Then the farmer or hog janitor has to manage to get rid of thousands of gallons of liquid hog manure, several times a year without polluting our waterways or roadways. Then, the farmer manages to get paid a little of the profits from the trucked hogs to the hog producer or meat packer. The corporation owns the hogs, feed, antibiotics, and growth hormones, so if the farmers aren’t doing what the corporation manages to tell them, the contract is broken and the family farm goes belly up! In the meantime, the neighbors of these CAFO buildings manage to lose their clean water and air, manage to lose most or all of our property values, manage to lose our freedom to enjoy the great outdoors (Mowing the grass, gardening, family get-to-gathers, cookouts and playing with grandchildren in the pool), we manage to get stuck paying taxes to repair roads and bridges to and from these corporations that are located in other counties. We manage to get stuck paying taxes on part of the feed for these hogs, we manage to get stuck with the smell, and we manage to get stuck with the air. Pamela Vance Claypool, via e-mail
