Pig business

Spectator, The, Nov 1, 2003 by Worcester, Tracy

Tracy Worcester on how the American pork industry is invading Poland with the help of EU grants

We ignored the 'No Entry' sign at Smithfield hog factory, near Szczecinek, west Pomerania, in northwest Poland. Clambering over wire barriers, we wrenched open the ventilation shaft of one of three vast concrete and corrugated iron sheds. Inside, 5,000 squealing pigs were crammed into small compartments. Outside, effluent from concrete cesspits had overflowed, sending a small stream into the lake below. In a large plastic bin (empty the previous night) we found 20 dead pigs.

Pig factories are invading Poland. When the German army launched its invasion in 1939, Britain declared war to save the country. Now, when the world's largest pork production company, Smithfield Foods, threatens the livelihood of two million farmers, Poland's best foreign ally is a lone ecologist from the state of Wyoming, named Tom Garrett.

These sorts of pig factories are not just a threat to local farmers, they are a disaster for all of us, says Garrett. Poland has tens of millions of acres of land tilled to this day without artificial chemicals. It may be the last bastion of traditional farming in Europe and our last hope for unpolluted food on a large scale. Garrett told me that Robert Kennedy Jr has said that 'pig factory farms are more dangerous for our lifestyle and democracy than Osama bin Laden and global terrorism'.

If this sounds melodramatic, consider Garrett's evidence. Drawing on his experience in the US, where he has faced Smithfield before, he said, 'Everywhere this company has operated, there has been gross environmental degradation from liquefied hog faeces stored in open sewage pits and sprayed on fields. Rivers, lakes and even aquifers are polluted. In North Carolina, where industrial hog-farming is particularly intense, the rivers were so polluted that toxic algae called pfiesteria piscicida began to flourish. They killed countless millions of fish and left hundreds of swimmers and boaters with neurological damage and skin lesions that refused to heal. Tourism and coastal fishing were virtually destroyed. In the meantime, communities near hog factory development, wherever it occurs, are burdened with a nauseating stench - whole regions are afflicted. You have to smell it to believe it.'

Even if it were not polluting the countryside, the entire operation at the factory we dropped in on would be illegal. Local officials told us that Smithfield - or Prima Farms, as it calls itself here - had only been given a permit to renovate a derelict state farm that had housed cattle and sheep on condition that it guaranteed 15 local jobs. Five thousand pigs arrived in the dead of night, but no locals were employed. Villagers only grasped what had happened when the company began dumping liquid faeces on the snowcovered fields.

Garrett has been defeated in battle with Smithfield in the US, where they have powerful corporate and government allies, but in Poland he hopes to win. In Warsaw I accompanied a group of journalists and NGOs to deliver a letter Garrett had drafted to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), signed by - among others - Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Sierra Club, America's largest environmental charity, and Poland's surging populist politician Andrzej Lepper. Why, the letter asked, had the EBRD, which purports to be 'environmentally sensitive', organised a $100 million loan to Smithfield's wholly owned Polish subsidiary Animex S.A.?

The office manager, Irena Grzbowska, an attractive woman with a strong American accent, explained that Smithfield had asked to use the money for vertical integration, to raise the pigs they then slaughtered in their abattoirs. She said that the EBRD had insisted its contribution be applied only to modernising Animex packing houses and paying off high-interest debts. Why, we asked, should one of the richest American companies receive EU-subsidised loans? How come Smithfield managed to purchase Animex, the state-owned conglomerate of giant communist-era farms, for such a bargain price (the Polish government had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on improvements pre-sale) that Luter, the CEO, could boast that he'd 'only paid 10 cents of the dollar'. With no one to answer our questions, Grzbowska admitted, 'EBRD doesn't have any experts on the project in Poland and it is too expensive to send experts over from head office in London.'

Marek Kryder of the Animal Welfare Institute explained that although there are laws making it illegal for foreigners to purchase former state farms, Smithfield operates behind Polish-registered front companies so as to bypass them. As Prima Farms, Smithfield has launched a huge drive to buy and convert dozens of former state farms near the German border (and so, of course, near potential EU markets) into intensive pig factories. The State Farm Property Agency set up to "privatise" state farms knows exactly what's going on,' says Garrett. 'They're obviously in on the fraud; so is the governor of the voivodship [province]. There are former ministers of agriculture and even some currently serving officials on Animex's board.'