At the end of the day, a small animal farm - even with direct discharge into the river!!! - may do much less damage than those mega-farms that positively amount to torture factories, IMO.

Could you elucidate on both accounts?

Maxi

Originally written by Maxi Schwarz-Bastami on July 29, 2009 10:02 PM And there was concern over here about large pig farming, and it had nothing to do with anyone's religion!  I translated a humungous report on the subject some years ago and learned more about pig poop and the digestive system of pigs than anyone would want to know.  Canada is a large country geographically with a relatively small population.  What about small densely populated countries?

Singapore (4 to 5 million people on less than 700 sq km) already phased out pig farming in the late 80s or early 90s.

Originally written by Maxi Schwarz-Bastami on July 29, 2009 9:04 AM At the end of the day, a small animal farm - even with direct discharge into the river!!! - may do much less damage than those mega-farms that positively amount to torture factories, IMO. Could you elucidate on both accounts? Maxi

Sorry, I inadvertently deleted my answer. So here goes again:

A few pigs using the river amount to the same as wildlife using the river - Mother Nature can well put up with it, and ecological balance is not upset.

On the other hand, large pig farms in Europe (the same goes for cattle raising, by the way) thrive on a minimum allotment of space, which causes serious problems, as outlined in the following article:

Helsinki, Finland - At today’s twenty-fifth meeting of the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) in Finland, Polish green groups and Coalition Clean Baltic presented a critical report on the seriously lax waste management practices in industrial pig farms situated on the Baltic coast. [1] Many of the offending farms are owned by notorious US agribusiness giant Smithfield Foods. The Commission recognised importance of the problem and sent the report to the investigative bodies to put forward to the Heads of Delegate meeting in June 2004 concrete proposals of the Helcom actions. [2] Anna Roggenbuck, of Green Federation Gaja, explained, “In north-west Poland alone there are 40 industrial farms that produce around two million cubic metres of manure
annually. In order to utilise such amounts of manure, best agricultural practice suggests that farms need to comprise 60 000 hectares of land. In our region the reality is that the farms occupy less than 15 percent of the required acreage.”

http://www.ccb.se/pdf/CCB%20Press03-03-04%20Helsinki.pdf
 

In Western Europe, I'm glad to say, there are in fact very few cases of manure being disposed of in groundwater or lakes. Instead, it's driven all over the continent, only to disappear in quite mysterious ways somewhere behind the Eastern borders, poorer countries tending to be less particular . How lucky we are not to share such a deplorable attitude (oh dear, I'm told it's bad manners to display cynicism) ...

Originally written by C. Studer on July 29, 2009 2:36 PM Polish green groups and Coalition Clean Baltic presented a critical report on the seriously lax waste management practices in industrial pig farms situated on the Baltic coast.

This, I affirm and confirm! And I might add it`s more and more difficult to get good pork as more and more industrial pig farms are making themselves at home in my country.

(oh dear, I'm told it's bad manners to display cynicism) ...

It`s not alwys bad manners and it`s often healthy!