THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 24, 1995 TAG: 9511240091
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: Long : 132 lines
North Carolina's hog industry continues to pick up steam, despite a public outcry and heightened concerns among some state officials after a series of environmental accidents.
Since July 1, almost 100 new hog farms with 200 or more swine have been certified in eastern North Carolina - an average of more than one new farm every other day.
The growth comes despite calls by environmentalists and others, including U.S. Rep. Charlie Rose, D-N.C., for a moratorium on new hog operations. Those proposals were prompted by a recent series of animal-waste spills - including the rupture of a waste lagoon at Oceanview Farms in Onslow County that sent 25 million gallons of animal waste into tributaries of the New River.
As a result of the spills, Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. ordered inspections of all livestock operations in the state, and lawmakers set up a commission to study agricultural waste issues.
Nevertheless, new hog farms continue to come on line.
``It looks like we have about 95 in the state since July,'' said Lou Polletta, an environmental specialist in the state Division of Environmental Management's water quality section.
Duplin County, the biggest swine-producing county in the nation, has led the way, with 29 new farms receiving the required certification for animal waste management systems. Sampson County has added 12 farms, while Bladen County has 10 new operations.
Despite its apparent popularity, the swine industry is not something entered into lightly, said newcomer Eva Ketelsleger.
Ketelsleger says she and her husband invested more than $1 million and endured two years of paperwork to get their Duplin County operation up and running.
``When you go out there, it's not just a whimsical thing you start into,'' she said. ``It's something you've thought out. . . When you see a hog farm, he didn't just decide over night, `I'm going to put me up a hog house.' ''
The Ketelslegers run Kilpatrick Farms, a finishing operation that grows hogs for Dogwood Farms in Clinton. They get hogs weighing about 40 pounds and care for them for roughly 18 weeks until they reach slaughtering weight of about 250 pounds.
``We put the first pigs in July 10th,'' said Ketelsleger, whose operation has 12 houses holding 8,640 swine. ``We've sold out three houses.''
Don Webb, head of the Alliance for Responsible Swine Industry, is not surprised by the number of new farms. ``To be honest with you, I thought there would be more,'' he said.
``Its unbelievable that our governor and our legislators did not demand a moratorium,'' Webb said. ``We have more feces and urine in the eastern part of this state than we can handle.
``The spills will get your attention, but there's a constant flow of feces and urine from the fields to the ditches, and all the ditches lead to our coast,'' Webb added. ``The ditches are extensions of our rivers.''
Most new farmers are contract growers, said Don Ledford, a livestock statistician for the state Department of Agriculture.
``It's getting . . . increasingly harder for independents to compete because of economies of scale,'' he said.
Many new farms have opened to help meet the demand at Carolina Food Processors in Tar Heel near Fayetteville, said Walter Cherry, executive secretary for the North Carolina Pork Producers Association.
The Bladen County plant asked state environmental officials on Friday for permission to discharge an additional 1.2 million gallons of wastewater per day into the Cape Fear River.
The company, now limited to 3.3 million gallons daily, needs the expansion to increase its slaughtering capacity from 24,000 hogs a day to 32,000.
Company officials say the expanded plant most likely won't require new hog farms in North Carolina.
``When we look down the line, there's enough in the pipeline or being planned to supply us,'' said Joseph W. Luter III, chief executive officer of Smithfield Foods Inc., parent company of Carolina Food Processors. ``But anything can happen, so we may need a few additional farms. Some may close or others may ship their hogs elsewhere,'' Luter told the Wilmington Morning Star.
Brown's of Carolina, another subsidiary of Smithfield, has opened four new farms since July, with a total design capacity of more than 16,000 head.
As of Sept. 1, there were 8.1 million hogs in North Carolina, up 23 percent from the previous September. North Carolina's hog population has grown by more than 1 million since last December, and now outnumbers the state's human population.
While North Carolina's hog population grew by 23 percent from September 1994 to September 1995, the U.S. figure was down 2 percent, and the hog population in Iowa, the nation's leading hog-producing state, dropped 5 percent to about 14.8 million.
Last year, hogs could be found at 7,000 locations in North Carolina, down from 42,000 in 1978, but 820 operations of more than 2,000 head each accounted for 86 percent of the state's hog population.
Thanks to improvements in animal care and feeding, every sow that farrows in North Carolina winds up producing about a half pig more than the national average, Ledford said.
``Every year, we're going up somewhere between 20 and 30 percent,'' he said.
Since Dec. 31, 1993, all new hog farms with at least 250 head are required to have a certified waste management plan. By the end of 1997, all hog farms of that size existing as of Dec. 31, 1993, must receive certification.
Roughly three-quarters of the state's hog farms have not been certified, Polletta said. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eva Ketelsleger holds a 40-pound pig Wednesday at her hog farm known
as Kilpatrick Farms in Kenansville, N.C. Ketelsleger and her husband
started their hog operation last July after struggling through two
years of paperwork.
WHERE THE FARMS ARE
At least 95 new hog farms with 200 or more swine have been
certified in North Carolina since July 1, state environmental
officials say. Here is a list of counties and the number of new hog
farms in each:
COUNTY NEW FARMS
Bertie 1
Bladen County 10
Columbus 5
Craven 3
Duplin 29
Greene 8
Johnston 5
Jones 4
Lenoir 5
New Brunswick 1
Onslow 1
Pender 2
Pitt 1
Sampson 12
Washington 1
Wayne 7
by CNB