By Jessica Scott-Reid
Jessica is a Canadian writer, animal advocate and plant-based food expert. Her work appears regularly in media across Canada and the US.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, stories of animals being culled on farms due to a lack of slaughterhouse capacity and because of dwindling demand for meat, dairy and eggs from shuttered restaurants, hotels and schools, have made headlines across much of North America. Most stories however, lack a definitive number of animals that have been culled, as there appears to be no such record. Estimates though, are in the tens of millions, at least. And now, animal and environmental advocates are raising concerns about the ecological risks associated with the disposal of so many dead animals, and about a lack of transparency about those risks.
In early July, two live hens were rescued from a landfill in Manitoba, Canada. They were spotted by landfill staff among piles of hundreds of dead hens, presumably dumped after being gassed by an egg farmer who no longer needed them. Via email, a representative from the capital city of Winnipeg states that dead animal disposal is permitted at that particular landfill, “provided that appropriate provincial regulations are followed.” However, according to the Government of Manitoba website, dead farmed animals – deemed “deadstock”—are only to be disposed of via burial, incineration, composting or rendering. There is no mention of open dumping.
One Canadian province that does permit deadstock dumping, is Alberta. In a document published by the provincial government, entitled Livestock Mortality Management (Disposal), it states: “Proper disposal of carcasses is important for both the prevention of livestock disease transmission and the protection of air and water quality,” adding “access to carcasses by scavengers is only permitted under the guidelines for natural disposal.” Natural disposal means dumped in permitted landfills, however the document goes on to deem, “Partially buried or carcasses left outside for scavengers or to decay,” as the highest risk option. It then lists some environmental concerns for “improper” disposal, including that some scavengers can transmit disease, that some disease-causing spores may be left viable within carcasses, and that excess concentrations of nitrogen may occur in the ground. “Disposal of carcasses by scavengers is a permitted method in Alberta, but because of the very high probability of disease spread and of creating a public nuisance, this method is not recommended,” the document concludes.
Ontario also allows dumping of dead animals at three specified landfills. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs states on its website that failure to dispose of deadstock properly will be a threat to the environment and the safety of fellow citizens, but no information is provided on what those risks might be.
“Mass on-farm killing is unmonitored and unregulated [in Canada] because there are no animal protection regulations governing standards of care for farmed animals, and no proactive government oversight of on-farm welfare,” says Kaitlyn Mitchell, former environmental lawyer, now animal rights lawyer with Canadian organization Animal Justice. Mitchell says that Animal Justice has asked the Canadian government to ensure public reporting of any animals killed on farms, “but our request has gone unanswered." The group is aware of thousands of pigs and chickens being killed on farms across Canada, says Mitchell, and being disposed of by various means, “but with no publicly available data from industry, it is impossible to know the full extent of the problem.” She adds that dumping animals' bodies in landfills “should also be concerning to nearby communities because it raises a host of serious environmental concerns related to odour and air pollution and threats to local water supplies.”
Similar concerns exist in the US. Matt Johnson is with animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, which has been documenting and exposing brutal on-farm culling in the US, during the pandemic. He says members of the group have witnessed pigs' bodies "thrown in the same city landfills where garbage trucks go", in Iowa, and similar dumping of dead pigs in landfills in Minnesota.
But it is not only the dumping of dead animals in landfills that is of concern to animal and environmental advocates, but also other methods of burying and incinerating, and about a general lack of oversight. NGOs including Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) expressed this concern in a June 30th article for The Guardian, as well as “increased air pollutants such as carcinogenic compounds, or bacterial and fecal matter leaking into local water ways.”
Hannah Connor, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity explains in the article that with unlined burials, which allow for direct contact between animal carcasses and the soil, “there are health risks from bacteria and fecal matter leaking into the water table.”
The groups are also concerned that “under-regulated and poorly monitored animal disposal during the pandemic” could lead to serious public health risks too.
"Farming animals in itself is a process that creates significant waste,” notes environmental researcher Nicholas Carter. “For every 100 calories fed to pigs, the consumer only gets 10 calories of pork. That's an immediate 90% in food wasted. When these animals are then gassed, then dumped due to supply chain issues -- slaughterhouse closures, or disease -- Swine Fever, or myriad of other infectious diseases -- then that adds to the environmental impacts,” he explains. Carter notes there are very limited studies on the impacts of dumping, burying and burning dead animals en-mass, but says “it's easy to conclude it's more unnecessary air pollutants and leakage of fecal matter into local waterways.” If the public is unable to grasp the obvious ethical issues at play, he says, “there's a myriad of environmental and public health considerations that require urgent attention."
Mass on-farm culling, or “depopulation,” is a method typically considered necessary only in times of exceptional circumstances, such as a global pandemic. Though it may appear that these rare circumstances could be the reason for an obvious lack of proper protocols, the truth is that a lack of regulations and oversight are typical in animal agriculture, and not the exception. The only difference in the case of mass COVID-19-induced animal culling, is that the environmental and public health outcomes have yet to be revealed, and the harms may only become evident once it is too late.
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