In response to the article on pork problems in the Iowa State Daily on Oct. 26, the article was misleading. The information about swine management and housing was way off-base.

The article starts off by saying that “living next to a hog confinement is not good for one’s health.” I will agree with that statement, but what makes it any different than living next to an oil refinery?

They are both bad for your health, but it seems to me that only the swine industry is hit hard with the issue of human health.

Yes, you can get sick living next to a swine confinement, but shouldn’t they deal with that themselves?

The owner of the property has the option to move. It’s not like they are confined there.

Also, the persons working on the swine farms are not forced into the job.

If they are afraid of getting sick, they always have the option of finding a new job.

It is also mentioned in the article that we should slow down the pork industry.

I hate to inform the world of this, but you can’t slow down a growing market. Nor would you want to slow down a growing market.

The slow of these markets would be bad for the economy. These hog confinements are what put the food on the tables of many farmers and their families.

If you were to slow down the market or industry, it is going to hurt thousands of families across the state and country.

It would also limit the amount of pork produced for consumers.

In essence, it would affect all the pork consumers across the nation too.

The article made mention of the fact that there aren’t any more hogs in Iowa today than there were 25 years ago.

If this is true, then there is no need to slow the market since the market has not changed!

Further down in the article, the author mentions a solution to the problem of waste management in swine.

They say that if you use a hoop house to confine the pigs in, it will help to control the waste management as well as save the farmers money.

At first glance this all sounds well, but in the long run it will end up costing the farmers more time, money and energy than before.

Now with these hoop houses the farmers will have to buy bedding for the hogs as well as hire more help to clean out the used bedding from the pens.

This will cost the farmers considerable amounts of time and money, making it pointless to change from the now efficient ways of hog farming.

Next time, I hope the author will take a little more time researching the topic they are going to write on before condemning the swine industry.

It only takes a minute to look up the facts.

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Shay Williams

Freshman

Animal science and pre-veterinary