Manitoba's Hog Moratorium misses the mark

One of the major challenges we have in Manitoba is ensuring the Lake Winnipeg is better looked after, that less phosphorous gets into the lake, and that we dramatically reduce the problem we now have with algal blooms.

Our challenge in Manitoba is to work with the hog industry to achieve excellence in environmental stewardship and animal husbandry, as part of a world leading industry provincially.

Already 50-75 per cent (or more) of hog producers inject their manure four inches into the ground, dramatically reducing the run off of phosphorous into the waterways and odours emanating from hog operations. Why should this not be 100%?

Well above 50 per cent of producers have moved away from the use of low levels of antibiotics as growth stimulants in response to concerns that such practices might lead to antibiotic resistance, as well as being more costly than healthy animal husbandry practices that keep animals healthier without using antibiotics. Why shouldn't all or almost all hog production move in this direction?

The industry is continually looking at ways to improve everything from nutrition, genetics and animal husbandry and well as reducing green house gas production, and we need this effort to continue and to accelerate.

With all these changes, it is pertinent to ask why the NDP has put forward Bill 17 to implement a moratorium on hog production in some 35 Manitoba municipalities, including those in the Red River Basin and Manitoba’s Interlake regions.

It is my view, after listening to more than 300 presenters at the committee stage of Bill 17 that we should work with the industry to continue in the direction of improved environmental stewardship and improved animal husbandry.

The proposed moratorium will not achieve this. The moratorium will put the industry in a straight jacket and will remove the flexibility and, to a considerable extent, the equity needed to make the necessary changes.

In Manitoba, there are already many rules and regulations to ensure that hog farmers exercise strong environmental stewardship however these rules must be adhered to by all hog producers to be effective, and we need to continue to improve the regulations.

Presenters gave various examples of where the province was derelict in enforcing the existing rules. Furthermore, in cases where producers are unable to practice top environmental stewardship, because they lack the economic base to make environmental improvements, there should be financial support from the province.

Where there is a shortage of needed scientific knowledge, the province needs to make sure the investment is made to address this. If the Minister really believes the hog industry is contributing far more than the 1.5% of phosphorous going into Lake Winnipeg, then we should be severely critical of the NDP for not ensuring better scientific knowledge is available – when they have had 9 years in government. We should also demand the investment is made to ascertain the scientific facts.

Putting on a moratorium without a strong scientific base is ludicrous. Yet today’s NDP are doing just this. If there is a speeder on Highway One across Manitoba you give the offender a speeding ticket, you don’t close the whole highway. Yet the NDP now, instead of improving enforcement, or improving environmental and animal husbandry standards are going to close the whole highway.

Liberals see an urgent need for intensive work on a few small watersheds and water basins (Killarney Lake, Lake Irwin and the Seine River might be examples). Doing the work to clear up the algal problem on Killarney Lake will help those in the Killarney area and it will also give us important insights into the critical changes needed to improve the whole Lake Winnipeg watershed.

Liberals see that focusing on approaches which will improve environmental stewardship and animal husbandry is good for the industry, for Lake Winnipeg and for our province. It will also drive the innovation and Manitoba based production of forward thinking products (machinery etc) for the hog industry which will not only keep the industry a world leader, but will also stimulate now products and services produced in Manitoba which can be the basis of leading edge export industries. This is happening now, but with a moratorium these industries will be hurt not helped and Manitoba and the world will be the losers, for the industries will go elsewhere and are likely to be more polluting than if developed here.

Moratoriums are generally bad public policy and offer only short term solutions. The NDP hog moratorium is a poor effort to rewrite history to give the NDP the illusion that they are good environmental stewards. Bill 17 is an attempt to make up for years of NDP neglect in regards to Manitoba’s lakes. Let us recognize it for what it is – poor public policy, and not give this credibility.