Hallo, esteemed viewers, and welcome to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Today’s episode is Part 2 of our program focusing on the enormous environmental, socio-economic and public health costs caused by a commercial pig farm located in Quebec, Canada. Animal agriculture has a severely negative effect on the air, water, and land and all life that lives within these three realms.

The livestock industry uses 70% of all agricultural lands globally and nearly a third of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet. Virgin rainforests are felled to make way for pastures which soon become permanently bare from cattle grazing. Factory farms generate enormous quantities of hazardous manure and other organic matter that are filled with pathogens and antibiotic residues that seep into rivers, lakes and seas. Livestock waste fouls the air with huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

According to the paper “Livestock and Climate Change” published in World Watch Magazine and written by former and current environmental experts from the World Bank, Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, the livestock sector is responsible for more than 51% of all human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions. The industry also accounts for the release of 37% of all human-caused emissions of the highly dangerous greenhouse gas methane.

Ms. Johanne Dion and her husband Tim Yeatman live in the small town of Richelieu which is located by the Richelieu River in Quebec. A factory farm housing 5,800 pigs was built in their area and life has now become truly nightmarish for the couple and the beauty of the land has eroded away. We now present further excerpts from interviews with Ms. Dion and Mr. Yeatman about the many ways this pig operation is seriously affecting their lives and those of others in their community.

I was born here in Richelieu. My parents came from Montreal (Canada) when they got married. They loved the river. They loved having the countryside in the back. We had orchards, and cows in the fields, and all kinds of vegetables and fruits in the backyard. Across the road we have a river and I’ve spent all my life here by the Richelieu River. In the summertime, it attracts a lot of people.

They come and swim in the river even though it’s polluted now. People don’t know and especially if we have a dry spell, the water gets clear and some city folks still swim in the river. It attracts a lot of people. A lot of people walk by here, especially when the sun is out like today, and admire the view and the birds. It’s very nice around here.

So you love your town very much?

Yes, my river is very important to me. Swimming when I was a child was the thing I loved the most doing. I spent a lot of time by the river and nature also is very important to me. I have a garden here around the house. As you can see I am surrounded by the plants in my house. So nature, plants, everything around me is very important to me. My environment is important for me.

There are a total of four pig farms within the region surrounding Richelieu. The foul odors caused by the farms are so strong that people moving to the area may decide where to reside based on the intensity of the smell they are willing to live with.

Quebec is the largest pig producer in Canada. And Canada is the largest pig producing per capita country in the world. So Quebec has lot of smelly places. And people decided that they were going to start businesses to try to make money off the smells. They made a map which showed, according to different wind directions and velocities, what parts of the neighborhood would be exposed to different smells.

When the wind is to the south coming down the river towards the north, because this river runs south- north from Lake Champlain, the smell will come from the farms which are basically on the Richelieu River, south of us, and come up the river, because it’s an open water space. And they just get blown right by the house here and you can smell it like crazy.

According to a 2005 study on terrestrial eco-regions by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), some 306 of Earth’s 825 known regions are facing threats from livestock production. Another analysis of the 35 global hotspots for biodiversity done by Conservation International reveals that 23 are now seriously affected by livestock production.

What surrounds the pig farms, are BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) corn. Practically the only crop that can grow in fields where pig’s manure has been spread is mostly BT corn. So we’re surrounded by genetically modified corn. I’ve seen butterfly populations go down. I’ve seen bird populations go down. I’ve seen summers when I didn’t see any honey bees at all. I’ve seen other summers that I haven’t seen any bumble bees at all. Some summers I can see a few. They come back a bit. But like last summer, I didn’t see any monarch butterflies enter migration at all.

After these brief messages, we will hear more about the severe damage caused by intensive animal farming in Richelieu, Canada. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home on Supreme Master Television. Our program today focuses on people who live within the vicinity of a concentrated animal feeding operation and are suffering because of the tremendous environmental devastation caused by this facility.

As an example, coliforms, a type of bacteria present in the feces of humans and mammals that make water undrinkable, has been found throughout the community’s water bodies and wells. Most noticeably, the local river has been severely fouled due to the presence of the pig farm. A summer camp in the area for children no longer lets participants near the Richelieu River.

They used to bring them during the summertime, during the daytime. The parents have been opposed to that because they’re afraid that the river’s too polluted and that the kids can catch infections by playing in the dirty river bottom. So that stopped. And of course, I deplore the fact that a lot of children now have all kind of allergies and asthma, something that I never suffered of. Is it the environment? Is it the pollution? You have to wonder.

The coliform in the river here after a rainfall, it goes way beyond what’s acceptable for swimming. Don’t even think about drinking it; forget it. It’s much too dangerous. But even touching it you risk catching a bad bug definitely, because the coliform count is so high, and that’s not counting the pathogens and the herbicides and the pesticides, and God knows what else.

I’m at least fourteen kilometers downstream from the pig farm. But still after a rainfall I can tell you that the coliform count here goes way up; it shoots way up.

Health Canada, the nation’s public health department, after studying cattle density in the rural areas of the province of Ontario in 2000 concluded that those communities with the highest concentrations of livestock had the highest rates of E. coli infection from 1990 to 1995. In Richelieu, the drinking water supply which was once sweet and pure is now contaminated due to the massive amounts of manure generated by the factory farm.

In the neighborhood that you know of, does anybody have wells that are contaminated?

Yes.

Can you tell us some more?

Well we didn’t test his well, okay. But his neighbor tested it, and did determine that they had not just coliform in their well; they had E. coli in their well.

What does it mean?

E. coli is what can kill you; coliform just gives you diarrhea.

The manure is spread on the fields using an aerial spray and then pollutes the region’s water as it washes into the streams and rivers and seeps into the water table following rainfalls. Ms. Dion believes that the act of spraying the waste into the air also sickens people as the wind disperses the disease-laden matter everywhere.

I must admit that I have much more frequent diarrhea in the spring time or when the water is dirty, when the river water gets brown. If I drink too much water out of the faucet, there's a good chance I have a diarrhea the next day. I went to the annual Public Health Day and I saw a study about people getting sick, getting diarrhea, because of living near either pig farms or cattle farms.

Years ago, Johanne Dion and Tim Yeatman helped to create a group seeking to prevent the opening of the nearby pig farm.

We formed a citizen’s group. We were 600 paid members. We did everything we could to stop it. I mean we petitioned. We had a petition going. We got a lot of attention from the media. We were in newspapers and on television.

Though unsuccessful in halting the opening of the factory farm, today Ms. Dion and Mr. Yeatman work hard to try and lessen the disastrous environmental consequences of its operation and strongly advocate for its closure.

I don’t see any changes being done and I am still working at it. I am joining all kinds of committees hoping to have people realize that it’s important that we keep our waterways clean. Already we’re depending on this river to have water to drink and it would be nice to swim in it again. My husband called Radio Canada on a talk show and said that farmers should be inspected more and their pollution should be checked more by our government.

In conclusion, Johanne Dion sincerely calls upon each of us to avoid making purchases that support factory farming.

It’s very hard to make people realized that you can change things by what you buy when you go to the grocery store. You can change things by saying, “I want this river cleaned up. I want to be able to swim in this river.”

Changing to an organic vegan diet is the simplest and quickest way to stop global warming and intensive animal agriculture and is something that we all can do very easily.

We thank Johanne Dion and Tim Yeatman and the other brave residents of Richelieu, Quebec for speaking out on the dangers the pig farm poses to their community. May all factory farming soon end so that our planet can be in balance once again and animals and humans can live in tranquility.

Caring viewers, thank you for your noble company on today’s episode of Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment following Noteworthy News. May the light and love of Heaven always be our guide.