HOST: Hallo, caring viewers, and welcome to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Today’s episode focuses 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 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.