Hightower Lowdown

Corporate hog producers
working with Canadian scientists
have developed a
genetically altered porker
that produces a more .environmentally
friendly. manure.
Manure is a big barrier to
the expansion of massive
hog factories, because swine
excrete excessively, the
excretion is especially stinky,
and the stuff contaminates
rivers and our other water
supplies, killing fish and
causing health problems.
For years, hog industrialists
have sought a scientific
fix, and now the biotech
DNA manipulators have
spliced the genes of mice
and, get this, E. coli bacteria
into pig genes. The result
is a pig that they say can
absorb the polluting phosphorous
that comes in its
feed ration, rather than
excrete it, which is how the
phosphorous currently
migrates from hog factories
into area water supplies.
The industry is so pleased
that it rushed to trademark
the name ,Enviropig,. hoping
everyone will be fooled into
thinking everything is now
hunky dory at the neighbor-
hood hog factory.
But hold your herd of
Frankenpigs right there!
Most of us are neither
fooled nor pleased.
There are many other
waterborne contaminants
from hog waste, and there’s
also the little matter of the
long-term human health and
environmental consequences
of adding mouse
and E. coli genes to pigs.
The answer to pig pollution
is sustainable agriculture
based on small family
farms, rather than cramming
hog factories with millions of
Frankenpigs.