Photo by Andrew Skowron via The Human League
Pig in a factory farm gestation crate
Pig in a factory farm gestation crate
Do you want pig poop in your drinking water? That’s what’s been happening in places like Iowa, thanks to the factory farms ill-run by corporate agribusiness. The animals themselves are penned in cramped cages and fed drugs—hmm, tasty bacon. But perhaps what’s worse is the pollution, the toxic run-off from those factory farms.
Battleground is a short documentary on the expansion of this sort of big-business pig farming into Crawford County, Wis. Director Adam Peditto did a fine job of matching visuals of the beautiful green countryside to interviews of local residents and footage from public meetings. Thanks to drones, we see a clear picture of the muddy manure ponds on corporate farms, whose waste seeps into groundwater triggering headaches, inflammation, skin sores and other health problems. The corporate pig industry is trying to wipe out family farms. They also don’t give a damn about their neighbors’ health.
The documentary is depressing on one hand. Local residents were able to delay but not prevent the opening of a Crawford County pig factory farm as helicopter-borne lobbyists descended on the area. Their expensive lawsuits overturned local ordinances and are now challenging the right of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources to regulate their industry. They are anarcho-capitalists of the worst sort, armed with lawyers and money, and lacking ethics or any notion of the greater good.
On a hopeful note, many residents of Crawford County haven’t abandoned the fight. Battleground can be seen on the The Humane League’s website .
