MISSOURI: New breed of hog farmers let pigs run wild

17.nov.08
STLtoday
Georgina Gustin
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/318AFFCCB22B3E7A8625750400093F5E?OpenDocument

FRANKENSTEIN, MO. -- Hog farmer Russ Kremer stands at the edge of a pen, surveying his pigs as they scamper and snort in the mud."They like diversity," he says, pushing a camouflage ballcap off his forehead. "Some of them are down there in the water, some are grazing on the rough ground. Some are pretty cliquish; they remember their litter mates."

Kremer won't go so far as to say they're like children to him, but clearly his animals are more than meat products in the making. Kremer raises nearly 1,000 pigs on his 160-acre farm in rolling Osage County in central Missouri. These days, though, he is often traveling around the nation, preaching the gospel of natural farming. "I'd rather be in my pen, enjoying my pigs," he says, "but some weeks I'm home just two, three days."Over the last decade, Kremer has become an evangelist for raising animals outdoors, with fresh air, room to root and run, and without antibiotics.

In the process, he has persuaded other farmers to go the same route, helping to create — and feed — a growing appetite for meat raised humanely and largely without drugs. The demand for naturally raised pork has become so steep that Kremer and small-scale farmers like him are sealing sales deals with companies around the country — and large industrial farm operators are taking notice.

While these independent farmers gain a toehold, some industrial farmers also have started to question what, exactly, constitutes a "naturally raised," and "antibiotic-free" pig. Farmers set their own standards — the only government designation that assures an antibiotic free meat is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "organic" label. At the same time, large corporations such as Cargill and Smithfield, have introduced their own antibiotic-free lines to capitalize on the demand."Usually these are market-driven programs," said Craig Rowles, a veterinarian and hog farmer from Carroll, Iowa, adding, "Antibiotic-free means different things to different people."