Five
kilometres east of downtown Brandon, Manitoba's second largest city, I turn
off the highway, steer quickly around a no-trespassing sign, and follow a
narrow dirt road as it winds its way along what appear to be several small and
medium-sized lakes. The largest of the "lakes" immediately seizes my senses.
At least 30 hectares in area, it is being churned by windmill-like devices on
pontoons, about 40 in total. The oversize blenders cause greyish foam and
black crud to accumulate, giving off a swirling stench of urine and rotten
eggs.
"That's
it, lagoon four," says biologist Bill Paton of Brandon University. Paton is my
unofficial guide on this hot summer day for a trek to the city's sewage-lagoon
system, through which most of the wastewater from the city passes before
heading to the fabled Assiniboine River. Dressed in rural casuals and sporting
for adventure, Paton suggests we leave the car for a closer look.
Once
outside, I reflexively pinch my nose. Brandon City Lagoon Cell No. 4 is
essentially a giant vat of at least 18 million litres of decomposing urine
from pregnant mares, known around town as PMU (pregnant-mare urine). The
stench from the lagoon wafts over to Brandon from early spring to midsummer,
making the city, in the eyes of some, the "odour capital of Manitoba." The
owners of 500 prairie horse farms in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and
North Dakota have their own name for PMU: superjuice. To them, the wrenching
odour from lagoon four is the sweet smell of business success. From October to
March, the farmers collect the urine from more than 60,000 pregnant mares and
ship the fluid to Brandon-based Ayerst Organics Ltd., a division of
Wyeth-Ayerst, a multinational pharmaceutical company. At the Ayerst plant, the
only one of its kind in the world, highly valued estrogens are extracted from
the PMU (estrogens are the hormones responsible for the development and
maintenance of female reproduction). The extract is then shipped to
manufacturing facilities in New York City and Montreal for use as the primary
active ingredient in Ayerst's widely used menopause drug, Premarin.
On
guard for the Assiniboine, biologist Bill Paton warns that sewage lagoons are
useless in cold climates.
At lagoon four, Paton sees the cost
of medical enterprise, and he does not like what he sees. On the basis of his
survey of the international research on sewage lagoons, he is convinced that
PMU waste by-products, particularly ammonia nitrogen, will adversely affect
air and water quality in the region and have disastrous effects on the
already-polluted Assiniboine. Driving past the lagoon to the banks of the
river, I note that its waters are dark and murky, typical of silty prairie
waterways. "You can't see it by looking, but this lagoon system is messing up
that river and everything around it," Paton says sadly. So far, however, there
has not been a thorough assessment of the environmental impact of the PMU
waste, which is expected to reach the 40-million-litre level in the lagoon by
1997. At lagoon four, I watch Paton's benevolent face sour. "This is insane,"
he says in disbelief.
Paton's
cry of alarm over PMU is just one of a number of disturbing flash points in a
complex story. Noisy and downright ugly battles over the environmental impact
of PMU have erupted in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly in Winnipeg. On a
second front, animal rights activists in Canada and the United States have
accused the superjuice industry of cruelty to pregnant mares and their foals.
And on a third front, women's health groups are calling attention to the use
of Premarin itself, arguing that synthetic substitutes are available for those
in true need estrogen therapy. With their $50-million-a-year business at
stake, PMU farmers, who have up to now said little in their own defence, are
acknowledging that the choir of dissent is settling in for an extended run,
and they are considering ways to mute the public impact. Only Brandon's Ayerst
Organics, at the behest of its American parent, has opted for silence and
business as usual.
Friendly,
burly Rick Borotsik, mayor of Brandon, is telling me how wonderful it is that
Ayerst chose his city for its PMU operation. "The company is a good corporate
citizen that has brought cash flow to an agricultural region that can be
rocked by the volatility of markets and prices," says Borotsik, his moustache
dancing a polka. "PMU is not a very romantic product, but it brings
stability."
When
estrogen-replacement therapy was first employed in the 1940s for women
experiencing menopause, the estrogen was extracted from the urine of pregnant
women. By the time Premarin became popular as a menopause drug, the urine from
pregnant mares was the new active ingredient. Today, according to Ayerst,
Premarin is the most prescribed product among all pharmaceuticals in the
United States, bringing in worldwide sales of US$749 million last year. That
is the sort of stability of which Borotsik speaks.
But
why Brandon, some 200 kilometres west of Winnipeg? Why not? he replies. Ever
since it was laid out by surveyors of the Canadian Pacific Railway and
incorporated in 1882, Brandon has been first and foremost agricultural. What
better place to raise horses and establish a new kind of horse industry? When
the multinational company came looking for can-do prairie spirit in the 1960s,
some risk takers, strong on agriculture, activated the Brandon entrepreneurial
ethic, and a relationship was established that has never looked back.
The
years have, indeed, been good for Ayerst Organics in Brandon. So good, in
fact, that in 1991, the company announced plans to expand plant facilities and
to double production, at a cost of $123 million. The Western Economic
Diversification Fund, a federal initiative, contributed a $25 million loan.
The province of Manitoba, viewing the expansion plans as good for the economy,
kicked in with a gift of $1 million for capital construction costs and
qualified Ayerst Organics for up to $7 million in tax credits. Today, the new
processing plant, painted a spanking bluish green, sits adjacent to the old
one in the Green Acres Industrial Park in east-end Brandon, and was scheduled
to go in full operation in the fall of 1994.
The
arrival of Ayerst was a godsend for scores of area farmers. Instead of being
exposed to the volatility in grain prices and other agricultural
uncertainties, farmers who built up their operations with horses, pastureland,
and special stables watched a nice, regular income flow in. It is not unusual,
for example, for a PMU farmer to sell $150,000 worth of pregnant-mare urine to
Ayerst each year. For Charlie Knockaert, a second-generation dairy farmer who
converted his operations to PMU three years ago, the attraction is obvious, as
I discover from touring his operations. In range of the town of Bruxelles,
about 80 kilometres from Brandon, the Knockaert farm is post-card pretty, with
a log cabin, a long row of planted trees, a large modern barn, several
corrals, and hundreds of hectares of hilly and flat pasture.
After
introductions, I sit with Knockaert at his kitchen table. A hardy 38, he
laughs with gusto and is unfailingly pleasant and polite. I expect to hear the
PMU party line, since he is president of the Manitoba PMU Producers
Association, but Knockaert sticks to the personal. Farming runs in the family,
he tells me. His Belgian grandfather started dairy farming when he arrived in
Bruxelles in the 1920s. "Grandpa did a lot of hard work and a lot of sweat,"
Knockaert says. "His farm was turned over to my dad and then to his brother.
We bought our own farm for dairy, and my father signed the note."
Eighteen
years of milking cows turned out to be enough for Knockaert and his wife. In
1992, they sold the cows and spent $300,000 on Belgian horses. It was their
son, Aaron, who suggested they apply to Ayerst Organics for a contract. The
company was expanding, and the Knockaert farm was among 160 selected nearly
three years ago from a waiting list of 900. The waiting list has since grown
to about 1,200.
Knockaert
finds the rhythms of PMU farming very different from the consistent routines
of dairying. Summer is a relaxing time. The mares, which have recently given
birth, are in the pastures with their foals. About 130 are grouped with seven
stallions and will soon likely become pregnant again for another round of 11
months.
In
October, the work on the farm intensifies. The mares are rounded up and taken
to the barn. While the rest of the horses are housed in sheltered corrals,
those which are pregnant, about 90 this fall, will remain in harness through
March in stalls measuring 2.5 metres long and up to 1.5 metres wide. Once in
harness, the "on-line" mares are fitted with a rubber "boot," or pouch, that
collects their urine. It is attached to a hose that deposits the urine in a
jug, which is emptied twice daily into a cooling tank. On Wednesdays and
Saturdays, a tanker truck arrives and hauls the urine to Ayerst Organics in
Brandon.
In
caring for his horses, Knockaert follows strict guidelines set out by
Manitoba's Ministry of Agriculture and Ayerst Organics. The dietary section
instructs PMU farmers on how to use mature hay and grains in order to give the
mares a properly balanced diet. Following the regimen supposedly makes it
unnecessary to restrict water to get low volumes of concentrated urine.
Knockaert
says Ayerst Organics inspectors pay the odd unannounced visit to a PMU farm.
"But we don't need anyone else telling us to be good to the horses," he says.
"My wife and I are always in the barn to make sure that everything is running
smoothly." They check to see whether the urine pouches are comfortable on the
horses and watch for signs of illness; if there are any, they isolate the
horse in a large stall during the recovery period. They ensure the smooth
operation of the automated machines that dispense oats and water and clean out
the manure every day and sometimes even twice, to keep the air in the barn
fresh.
Thus
far, Knockaert hasn't mentioned what happens to the foals, so I bring it up. I
detect a rise in emotion on his sunburned face. "We take them away from their
mothers when they're three or four months old, beginning in September," he
says. I ask him whether it is true that the foals are sold at auction to
feedlots, fattened, and then sold for meat in Europe and Japan and for dog
food. "Most of them are," he admits, "but some are sold for recreation or to
dairy farms." The issue is a sensitive one: the Manitoba Animal Rights
Coalition and groups in the United States, including People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, are protesting the killing of some 60,000 to 75,000
foals in North America each year. They refer to them as by-products of an
industry based on cruelty.
The
same groups also claim to have reliable sources who have witnessed how some
farmers abuse their horses. They say mares are confined in cramped stalls, fed
poorly, denied water, and neglected. The groups also object on principle to
the use of mares to produce the raw ingredients of Premarin, considering that
synthetic hormones are available.
Elizabeth
Carlyle, coordinator for the Manitoba Animal Rights Coalition, recently
visited Knockaert. He describes the exchange as friendly but tough. "I told
her that if she had evidence of any abuse, then I wanted to see it too," he
says. "Sure, there can be problems from time to time. But if activists find
one incident, they make it sound like the whole industry revolves around the
one bad apple." Knockaert also suggested to Carlyle that PMU farmers take
better care of their horses than some people are cared for in Winnipeg. So why
didn't her group focus its energy on helping the homeless and the starving?
Why was it picking on the horse industry?
Later,
in the pasture, watching the big Belgians swish their tails to beat back horse
flies, Knockaert turns to me and asks: "If I didn't have this, if I didn't
farm, what could I do? Wind up in Winnipeg? And do what? Go on welfare?"
Beginning
its 1,070-kilometre run in eastern Saskatchewan and meandering across southern
Manitoba before joining the Red River in Winnipeg, the Assiniboine was once a
vital water highway for the canoes of fur trappers and for the steamboats that
transported settlers and goods. Old photographs show the river to have been a
popular place to swim. Today, the water supply is being endangered by
inadequately treated municipal waste, a prairie-wide problem. A 1991 federal
environmental report rated prairie water quality as "close to a minimum level
at many locations," and some predict that current economic, social, and
climatic trends may cause it to drop to an unacceptable level.
Water
quality is a particular problem in Brandon. For many years, the town piped all
its wastewater, including the PMU waste, to its mechanical-treatment plant and
then in a more clarified form to sewage lagoons for further dilution and
ultimate discharge into the Assiniboine. But by 1986, the increasing volumes
of alkaline and salty PMU waste were overwhelming the system. It was then
mutually agreed that Ayerst Organics would truck its wastewater directly to
lagoon four. The processing of PMU, however, was steadily on the rise, and the
highly concentrated waste could not be diluted efficiently, resulting in foul
odours. With the Ayerst expansion in 1991, the company proposed, with the
city's blessing, to upgrade lagoon four at its own cost of $4 million. As part
of the agreement, it vowed to correct the odour problem once and for all.
At
the sewage-lagoon site, windmill-like aerators, costing about $10,000 apiece,
are supposed to stir up the air so that lagoon bacteria requiring oxygen for
survival will more easily break down the organic parts of the PMU. Ayerst
Organics claims that the process will lead to the discharge of diluted, and
therefore safe, levels of toxic products into the atmosphere. Today, the new
dumping station at the site is ready to receive PMU waste from the company's
tanker trucks on a daily basis. And there is a small newly dug lagoon adjacent
to number four to remove any solids before treated wastewater is finally
released into the Assiniboine.
Bill
Paton has seen Ayerst's latest waste-engineering feats and is not impressed.
He says Ayerst Organics and Brandon, like many companies and cities across the
prairies, are not addressing the basic shortcoming of sewage lagoons. "They
just don't do the job," he says, sitting in his laboratory at Brandon
University, where he has taught for 20 years. "Unless they are all replaced by
adequate treatment plants, the rivers, streams, and lakes will become more
polluted and totally undesirable and unproductive. The fish will go, and all
the biodiversity will be lost."
For
one thing, he says, treated water released from sewage lagoons contains higher
levels of phosphates than water processed in a treatment plant. Phosphates
produce toxin-producing blue-green algae blooms and ammonia, he says. Also,
sewage lagoons require a minimum temperature of 10 degrees C to sustain the
bacteria required to break down sewage effectively and therefore are better
suited to warm climates than to Manitoba's brutally cold winters.
Paton
found some support for his views in the October 1992 report of the Manitoba
Clean Environment Commission. It recommended that a study be conducted of
sewage-lagoon design, construction, and operation. Environmental groups,
condemning construction guidelines as being hopelessly out of date, want
Manitoba to follow Quebec and Ontario policy and issue a moratorium on sewage
lagoons. More recently, residents of several small communities in the province
have questioned the viability of treating liquid waste and manure in sewage
lagoons built near large hog farms.
There
is little surprise that the Manitoba legislature has not acted on the
commission's recommendation, Paton says. Indeed, the Conservative-led Manitoba
government of Gary Filmon firmly supports lagoons, which are the cheapest form
of sewage treatment. The Ministry of the Environment contends that waste is
properly treated, because it is kept in lagoons for long periods and is
discharged into rivers in a timely manner.
Paton
counters that in 1992, the Clean Environment Commission identified 10 percent
of Manitoba lagoons, including those at Brandon, as having a long record of
failing to meet their licensed objectives. And, he adds, licensed objectives
do not necessarily reflect modern standards. "There isn't even any restriction
on phosphates," he says. "Total nitrogen levels, particularly ammonia, which
is highly toxic to all forms of life, are often not regulated. And there is
virtually no toxicity testing."
In
December of 1992, he had one chance to raise his concerns about Ayerst's plans
for the sewage-lagoon upgrade, months after the company had received the
go-ahead from the city. Transcripts from the public meeting, held in the
Brandon council chamber, document that Paton raised his concerns about the
potential dangers of ammonia release from lagoon four. He wanted proof from
the company and city that the emissions could be safely controlled. Ayerst
Organics was directed to look into the matter and to submit to the province a
broad report on the lagoon upgrade that would include answers to Paton's
questions.
The
company issued the report for provincial review in September 1993. It
concluded, on the basis of a mathematical model, that ammonia emissions would
be light during the summer months and significant in the winter, when they
would cause little harm. Ayerst Organics also predicts that a significant
volume of the PMU waste will be broken down microbiologically through a
process called nitrification, an oxidation process whereby ammonia is
converted to a less damaging nitrate. In short, there is nothing to fear.
Paton
has studied the report and dismisses its conclusions. He says the company has
no sound data that significant nitrification will occur, and he finds it
peculiar that anyone would predict that air emissions of ammonia would be low
in summer. "There is good data from prairie lagoons and from Holland that
ammonia can be given off into the air in significant amounts during hot
weather," he says. "We also have high wind conditions in the summer."
By
contrast, he predicts that ammonia will rise and fall again in a 10-kilometre
radius and then drain into the river. He is also concerned that the ammonia
will continue to deplete the leaves of trees and shrubs of vital nutrients.
His tests of plants in the area show that their alkaline content is high. "It
isn't acid rain that is destroying prairie trees and shrubs, because there is
little acidity to be found," he says. "It is ammonia that is doing the
damage."
When
I bring up Paton's dismissal of this new chapter in PMU waste management as a
corporate and political fantasy, Brandon mayor Rick Borotsik acts as though I
have just stolen candy from a happy baby. "Bill Paton is a critic of just
about everything," he declares in a blink. "Our lagoon system doesn't fit into
his philosophy." And he quickly adds: "He's a lone voice. I am convinced, my
engineers are convinced, my council is convinced, and more than the majority
of the community out here, both agricultural and urban, is convinced that
we're right. Paton is a detractor."
The Great Drug
Debate
Back
in the 1940s and 1950s, when researchers were gaining a better
understanding of menopause as an "estrogen-deficiency state," hormone
therapy was initiated as a medical treatment for symptoms associated
with "the change," such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness. In the
1960s and 1970s, women were also told that hormone therapy would
protect against wrinkles, keep hair glossy, and reduce depression.
Now
hormone therapy is being touted as protection against porous bones, or
osteoporosis. For several decades, it has been known that estrogen
helps protect women's bone. After menopause, when estrogen production
declines, there is accelerated bone loss. To date, however, it is not
clear how much this problem is due to the loss of estrogen as opposed
to lifestyle and genetics. Furthermore, all women are not at equal
risk for bone thinning and fractures.
Hormone
therapy is now also being suggested for the prevention of heart
disease, which rises dramatically in women over the age of 50. A
report released recently by the Canadian Menopause Consensus
Conference says that estrogen therapy can lower a woman's risk for
developing heart disease by up to 50 percent.
There
are, however, unknowns. For one thing, estrogen alone increases the
risk of developing uterine cancer. There is also concern that estrogen
has the potential to promote the growth of breast cancer.
Unfortunately,
solid scientific information on the use of drugs in menopause is
unimpressive. A report issued in May 1992 by the United States Office
of Technology Assessment emphasized that there have not been
sufficient studies that meet adequate design, duration, and
sample-size requirements to determine the risks and benefits of
hormone therapy, whether involving Premarin or synthetic medications.
"It is quite a long-term commitment, perhaps 30 years, for women to
make without knowing the long term effects of hormone therapies," says
Nori Korsunsky, a health educator who runs menopause information
sessions at the Women's Health Clinic in Winnipeg.
Meanwhile,
a variety of daily side effects are known to be associated with
estrogen supplements. They include nausea, changes in body weight,
elevation in blood pressure, aggravation of migraine headaches,
allergic reactions and rashes, nervousness, and dizziness. - N.R.
|
I
am in Winnipeg, sitting on a bench on the grounds of the legislative assembly,
listening to Marianne Cerilli's concerns about the expansion of Ayerst
Organics and its boosted PMU production. First elected four years ago, Cerilli,
28, was until recently the New Democratic Party environment and workplace
safety and health critic.
In
February 1993, her office released a document entitled "The Business of
Estrogen Production, the Environment and Women's Health." It called for a
federal environmental-impact assessment of the PMU industry, taking into
account not only the impact of PMU waste on the environment but also looking
into the overuse of estrogen supplements. Cerilli is concerned about what she
calls the "medicalization of menopause." She and other critics of Ayerst
Organics point out that Premarin remains the only drug for menopause that is
derived from animal estrogen and that other, synthetic forms of estrogen and
estrogen substitutes are readily available. Estradiol tablets and patches are
said to be safe, effective, and economical for those women in need of hormone
therapy. Estrogen substitutes can be derived from Mexican yams or soybeans,
and there are also alternative therapies, such as dietary changes, exercise,
and the use of vitamins, that can be initiated to lessen symptoms of
menopause.
"What's
happening in Brandon is a perfect example of the lack of proper planning,"
says Cerilli, who was characterized as the enemy of jobs for Manitobans for
questioning the PMU industry. "There were no connections being made between
environment, economy, and health. We have a controversial product, and here is
a decision being made to financially encourage the company to expand
production, which could needlessly increase pollution."
The
true challenge in North America, she says, is to guide industrial development
toward a sustainable economy "where we're not destroying the very ecosystems
that are keeping us alive and are the basis for the economy. The fact remains
that this kind of economic development -- overproduction and overconsumption
that ultimately lead to pollution -- is catching up with us. We will have to
come to terms with that."
In the end, I have
discovered, there is much to come to terms with: how we treat our water
resources and animals and how we treat ourselves. But I am also left thinking
of Charles Knockaert's stake in all this, both financial and emotional. On our
drive back to Brandon after the tour of lagoon four, Bill Paton turned to me
and said: "I want you to know that I want the best solution for Brandon, its
environment, and even for Ayerst. But, damn it, tell me, Why can't we have an
intelligent approach to this problem?"
