THERE ARE, of course, also the big factory farms where pigs are more scientifically bred, artificial insemination taking the place of stud services. But big doesn't necessarily mean better. Large-scale commercial pig farms merely represent a host of other problems. Indeed, these enterprises are often characterized by an almost sterilized environment inside their walls while creating the most squalid conditions right outside.

	Lucio Tan's Foremost Farms, the largest piggery in Asia, dumps its wastes in a stagnant brown river in Antipolo.

The DENR is supposed to enforce tighter regulations on these businesses, which could contain as many as 100,000 heads. The standard waste disposal system for these factory farms — in which the breeding and sanitizing can be state-of-the-art — is composed of a series of open-air lagoons, which are usually deep paddies made of earth where pig waste washed from the pens is channeled. But this method is susceptible to overflow, especially when the number of heads increases without a corresponding growth in space for their waste. Storms can also cause breaks in the paddies, releasing the filthy fluid into the rest of the environment. Some farms have been accused by their neighbors of deliberately discharging waste when it rains, just to create more space in the lagoons.

In rural Antipolo, there is a brown waterway known as Ilog Baho (Stinky River). One realizes after a whiff that the name is apt. The stench doesn't seem to bother the dozen or so kids swimming in the mucky water during a visit by this writer on a hot day. Older residents, however, claim to have been hospitalized in the past with a variety of infections that they suspect can be traced to the filthy river.

A few kilometers upstream are the only possible sources for the shit-laced fluid: several large pig farms in Rizal province, including the Lucio Tan-owned Foremost Farms that is said to be the largest piggery in all of Asia, with as many as several hundred thousand porcine heads.

Company officials refused to be interviewed. But right outside Foremost's premises is a winding riverbed without water during the summertime; what is there is a long stagnant ribbon of dark-brown syrup. A pipeline leading from inside the company compound connects to the riverbed. None of the surrounding residents complain about it though, nearly all of them or their family breadwinners being employees of the company.

The irony is that profitable factory farms, unlike many backyard operators, put a premium on cleanliness inside their premises. Visitors and their belongings, even entering vehicles, are sprayed with disinfectant. After all, disease can easily spread and wipe out an entire farm of delicate imported hog species.

This fetish with cleanliness inside their compounds, though, causes commercial farms to consume large amounts of water, often from underground aquifers that the rest of the surrounding communities must share. In some places in Bulacan, for example, the wells of residents have run dry because expanding pig farms have dug deeper wells and dried up the shallower aquifers. The farms then get to curry favor with locals by offering them free water.

Obviously, as with many other businesses, the environmental impact of commercial pig farms is weakly monitored by the DENR. The result has been havoc for local waterways, a decline in the public's health, and a constant stench that clings to hair, clothes and house curtains — a vastly lowered quality of life that is often dismissed by local government officials as the price the community pays for a profitable industry.

WHY piggeries (despite their inescapably putrid odor) have managed to escape the notice of those who shape the nation's environmental agenda is not quite clear. Then again, to acknowledge serious problems with the pork industry would be to obligate green advocates, at the very least, to contemplate items in their diets that are hard to resist: lechon, chicharon, liempo, adobo, sisig, dinuguan and all the other delectable Filipino food delights that feature pork.

There's no denying that Filipinos (except the Muslims and the vegetarians) love pork and consume more of it per capita than any other developing country. (Richer countries can afford to consume more meat.) Even the Ilocanos, who are known for their vegetable dishes like pinakbet and dinengdeng, have bagnet, or deep-fried pork complete with fat and rind.

The fact is that while much of the world turned more health-conscious in the 1990s and consumed less pork, Filipinos ate more of it per person. In 1995, according to agriculture department statistics, Filipinos consumed 14 kilos of pork per capita per year, which rose to 16 kilos by 1999. Which only means Ka Pilo and Hyphor 4 can count on having a very busy schedule for so long as they can handle the work.

If there is any great hindrance to the domestic pork industry's continued growth, it will not come from any changes in the Filipino diet, but in the form of competition from China. Cheap pork — both legally imported and smuggled — has started to inundate local markets, undermining the attractiveness of investments in swine.

Without stronger environmental regulation and interest from the activist community, perhaps only free trade will save us from the harm wrought by our fondness for pork.