Hog Farm

RIDGELY -- Alfred Saathoff has been raising hogs on the family farm for 32 years."It's was always a good business," he said, adjusting the bill of a yellow John Deere dealership baseball cap. "It was the mortgage payer. That's what we always said."But not anymore. Saathoff, 54, is quitting the business -- driven out, he says, by the lowest hog prices in 50 years and annual losses "running into the thousands and thousands of dollars.""It doesn't make sense," he said. "You raise the pigs. You buy the feed.

SPRINGDALE, Ark. - Tyson Foods Inc. said yesterday that it expects its profit in the current quarter to fall as much as 41 percent as the world's largest meat producer spends money to close hog farms and discontinue a brand it bought last year. Profit for the quarter that will end Sept. 28 will range from 13 cents to 15 cents a share, Tyson said in a news release. That would be 22 cents less than in the year-earlier period. Tyson, Smithfield Foods Inc., Hormel Foods Inc. and other meat companies have been hurt by a drought in the United States that has raised prices for grain-based animal feed and by a Russian ban on U.S. poultry imports imposed in March because of food-safety concerns.

An article in yesterday's Maryland section misstated the size of farms affected by the hog farm regulations adopted Thursday by the Frederick County Commissioners. The regulations apply to farms with 1,000 or more hogs. The Sun regrets the error.

A public hearing on a proposed 2,000-hog farm in Westminster is on hold while the advisory board that reviews such issues for Carroll County ponders its own fate.Members of the Environmental Affairs Advisory Board offered to resign in the wake of a decision by the county commissioners to eliminate the agency the panel was created to assist. As a result, several critical issues, including the proposed hog farm on Indian Valley Trail, will not be addressed until after the commissioners meet with the panel.

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A Circuit Court judge upheld a court order yesterday barring a West Virginia man and his brother from dumping sewage on their Gambrills property.An attorney for Willie F. Helsel, who owns 45 acres on Hog Farm Road, had asked the court to rescind the emergency order. The order also gives the Health Department control over the cleanup of twin sewage lagoons discovered on the property.Health officials discovered the pits, which they fear could contaminate drinking water and pollute a nearby stream, after receiving ananonymous tip last month.

Despite the removal of her 54 cats and two refuse bins of debris, Gloria Wilson's tiny Lansdowne rowhouse remained so offensive Friday that a Baltimore County building engineer couldn't make it to the second floor."

Corey M. Green of Glen Burnie admitted yesterday that he killed his former girlfriend, the mother of his 6-year-old son, by shooting her in the head, the county state's attorney's office said.Green, 28, of the 800 block of Pamela Road pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and use of a handgun in the commission of a violent crime, said Anne Colt Leitess, assistant state's attorney for Anne Arundel County.On Aug. 3, Green, who had been an automobile mechanic at the Saturn dealership in Ellicott City, shot Latausha Lewis, 24, as she sat in the passenger seat of his 1987 Chevrolet Nova, Leitess said.

WINCHESTER, Va. - Valley Proteins Vice President Michael Smith stands next to the animal-rendering business his grandfather built among the apple orchards and inhales deeply. There is no hint of the rotten-garbage smell that Baltimore residents say they endured for decades - until a fire destroyed the company's Curtis Bay cooker two years ago and forced it to stop rendering animals there. Though the Winchester plant renders several truckloads of carcasses a day, the main odor outside the plant is the pine tinge of Smith's cologne.

While some ponder the effect of a proposed 2,200-animal hog farm outside Westminster, the county Environmental Affairs Advisory Board studied its own fate yesterday.Most of the board offered to resign last month after the county agency it was created to assist was eliminated. Yesterday, three of the remaining six members met for 35 minutes and attempted to chart a new course.The board had little success and a meeting next month with the county commissioners was set to continue discussion.