(February 4) ONTARIO–The continuing decline of the region’s agricultural base is being given emphasis this month with the shuttering of what was once a thriving pig farm on the southeast side of Ontario.
The farm, which began operation in 1938, and boasted 14,000 animals in its heyday, since 1988 has been operated as a joint farm/food waste and resource recovery station under the name Standard Feeding Company.
Owner Arie De Jong combined the business in which he had previously functioned – refuse disposal and waste recycling – into a business model that involved accepting uneaten food from restaurants and other establishments and combining that with the hog farming operation at 13751 S. Haven Ave. De Jong’s Standard Feeding Company, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health “provides collection services of grain-based products, including bread, tortillas, pasta, noodles, and other foods such as potatoes, onions etc.”  DeJong had developed a method of collecting those products, storing them in containers and bins that would retard their spoilage, and transporting them to the hog farm which he had purchased from its owner upon his retirement in the late 1980s.
The farm dealt mostly in piglets, allowing them to roam freely in a non-cage environment where they were nourished after they had been weaned. They would eventually be sold to other farmers or go directly to the slaughterhouse. With the breakup of the Chino Agricultural Preserve and the annexation of the property on which the farm is located by the city of Ontario, the operation was essentially zoned out of compliance with the newly extant land use standards.
In 2005 the property was included as part of the Rich Haven Specific Plan. In 2007, the specific plan was given full approval by the Ontario City Council, slating the land on which the farm sits to become part of a development that would entail 4,000 residential units, a junior high school and 886,000 square feet of commercial buildings.
When the original project proponent went bankrupt following the financial crash of 2007, the project was postponed. Now, however, Brookfield Homes is moving ahead full speed on the project and Standard Feeding Company and its pigs are to be gone by February 28.