The first issue of interest and substance likely to cause some political stirring in the Pennsylvania governor's race has been provided by Peg Luksik, the Constitutional Party candidate.

In an appearance this week in Jonestown, Lebanon County, Luksik said state government should declare a moratorium on large livestock operations until the environmental and health questions they pose are addressed.

We agree. While the state currently requires factory farms to have "nutrient management plans" and is working to develop additional regulations to protect surface-water quality under federal mandate, the effort does not go far enough.

As noted in this space earlier this month, issues related to odor, buffer zones, groundwater, appropriate land use, property values and even the legal basis for rejecting such operations were largely or entirely ignored in the proposed regulations.

Luksik, who is in her third run for the state's top job and is making a deliberate effort to broaden her message, spoke less than a mile from the site of a planned farm for 3,600 juvenile pigs. There has been a flurry of proposed large livestock operations of late in central Pennsylvania, most of which have prompted adverse reactions from those who live nearby.

Best known for her staunch opposition to abortion and support ** for school vouchers, Luksik may well have struck a chord on an issue that transcends political parties and philosophies, all the more so from those who live downwind from one of these industrial farming operations.

Luksik also seems to understand the issue at the level of the ordinary citizen. She astutely noted that "corporate agriculture is taking advantage of laws written for family farms."

Gov. Tom Ridge, who was joined by an official of one of the state's leading hog producers on his December trip to the Orient to promote sales of "the other white meat," has indicated through members of his cabinet that he views factory farms as an inevitable development in the state's leading industry that is prompted by economics.

That may be true and the state's efforts to fashion new regulations may be commendable as far as they go, but we find ourselves in agreement with Luksik's call "not to repeat the mistakes other states have already made." She is right in declaring that, "We need to step back and look at the impact of bringing in large factory farms."

While relatively few people are directly affected today by large livestock operations, Pennsylvania has the nation's largest rural population and many who live in the country may well fear - as they have good reason to - that a factory farm could be coming to their neck of the woods in the future.

Ridge may choose to ignore the hog factory issue, if he can, but it looks from here that Luksik has put the ball in his court with an issue that could well prove more potent than many might assume at first glance.