"Pig Poop Politics And Animal Welfare" (Ezra Klein)

[Catchawave]

For my AR/AW friends...YAY!


http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/pig-poop-politi.html

Here's what John Edwards was doing while Hillary was having a 'Rural Americans for Hillary' fundraiser with Monsanto lobbyists in DC:

The former North Carolina senator told audiences that he would push for a national moratorium on building or expanding livestock confinement facilities. He also said he would push for tougher federal environmental regulations and for rigorous enforcement of current manure disposal laws.

He mostly was talking about hog confinement operations, which have pitted neighbors against each other in many rural Iowa areas. Operators say well-run facilities are a safe, efficient way to raise hogs and compete on the world market. But many neighbors say the facilities stink up the air and foul the water, devastate their property values, and drive small farmers out of business.

It's no accident that a North Carolina Senator is pushing for this. (I remember in 1996 when my hometown paper, Raleigh's News & Observer, won a Pulitzer for reporting on the state's hog waste problem.) There's been a state moratorium on construction of new confinement facilities since then, and I see that Edwards wants to take that moratorium national. It's not an especially hard sell -- nobody wants to live near gigantic 'lagoons' of hog urine and feces. But what has me most excited about it is the benefit for animal welfare....

more....