"Pork's Dirty Secret" . . . Rolling Stone . . . (warning: disturbing photo) . . .

[OneBlueSky]

Pork's Dirty Secret: The nation's top hog producer is also one of America's worst polluters
America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters



Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That's a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.

Smithfield Foods actually faces a more difficult task than transmogrifying the populations of America's thirty-two largest cities into edible packages of meat. Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield's total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround the company's slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount.

Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do -- even if it came marginally close to that standard -- it would lose money. So many of its contractors allow great volumes of waste to run out of their slope-floored barns and sit blithely in the open, untreated, where the elements break it down and gravity pulls it into groundwater and river systems. Although the company proclaims a culture of environmental responsibility, ostentatious pollution is a linchpin of Smithfield's business model.

A lot of pig shit is one thing; a lot of highly toxic pig shit is another. The excrement of Smithfield hogs is hardly even pig shit: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure. The reason it is so toxic is Smithfield's efficiency. The company produces 6 billion pounds of packaged pork each year. That's a remarkable achievement, a prolificacy unimagined only two decades ago, and the only way to do it is to raise pigs in astonishing, unprecedented concentrations.

more . . .

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters

[no_hypocrisy]

1. All of a sudden, I can see going Kosher or Halal.

That's disgusting.

[Fridays Child]

2. I have to assume that Smithfield meat packages do not have "Ks" on them.

Besides Hebrew National beef products, I wonder what processed meats are kosher.

[yewberry]

10. No, not kosher by definition.

It's pork--never kosher.

[BlueEyedSon]

45. Yeah because Cows and Sheep don't poop.

I guess you meant "go vegetarian".....

[hedgehog]

3. An excellent overview

The only thing not mentioned is that pork doesn't have any flavor anymore. Chicken is the same way.

[slor]

4. Damn...

I think I just gave up meat. Thanks for posting. My wife is vegan, and has been trying to get me to give it up for years, this article may have just done it.

[nam78_two]

5. K&R.nt

[MindPilot]

6. Another reason to push the development of TDP technology

[suziedemocrat]

17. Hey!!! I thought I was the only one following that!!!

Link http://www.changingworldtech.com/

[jgraz]

7. It CAN be done better -- check out Niman Ranch, among others

http://www.nimanranch.com

[IndyOp]

20. Absolutely - It can and should be done better -

I think we should outlaw the mega-animal production facilities. It would be an incredible boon to our economy to have small farm begin popping up all over the nation again.

In the meantime, I am vegetarian.

[NickB79]

35. My dad is a small family farmer

And some kind of limitation on factory farming would be a boon to the rural economy. Children (myself included) no longer stay in the area once we graduate high school, and there is little young blood coming back into the community. The average farmer where I grew up (central Minnesota) is in his 50's or early 60's; the youngest farmer I know is my uncle, who is in his mid-30's.

Factory farms are largely automated with massive tractors and feeding systems now, so they employ few people. They have their grain and feed shipped in on semi-trailers instead of purchased at the local feedmill, and ship their livestock out to mega-butchering plants instead of using the local butchering plant. Rural towns are slowly dying out with every old-timer that retires or passes away.

[lordsummerisle]

8. What an eye-opener

Thanks for the post...

[judaspriestess]

9. you also eat the last dying moments of this animal

which are filled with pain and anguish. Thats toxic too.

How sad. I struggle with eating meat now, I honestly don't want to anymore. I will do my best to stop.

[jgraz]

23. mmmm...dying moments...

Most slaughterhouses work to keep the animals calm, since stress hormones degrade the quality of the meat. Check out some of Temple Grandin's great work in this area.

Of course, avoiding factory-farmed meat -- or meat altogether -- is the only way to really cut down on animal suffering. For myself, I'll gladly pay the extra $2 a pound (or more) to get meat that's been humanely raised and killed.

[KansDem]

56. I don't know...I had a friend once describe to me that animals can sense death...

Particularly at slaughterhouses. He shunned meat on a regular basis (not entirely vegetarian; he'd have a hamburger every once in a while). I worked at a slaughterhouse for one night in the mid-'80s and saw firsthand how much of the slaughtering process operated. Although I was on the cleanup crew, I could see how cattle might suspect something was up (smell desperation?) and become panicked.

[Little Wing]

11. It reads a bit like Fast Food Nation. However, it comes as no surprise

that Red North Carolina is covered in pigshit.

[Control-Z]

12. We have family in NC

I read this article a few weeks ago and mentioned it to my sister over the phone. She was on the defensive before I could finish my sentence. Some bs about the small farmers staying in business - exactly the opposite of what this article brought to light. Top it off, she said the smell of pig shit was nothing compared to that of chicken shit (also part of the NC aromatics). Damn. And we have to visit both sides of the family there the week following Christmas.:scared:

[nosmokes]

13. The legacy of industrial agriculture isn't limited to hogs, but don't boycott

the wrong thing. me, i'm probably 95% vegetarian,only eating meat occasionally, but more because my wife is a vewgetarian. what i do though is make sure the meat i eat comes from local producers that use sustainable organic practices, and i *never* eat meat that has been commercially raised, i.e.: smithfield or tyson or your basic supermarket meat. where did it come from? what was it fed? how was it treated? you can bet that if you don't know the answers to those questions there's a damn good reason, and the odds are the producers don't want you to know.-

support your local farmer and rancher
buy local
buy organic
buy fair trade

edited to say thanks for the post.

[suziedemocrat]

19. I'm a vegetarian, I don't expect Americans to stop eating meat though.

They should eat less meat. They should eat better meat. I don't think that's too much to hope for. Am I delusional???????

[nosmokes]

34. delusional? probably.

and i don't mean that in a bad way, but it is such an ingrained part of the psyche over here that in many areas of the country simply trying to get a vegetarian meal in a restaraunt can be a challenge. even the pie crusts will be made with lard, for instance, or bacon or some form of pig fat will be cooked with the vegetables to add flavor. sometimes all you can eat is a grilled cheese sandwhich and a salad. and folks still think that for some reason if you're not eating meat you're missing out on some important nutrients and vitamins. but try explaining that a varied diet with plenty of whole grains and leafy greeens anat will fulfill everything your body needs nutrionally is like trying to explain it to my door. but trying to get people to have even one meatless day a week will run up against opposition. but have some people over and serve 'em a veggie meal and they don't even notice there's no meat until you point it out, as long as you don't try and slip in some tofu or some sort of *subsstitute.*

[suziedemocrat]

40. Oh I know! But it's gotten a lot better.

I became a vegetarian in 1986 in Indiana. It was awful! People thought I was "being difficult" for not wanting to eat soup made with chicken broth. I got so much flack from just about everyone. People also used to say to me "Do you mind if I eat meat?" Like they expected me to lecture them or something, so they lectured me first about how unhealthy it is to be a vegetarian. People got very confrontational at meals and I ended up avoiding eating with people.

I recently moved back, and most people now are more comfortable with vegetarians. The new type of restaurant chains called "Fast Casual" have helped a lot. Places like Panera Bread specify if the soups are vegetarian, and they are getting people to wake-up.

Btw, I was working in Germany in the mid-1990's and it was even worse to be a vegetarian there! Germans put pork in EVERYTHING! And little pieces of pork don't count, so vegetables with pork "for flavor" are considered vegetarian. I ended up eating almost every meal in Italian restaurants when I was in Germany.

[Bjorn Against]

14. Wow, that is the most disgusting article I have read in quite some time

I thought Fast Food Nation was disgusting, but damn. I don't know how anyone could even consider eating pork after reading this article. The part about people falling into the lagoons and drowning in pig shit was especially nasty. And I don't think too many people are going to be excited to eat ham after learning the pig that ham came from was shitting out something closer to radioactive waste than organic manure.

Did anyone else notice in the article that this company was a major contributor to George Allen's campaign? No big surprise, this is the Republican agenda. Radioactive pig shit for all!

[Little Wing]

21. I think "Radioactive" was a metaphor for really nasty

You can't just mix a bunch of shit together and get radioactivity, although it would be neat to see John Ashscroft talking about shit-bombs instead of dirty-bombs :D

[Bjorn Against]

22. If you read the article...

No technically speaking it is not radioactive, but it is highly toxic. Far more toxic than normal shit, because there are all kinds of nasty chemicals in it.

[Little Wing]

25. Yes, amazingly I did read the article

but I'm not the on repeating "radioactive" as if it were fact, now, am I?

[Bjorn Against]

26. Did I not just acknowledge it wasn't radioactive?

My comment before was clearly satirical, but still much too close to reality.

[Wiley50]

15. I read the whole thing

Suddenly. I realize that I'll never eat the polish sausage in my fridge.

BTW. The Neuse river in NC is the sailing capital of the east coast.

Glad I pulled the boat out at the Potomac

[malaise]

16. How nice that I don't eat

this nasty meat.

[progressoid]

18. If I recall correctly, Al Gore got in hot water here in IA for stating the obvious...

He pointed out that Human waste is more tightly regulated than hog waste. That pissed off a lot of people (particularly in an ag state). Sadly his statement just meant more regulations, more govt oversight and higher costs to most. Very few people actually addressed the validity of it.


Iowa Pork Facts:

In 2005, Iowa had 8,900 pig farms

At any one time, there are approximately 16 million pigs being raised in Iowa.

Each year, around 25 million hogs are raised in Iowa.

Each year, around 60 million hogs are raised in the U.S.

Iowa pork producers raise 25% of the hogs raised in the U.S., making our state #1 in pork production.

There are approximately five hogs for every one person in Iowa.

Source: Iowa Agriculture Statistics Service www.nass.usda.gov/ia/



The Iowa pork industry:

Creates more than 63,000 jobs for fellow Iowans

Contributes more than $2 billion in annual payroll

Contributes $12 billion annually in economic impact to the state of Iowa.

Hogs consume 27% of Iowa's corn and 30% of Iowa's soybeans, or 492 million bushels of corn and 145 million bushels of soybeans.

Source: Iowa State University, Department of Economics

[JNelson6563]

24. Pardon the pun but Holy Crap!!

I read the whole article. This is horrifying. I think President Gore would do something about this if we got him the the WH.

Julie

[Arugula Latte]

27. Ugh. I'm so glad I haven't eaten pork since about 1982.

:scared:

Poor pigs. They are such intelligent beings. :cry:

[RebelOne]

39. I am so glad I don't eat anything with hair, fur or feathers. n/t

[Feron]

28. That story is simultaneously..

really disgusting and infuriating.

[katamaran]

29. Smithfield (the town) has been increasingly against the company

The article pointed out all the problems with the original Smithfield packing plant in Smithfield VA (about 15 minutes from me). There has been a grassroots movement against the company for both its environmental damages and damages against the historic district in the town. They finally got the pig trucks to stop rolling down Main Street a few years ago. The Pagan River has finally started coming back a bit, but it's still not a place to dangle your toes in. The Pagan is a tributary of the James River, which flows into the lower Chesapeake Bay. The health department keeps having to close beaches on the James downstream of the Pagan because of bacteria. And every time, they say that no one knows why there are one million times the safe levels in the water. The savvy locals know what it is. The beaches in Newport News and Hampton are closed because of the waste generated a few miles away in Smithfield.

Plus, all the people who are moving out to Smithfield because it's some of the last "country" in Hampton Roads don't know they're sitting on an environmental timebomb. If the land near the river was tested, you know it would be toxic. But people keep building houses out there, and the Luter family keeps raking in the dough.

[Maraya1969]

30. Why did they kill all those baby pigs? I don't want to go to the link.

[undergroundpanther]

31. Ceos

Need to be held accountable to the world,if the politicians won't do it or fail to because of bribes, than it's up to us. I wonder if Luten would like to go skinnydippin' in a pink lagoon in august?
He deserves worse as far as I'm concerned what a sickfucking thug.

[Occulus]

33. Oh, silly panther!

If we *GASP* regulate CEOs such that they are, well, actually held responsible for the actions of their companies, for every act of corporate wrongdoing their board engages in, why, the entire business world would fall apart in a twitching fit of imposed corporate responsibility! Their offices and jets would disintigrate into dust!

Why, if we held CEOs responsible each and every time, *gasp* nobody would want to be a CEO, and everyone knows we need CEOs for the business world to function because we need ridiculously well-paid people to make decisions and manage things at that tippy-top level. Oh, and we need to pay them tens of millions of dollars because without them nothing would get done on the factory floor!!

(I don't think that needs a sarcasm smiley... but a bitter cynicism smiley would be awful apropos.)

ed.: it's a twitching fit.

[Danger Mouse]

32. Okay.

I will never. fucking. eat. pork. again.
or bacon. or ham. or anything with pigs in it...ugh...
going back to vegetarian is starting to look really good right about now...

[Cobalt-60]

36. METHANE!

26 million tons of code red pig poo translates into rather a lot of methane.
Methane is suitable for burning in a generator. It can be processed into a gasoline substitute.
The evil, greedy clods at this company are actually losing the income this free resource would bring so they can pollute the environment.

[renate]

37. when I read that story I thought about karma

The people who are getting rich from all those animals' suffering are going to be sad about it someday.

I don't really blame the people who buy bacon, in its neat and tidy packages so different from its origin. It's easy to forget that it actually comes from a sentient being.

But those who know what goes into its production, and keep doing it anyway because it gives them a tidy profit... maybe they'll come back as a pig in their next life, not as punishment (karma doesn't punish, it teaches) but as a lesson.

[BreweryYardRat]

46. Pigs aren't sentient, dude. (Dudette?)

Smart for animals, but not sentient. Cetaceans are sentient, or the closest thing in the animal kingdom to it.

For the record, I try to steer away from eating pork because of the inhumane kill conditions.

[nosmokes]

51. what?!? of course they are. they feel pain, they have a sense of self.

granted, they aren't rhodes scholars, but does that make their suffering any less genuine?

[rolfboy]

38. What a potential for Renewable Energy!

Here in Vermont, the local utlity company has set up digesters with dairy farms.

My wife and I actually get 1/2 of our electricity powered from Cow Shit! it's more
expensive (we pay 4 cents/kwh more than none "Cow Power"--that's what the program is called).

The article mentioned that Smithfield's Pig Shit is extremely toxic, so i don't know if that toxicity could be digested (convert shit to methane which then powers generators, in short). but to my mind, it seems like it could and be worth a try. This is one tax break I would offer to any corporation.

WOW, could you imagine 26mm pounds of shit and how much power that could generate.

We don't have nearly that much dung here in VT, and the Cow Power program is powering several towns.

just my $0.02

[Chimichurri]

41. We should use that excrement as fuel. Thailand found a way to use

human excrement as fuel. If they could do that I'm sure some brilliant scientist can find a way to use animal droppings.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/768672.stm

[Blue_Tires]

42. ttt

nt

[LynneSin]

43. I read that magazine and I don't think I could eat pork every again

:puke:

[gollygee]

44. I grew up with friends who had a hog farm

and they are nasty animals. Ugh, the stench!

But I've also been around dairy farms and they weren't bad at all.

[aikoaiko]

47. mmmmmmmmm. bacon.

and ribs. slow cooked. mmmmmmmmmmmmm

[BreweryYardRat]

48. Al Franken was talking about this in Lies and Lying Liars.

Which was written in what...2002?

The oozing pig-shit reservoirs have actually caused the evolution of lethal little micro-organisms (amoebic, I think) capable of making people very, very sick. They kill anything else. People only survive because we have hospitals.

Edit: The article actually mentions them: Pfiesteria piscicida.

Someone should have shot Luter years ago.

[Beaverhausen]

49. I quit eating pork over 20 years ago

looks like I made the right decision.

[NashVegas]

50. I Went About 10 Years W/out Pork

Almost made it closer to 15, I think.

Eventually, I started wanting to have an occasion slice of bacon or sausage. I try to research who puts out what.

[HughLefty1]

52. I also quit eating pork years ago...

About 15 years ago when living back East, I would see those trucks jam packed with the pigs on the way to the slaughter house. It was enough to stop me from eating pork for a decade.

I've 'cheated' the past few years eating bacon and the occasional pepperoni pizza slice. This article is enough for me to swear off pork again. It is repulsive to see the treatment of these animals. My vegan friends all swear that the next great disease will be spread by eating meat.

[LibraLiz1973]

53. That article was VERY disturbing

I read it when the magazine came and I've been skeeved by it since

[Lydia Leftcoast]

54. Already covered in the May issue of Harper's

Since then, I have eaten only pasture-raised pork, which is fortunately available in my local food co-op. And it does taste better!

[MazeRat7]

55. I am way more concerned about the "pigs" than I am the "environment"...

Seriously, if the major concern here is environmental degradation, then I think our priorities are a bit skewed. For the record, pigs are one of the top 10 most intelligent animals. Some experts have claimed mature swine have the cognitive intelligence of young 6-7 year old humans.

Now before you are quick to the trigger and want to say something lame like, "show me a pig that can write or talk", please note I specifically said "cognitive intelligence" as relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering).

So color me not interested in "helping" if the primary concern here is for us humans and their environment. Perhaps if we quit killing pigs for food we would alleviate the need for hog farms, which in turn would help both the pigs and the humans.

MZr7

[Danger Mouse]

57. Contrary to what some believe...

...the environment isn't just for people.
For the record, if we completely decimate the planet, your precious little piggies will go bye-bye too.
Granted, the way they are treated is disgusting and horrifying. Luter is a piece of filth that almost makes Bush look good. Amazing how much harm one asshole can cause, isn't it? Unfortunately, we'll be paying for that greedy asshole's money grubbing schemes for years...

[BlueStorm]

58. Not to mention that pork has about 75-100 different parasites

and diseases. Not to mention the lovely Tania Solenium or however it's spelled, otherwise known as the tapeworm. Some of these parasites and diseases will not die even if you burnt the meat.

When I was studying Islam there was something I read on the Internet about a science project a Middle Eastern boy did. He took Coke and put it on a raw pork chop or steak and let it sit. After a while he noticed some kind of parasite coming out of the meat.

With the kind of conditions these hogs live in on these kinds of farms, there would probably be even more disease and parasitic laden pork products out there.

And I had pork steaks last night. Great.

Sorry I don't mean to gross you out.

Blue

[Danger Mouse]

60. I almost want to try that pork chop experiment...

almost...not quite...it's just a little too horrible...ugh...

[skipos]

59. Articles like this make it very easy to be a vegetarian. nt