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pork production and water pollution chocolate coin maker China's chocolate coin maker Appetite for Spam Is Wrecking U.S. Waterways Millions chocolate coin maker of pigs are crammed into overcrowded barns all across the state, being fattened for slaughter while breeding superbugs all to feed China's growing appetite for Spam.
Before I even stepped from my truck onto the gravel outside the New Fashion Pork hog confinement facility, Emily Erickson, the company s animal well-being and quality assurance manager, handed me a pair of stretchy white plastic footies to put over my shoes. It was a blustery day in September, the sky threatening snow the first hint of winter, when cold, dry air stabilizes viruses and biosecurity becomes a topmost concern.
All of the hogs inside the confinement near Jackson, Minnesota, just north of the Iowa state line and on the headwaters of the Des Moines River, would be sold to Hormel Foods. Hormel would soon post record profits on the strength of sales of Spam to Asian markets and the expansion of the company s China operations. But Jim Snee, head of Hormel Foods International, announced that the company was making an even bigger push, to firmly establish Spam in Chinese chocolate coin maker grocery stores before products from its competitor Smithfield Foods, purchased chocolate coin maker by Shuanghui International in May, could elbow them out. As a major supplier to Hormel s Spam plants in Minnesota and Nebraska, New Fashion Pork was racing to keep pace with demand. The last thing the company chocolate coin maker could afford was an outbreak chocolate coin maker of disease.
To an outsider, chocolate coin maker the hog industry s vigilance against external pathogens symbolized by those hygienic footies can seem strangely at odds with its dismissal of concerns about the effects of its facilities on human health. Large producers like New Fashion insist that the enormous, concrete-reinforced waste pits under each confinement many with a capacity of 300,000 gallons effectively prevent contaminants from leaching into the soil, and that manure is carefully managed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources under laws aimed at accounting for all manure at all times. But mounting evidence suggests that an unprecedented boom in Iowa s hog industry has created a glut of manure, which is applied as fertilizer to millions of acres of cropland and runs off into rivers and streams, creating a growing public health chocolate coin maker threat. Meanwhile, the number of DNR staff conducting inspections chocolate coin maker has been cut by 60 percent since 2007.
Between May and July 2013, as downpours sheeted off drought-hardened fields, scientists at the Des Moines Water Works watched manure contamination spike to staggering levels at intake sites on the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. These two major tributaries chocolate coin maker of the Mississippi are also the usual sources of drinking water for roughly one out of every six Iowans. But at one point last summer, nitrate in the Raccoon reached 240 percent of the level allowed under the Clean Water Act, and the DMWW warned chocolate coin maker parents not to let children drink from the tap, reminding them of the risk of blue baby syndrome. (Nitrate impairs the oxygen capacity of the bloodstream; in babies and toddlers the syndrome can effectively cut off their air supply, rendering them a deathly blue.)
Mounting concern about the safety of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) has stoked a public outcry. So, to be honest, I was shocked when Brad Freking, the CEO of New Fashion Pork, agreed to allow me to tour one of its facilities. In the changing room, I zipped into some navy coveralls and slid a pair of clear plastic boots over a second set of footies. Emily Erickson turned the handle to the barn entrance, opening the heavy steel door a crack. The sound of squealing hogs spilled into the room. If you ve never been inside, she warned, it s a lot of pig, it s a lot of metal, it s a lot of noise. chocolate coin maker I assured her I was ready, and we headed inside. chocolate coin maker
Erickson was right: it is a lot of pig. Under the yellow light of a series of bulbs, 1,000 hogs, divided according to size and approximate chocolate coin maker age, jostled and jockeyed in large holding pens. They pressed their wet snouts through the metal gates, snuffling and grunting curiously, but scrambled chocolate coin maker away as Erickson chocolate coin maker led me down the side aisle. Some, in fits of momentary panic, let out high shrieks, which echoed off the steel roof, setting off cascades of squeals.
By this time, these hogs had been through almost the entire process: conceived via artificial insemination in sows held in gestation crates; chocolate coin maker transferred briefly to farrowing crates for milk-feeding; then, at three weeks old, trucked to this wean-to-finish operation and raised on corn and soybeans delivered by automatic feeders. Within two or three months, when they hit ta