Hog Lots Hurting Seniors’ Physical & Financial Health?

[nosmokes]

Well we sure can't have a buncha fecking old folks holding up making a dollar!


original-publicnewsservice

Hog Lots Hurting Seniors’ Physical & Financial Health?

Cresco , IA – Many of the neighbors of large livestock confinement operations are retired seniors, and the hog lots may be affecting their physical and financial health, according to recent studies in Iowa and North Carolina. The studies report elderly face weakened immune systems from water-borne bacteria that can originate on factory farms. The facilities can also emit gases, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, which cause respiratory problems for many seniors.

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complete article here

[groovedaddy]

1. Those places stink to high heaven!

When I lived in NC, I drove past one and the smell nearly gagged me.

[Trillo]

2. One would think that scientists and engineers could

design a containment system. Who knows, maybe they could even generate electricity from it.

Example:

PLAN TO HARNESS POWER OF MANURE DRAWS INTEREST
May 11, 2003
The New York Times
A18
HINO, Calif. ‹ This Southern California valley is, according to this story,
at an epochal stage in the ancient and deeply ambivalent relationship
between man and cow manure.
The milk flows richly here, thanks to 350,000 dairy cows, one of the world's
densest concentrations of cows. But with these animals comes their waste:
1.5 million tons a year.
Mark Lambooy, 41, one of 260 dairy farmers in this valley of 50 square
miles, known as the Chino Basin, was quoted as saying, "Manure is becoming a
bigger problem."
That is because a half-million people and counting live here, too. Downtown
Los Angeles is a mere 35 miles away, and Orange County a stone's throw. With
this kind of geography in its favor, people will build houses here, no
matter how much it smells or how many flies strafe their barbecues.
One answer, at least for 90,000 of the cows, could, the story says, be the
Harper Dry Lake Energy Park, which seeks to transform manure from bane to
blessing, in the form of nearly 50 megawatts of electricity.
Buck Johns, 61, president of Inland Energy Inc., a developer of energy
plants based in Newport Beach, Calif., heard about the Chino Basin situation
and proposed building a methane digester on 1,900 acres in the high desert
country just west of Barstow, in San Bernardino County.
The story says that the plant uses technology that heats the cow manure,
releasing methane in sufficient quantities to fuel a gas turbine and create
electricity. The solid waste remains are used for fertilizer, and the waste
water is mostly recirculated, with some used to grow alfalfa around the
plant to help feed the cows and provide greenery.
The technology is used worldwide, with animal wastes and with rotting
garbage, but nothing close to this scale has been done using livestock
manure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and the
International Energy Agency, a Paris organization with 26 member countries.

Source: http://archives.foodsafetynetwork.ca/animalnet/2003/5-2003/animalnet_may_11.htm

[nosmokes]

3. So you're OK w/ the living conditions of the animals?

That are crammed in tight places and rarely if ever get to touch actual earth or feel real sunshine on their backs and are fed diets that are un-natural and full of hormones and antibiotics to fight the inevitable disease that comes from such unsanitary and abhorent living conditions.

[Trillo]

4. Just trying to be a realist.

I'd love it if scientists would start growing muscles (meat) synthetically, then no more need for ANY food animal deaths at all. But realistically, do you believe that freezing a solution to the elderly folks problems because of the ideology that the farms should really be shut down, but won't because the opposition is divided, changes anything?

Not every human is going to be able to thrive and or survive as a vegetarian.

[nosmokes]

5. I don't advocate veg for everyone, but humane, pastured, grass fed organic

meat sparingly, in small amounts is better for human health and a damn sight better for the planet's health. And no animal has to live a life of confined torture eating stuff they were never designed to eat. It's the right thing to do, for all concerned.

edit because I can't tyep

[WinkyDink]

6. Let's face it: Hogs, old people---no difference to Corporate America.