Pig-odor study passes smell test, Iowans say

[franksolich]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29534876/wid/18298287/?Gt1=45002

Seriously, this is about politics; if this forum is the wrong one, my apologies.

DES MOINES, Iowa - On Capitol Hill, a $1.7 million earmark for pig odor research in Iowa has become a big, fat joke among Republicans, a Grade A example of pork. But the people who live cheek by jowl with hog farms in the No. 1 pig-producing state aren't laughing.

They're gagging.

"You hold your breath and when it's really bad you get the taste in your mouth," said Carroll Harless, a 70-year-old retired corn-and-soybean farmer from Iowa Falls.

In Iowa, where the 20 million hogs easily outnumber the 3 million people, the rotten-egg-and-ammonia smell of hog waste often wafts into homes, landing like a punch to the chest.

"Once, we couldn't go outside for a week," said Karen Forbes, who lives near a hog feedlot outside Lorimor. "It burned your eyes. You couldn't breathe. You had to take a deep breath and run for your garage. It was horrid."

She recalls a citywide garage sale held in the town of 420 a couple of years ago that no one attended because of the stink that day.

The proposal to spend money on how to control pig-farm smells is contained in a $410 billion spending bill now making its way through Congress. Among other earmarks that have been criticized: tattoo removal for gang members in Los Angeles; Polynesian canoe rides in Hawaii; termite research in New Orleans; and the study of grape genetics in New York.

Despite the ridicule from Sen. John McCain and other Republicans, Iowa and the federal government have been studying how to control hog odors for years. The latest grant continues efforts under way at the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture labs in Ames, Iowa.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, inserted the earmark.

"While we will likely hear about it on Jay Leno or the Letterman show, where they will be yukking it up, it's a profoundly serious challenge," he said. He said the idea is to help the pork industry go about its business "in an environmentally friendly way and be good neighbors.".....

This of course is a consequence of primitives demanding cheap food.

One assumes the primitives would be opposed to air pollution, but that's what it takes to get cheap food.....as Californians, who recently voted on restrictions on raisilng farm animals, are sure to find out, possibly as early as this summer.

Things have consequences, and not necessarily the consequences one wishes them to have.

[JohnnyReb]

I'm telling you boys, pig poop do stink. I have first hand knowledge...... eeeeew

[franksolich]

I'm telling you boys, pig poop do stink. I have first hand knowledge...... eeeeew

Well, on one hand, I can sympathize with those who don't like it.

Today, it's much unlike it used to be here, where I live, where pigs were raised.

Back then, one had maybe a couple hundred pigs, sometimes even less (because they were bred here, and then sold to others who raised them), and with these wide-open spaces and the wind always blowing in Nebraska (for some reason it doesn't seem to blow much in Iowa), odor was never a problem.

Of course, back then, pork was more expensive (adjusted for inflation) than it is now.

Back then, nobody, but nobody, had tens of thousands of pigs in a limited area.

And so one has to make a decision; a decision that has two known consequences, one of them good, the other one bad.

Does one prefer cheap food at the "cost" of air pollution?

Or does one prefer clean air at the "cost" of high prices for food?

I have no preference either way.

[Crazy Horse]

Smells like money to me.