Vox examines hog farming's poop problem for National Food Day

Happy National Food Day! As I wrote in 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' on food safety for World Food Day, "I still plan on observing the day next week with the third video in the series that began with Vox explains how 4 companies control the beef industry for a late National Food Day and continued with Vox explains 'The chicken industry’s worker safety problem' for Food Day 2022." Here's the video, Hog farming has a massive poop problem.

Inside North Carolina’s search for solutions for its thousands of pig manure lagoons.
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For this third episode of our video series with Vox’s Future Perfect team, we went to North Carolina, a state that for decades has been a battleground over the public health impact of hog farming.

I'll repeat some of what I wrote last week as my response.

I just watched Food, Inc. with my class last week and some of questions on the worksheet pertain to Oliver's video.

12. What is a CAFO?

A concentrated animal feeding operation.

13. How did the feeding of corn to cattle along with other raising and slaughtering practices lead to evolution and spread of a dangerous strain of E. coli?

I answered the first part of this question in Corn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet: "Corn makes cattle stomachs acidic, which promotes strains of E. coli that are pathogens in humans. These strains can then survive passage through human stomachs." The video shows the second part; cattle finish their growth in crowded conditions on CAFOs that allow pathogens to spread from animal to animal. The pathogens, particularly E. coli, can then enter water supplies and pass into vegetables.

The last part, and more, is true of the emissions from manure lagoons and spray-fields, which pose an environmental justice issue.

This video also provides examples of Commoner's Laws, everything must go somewhere, everything is connected to everything else, there is no free lunch, and nature knows best. The poop has to be disposed of, but it gets into the air and water and affects people's health. That's a not-so-hidden cost of cheap meat. The solution to derive energy from the manure, which reduces methane and some of the odors, connects "there is no waste in nature" with nature knows best. I wrote more extensively about how that works in Paean to the power of poop, a Squirrel Case entry. Too bad it does nothing about the other problems like nitrogen and phosphorus. Sigh.

Stay tuned for a full week of Halloween posts. Spooky season!