America’s Animal Poop Problem: Why Ignoring It Is No Longer an Option

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Animal Waste Lagoons

Once in a while when the lagoon starts to fill up, the operators of the farm have to empty it out. And, because this farm has no waste-treatment system like how cities have for their human waste counterpart, its contents are liquefied and using gigantic hoses are sprayed into the air.

This mist of urine and feces is picked up by the wind and travels to the homes of nearby communities. The smell in the air is so horrific, people don’t step outdoors for extended periods of time when they “get wind” that these garden hose operations are underway. Talk about your neighbor’s shit being contaminated.

Because the contents of the pool seep into the ground, they affect the drinking water system. Because they mix in with the air, people in homes surrounding these farms experience respiratory problem, physical issues and mental issues like depression and aggression. Neighbors routinely die of cancer, and no one knows why.

Now, multiply this one farm by the 1000’s and imagine them as factory farms, America’s biggest secret – CAFOs. According to Wikipedia, a CAFO is a concentrated animal feeding operation which is an animal feeding farm in which more than 1000 animals are raised in confinement for over 45 days a year.

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“It can, I think very correctly, be called ‘environmental racism’ or ‘environmental injustice’ that low-income people, people of color, bear the brunt of these practices.” ~ Steve Wing, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology, University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health

Read more HERE.

Watch the Vox Video HERE. 

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“As in any kind of factory, uniformity is essential. Piglets that don’t grow fast enough – the runts – are a drain on resources. Picked up by their hind legs, they are swung and then bashed head first onto the concrete floor. This common practice is called “thumping”.

‘We’ve thumped as many as 120 in one day,’ said a worker from a Missouri farm.

‘We just swing them, thump them, then toss them aside. Then, after you’ve thumped ten, twelve, fourteen of them, you take them to the chute room and stack them for the dead truck. And if you go in the chute room and some are still alive, then you have to thump them all over again. There’ve been times I’ve walked in that room and they’d be running around with an eyeball hanging down the side of their face, just bleeding like crazy, or their jaw would be broken.’”

― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

Read more HERE.

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