overapplication
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| SIGN OF THE TIMES |
 The sign mounted on this hideous sculpture of a typewriter eraser scarring a new Seattle neighborhood sculpture park says, "Sorry, photography of this statue is not permitted." So, you're not allowed to make a copy of something the artist copied? (Update: I don't really think the sculpture is hideous. But it's not as playful or interesting as his other work, I think. Also, here are 134 photos of the sculpture on Google Image Search, found by Boing Boing reader Aaron.) Link
Reader comment:
David says:
For readers who want to know more: The eraser is a sculpture by Swedish sculptor Claes Oldenburg, who is best known for his oversize sculptures of everyday objects. A gallery of his large scale projects can be seen on his website.
It reminds me of the quote by designer Paul Rand, who said something like: "If you can't make it good, make it big. (And if you can't make it big, make it red.)" http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/14-week/
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EcoBusinessLinks
Environmental Directory
*** 1998 - 2008 Tenth Anniversary ***
+ 9,000 Earth-Friendly Links!
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_energy_solar_power_panels.htm
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DON'T MISS THIS SPECIAL EVENING PROGRAM ON:
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Climate Change: From Dialogue to Action
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Panel Discussion & Cocktail Reception
Tuesday, May 6, 2008, 5:30pm – 8:00pm
Swiss Re, 55 East 52nd Street, 44th Floor, New York
Panelists:
Ambassador Peter Maurer, Head of the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations in New York
Paul R. Epstein, M.D., MPH., Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School
Mark F. Thielking, Managing Director, Environmental Risk Group – Americas, UBS
Mark Way, Director, Sustainable Development Americas, Swiss Re.
The panel discussion will be moderated by Steve Dishart, Managing Director, Communications & HR, Swiss Re.
Organized by The Swiss Society of New York and The Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, the event is supported by
Swiss Re which has a long-standing
commitment to sustainability and addressing issues related to climate change (see enclosed invitation and visit Swiss Re's
website at www.swissre.com/climatechange).
Admission Price: USD30.00 members of the SSNY or SACC, USD40.00 non members
Please feel free to forward this information to people who might be interested in the subject.
Yours sincerely
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Ladders provide remedy to gravity
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&q=ladders+provide+remedy+to+gravity
the lagoons pink, overapplication.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=the%20lagoons%20pink%20%20overapplication.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Environmental Law Prof Blog A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/biodiversity/index.html
http://greatreporter.com/mambo/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/
oyster
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=oyster&btnG=Search+Images
oyster
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&resnum=0&q=oyster&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
oyster
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/invertebrates/bivalve/Oysterprintout.shtml
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http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&resnum=0&q=oyster&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
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American Oyster (Crassostrea ...
300 x 297 - 14k - jpg
www.sherpaguides.com |
... above shows the Pacific Oyster, ...
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www.shellfish.org.uk |
... above show Pacific Oyster (left) ...
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www.shellfish.org.uk |
oyster.jpg
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libizblog.wordpress.com |
Oyster
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www.infovisual.info |
Water Street Oyster Bar, ...
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oyster
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www.utilitarianism.com |
oyster. ...
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arthursshells.tripod.com |
Oyster
700 x 525 - 43k - jpg
www.tonyboon.co.uk |
Cut the oyster free from his shell.
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whatscookingamerica.net |
Lavender oval oyster plate
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tilghmanislandtreasures.com |
Oysters are soft-bodied animals that ...
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Photo: Oysters
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animals.nationalgeographic.com |
... the Electric Oyster Experiment, ...
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gothamist.com |
Sarah Eating Oyster
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www.colvillebayoysterco.ca |
Oyster system diagram
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www.aquamarinepower.com |
Name: Olympia Oyster (Photo: Pacific ...
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www.pacificbio.org |
Oyster plateau Lyon1.jpg
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Ok I can't help it ...
Do the math...
http://quantumfieldtheory.org/x.htm
Above: the Standard Model particles in the existing SU(2)xU(1) electroweak symmetry group (a high-quality PDF
version of this table can be found here). The complexity of chiral symmetry - the fact that only particles
with left-handed spins (Weyl spinors) experience the weak force - is shown by the different effective weak
charges for left and right handed particles of the same type. My argument, with evidence to back it up in
this post and previous posts, is that there are no real ’singlets’: all the particles are doublets apart from
the gauge bosons (W/Z particles) which are triplets. This causes a major change to the SU(2)xU(1) electroweak
symmetry. Essentially, the U(1) group which is a source of singlets (i.e., particles shown in blue type in
this table which may have weak hypercharge but have no weak isotopic charge) is removed! An SU(2) symmetry
group then becomes a source of electric and weak hypercharge, as well as its existing role in Standard Model
as a descriptor of the isotopic spin. It modifies the role of the ‘Higgs bosons’: some such particles are
still be required to give mass, but the mainstream electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism is incorrect.
There are 6 rather than 4 electroweak gauge bosons, the same 3 massive weak bosons as before, but 2 new charged
massless gauge bosons in addition to the uncharged massless ‘photon’, B. The 3 massless gauge bosons are
all massless counterparts to the 3 massive weak gauge bosons. The ‘photon’ is not the gauge boson of
electromagnetism because, being neutral, it can’t represent a charged field. Instead, the ‘photon’ gauge boson
is the graviton, while the two massless gauge bosons are the charged exchange radiation (gauge bosons) of
electromagnetism. This allows quantitative predictions and the resolution of existing electromagnetic anomalies
(which are usually just censored out of discussions).
http://quantumfieldtheory.org/x.htm
http://quiztimeuk.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
31.7.07
How does a human calculator do it?
Root of all easy: Lemaire did this sum in 2004 in less than four seconds
Alexis Lemaire has broken the record for finding the
13th root of a 200-digit number.
It's an incredibly hard calculation so how does the
"human calculator" do it?
Fancy yourself as a bit of mental arithmetics buff,
one of those who relishes totting up the bill after
a restaurant meal for 12, one of those who looks
down their nose at calculator users?
Well try this for size.
The task is to find the 13th root of 85,877,066,894,718,045,
602,549,144,850,158,599,202,771,247,748,960,878,023,151,
390,314,284,284,465,842,798,373,290,242,826,571,823,153,
045,030,300,932,591,615,405,929,429,773,640,895,967,991,
430,381,763,526,613,357,308,674,592,650,724,521,841,103,
664,923,661,204,223.
The answer's 2396232838850303. Multiply that by itself 13 times and you get the above.
Even with a calculator you wouldn't beat Alexis Lemaire doing the calculation in his
head.
http://quiztimeuk.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
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| One of our,Bigest sources of bio mass... |
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pink lagoons
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Newton+Grove,+North+Carolina&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=35.295635,-78.347733&spn=0.008914,0.027122&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr
the lagoons pink.overapplication.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/14-week/
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BIG Opertunity!!! Smithfield Foods
& pig shit as fule sorce.
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Big factory pig farms are some of America's worst polluters
Posted by Xeni Jardin, January 20, 2007 11:04 AM permalink
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Newton+Grove,+North+Carolina&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=35.295635,-78.347733&spn=0.008914,0.027122&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Newton+Grove,+North+Carolina&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=35.281877,-78.338673&spn=0.004458,0.013561&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr
Rant - February 19, 2007 - Joanne
http://www.forkandbottle.com/rants/food/putdown_bacon.htm
Put Down That Bacon...
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... open-air pits, called lagoons.
500 x 334 - 125k - jpg
www.boingboing.net |
[Ed note: those big, pink "lakes" in ...
400 x 200 - 24k - jpg
www.boingboing.net |
... dairies must line the lagoons ...
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www.epa.gov |
For those vegetarians who still ...
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blogyournews.com |
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The lagoons pink, overapplication.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=the%20lagoons%20pink%20%20overapplication.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
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| Yeah but does it work on pig shit??/ |
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http://www.huwsgray.co.uk/wisscms-en-269.aspx
http://www.huwsgray.co.uk/wisscms-en-269.aspx?showlogin=1
(1 of 6) [4/29/2008 3:06:56 PM]ഊTreat it! -
Sewage Treatment Plant
Increasingly this is the solution of choice. A
Klargester BioDisc* Sewage Treatment Plant
fully treats the sewage. The treated effluent is
of such a high standard that it is odour free and
the Environment Agency - the regulator in
England & Wales (SEPA) in Scotland - may
permit discharge directly into a watercourse.
The treated effluent discharged from BioDisc*
will not cause blockage of the soakaway, if
one is required.
A correctly installed BioDisc* is robustly
constructed from corrosion-proof GRP and
will only require de-sludging every 12 months.
A BioDisc* sewage treatment plant is a more
adaptable solution than a septic tank, allowing
a more flexible installation to suit individual
situations.
Klargester manufacture treatment plants from
a single house solution to 500 population
equivalent.
Huws Gray - Sewage Solutions
http://www.huwsgray.co.uk/wisscms-en-269.aspx
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I decided to try out veganism a little over a week ago -- so far I feel great, and it's a lot easier than I thought. A number of things inspired me to give it a go, including Joi Ito's blog entries about his own vegan bodyhacking experiment, and this Rolling Stone article by Jeff Tietz. A friend had a copy sitting on the couch, open to this page, and I couldn't take my eyes off the story.
It's an investigative piece on how Smithfield Foods, America's largest hog slaughterer, circumvents law, pollutes like crazy, and creates antibiotic and vaccine-laden pork products that feed our country. I don't intend to become one of those annoying vegangelicals who tries to convert everyone to tempeh, but this was just a fascinating read:
Smithfield's holding ponds -- the company calls them lagoons -- cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.
Even light rains can cause lagoons to overflow; major floods have transformed entire counties into pig-shit bayous. To alleviate swelling lagoons, workers sometimes pump the shit out of them and spray the waste on surrounding fields, which results in what the industry daintily refers to as "overapplication." This can turn hundreds of acres -- thousands of football fields -- into shallow mud puddles of pig shit. Tree branches drip with pig shit.
Some pig-farm lagoons have polyethylene liners, which can be punctured by rocks in the ground, allowing shit to seep beneath the liners and spread and ferment. Gases from the fermentation can inflate the liner like a hot-air balloon and rise in an expanding, accelerating bubble, forcing thousands of tons of feces out of the lagoon in all directions.
The lagoons themselves are so viscous and venomous that if someone falls in it is foolish to try to save him. A few years ago, a truck driver in Oklahoma was transferring pig shit to a lagoon when he and his truck went over the side. It took almost three weeks to recover his body. In 1992, when a worker making repairs to a lagoon in Minnesota began to choke to death on the fumes, another worker dived in after him, and they died the same death. In another instance, a worker who was repairing a lagoon in Michigan was overcome by the fumes and fell in. His fifteen-year-old nephew dived in to save him but was overcome, the worker's cousin went in to save the teenager but was overcome, the worker's older brother dived in to save them but was overcome, and then the worker's father dived in. They all died in pig shit.
Link to "Boss Hog," by Jeff Tietz. Photo by doveimaging.com. ( thanks, Sputnik!)
Previously on BoingBoing:
(Unintentional?) Smithfield Ham Pron?
Check out the screenshot in my post. It's from this part of the
Smithfield website here: Link.
Damn, now that's some juicy ham pron if I've ever seen it....
I just want to stick my tongue right in the midd... (OK... I'll stop).
Daddymem says,
Here's an employee site regarding Smithfield Farms' labor practices: Link.
Kelly says,
B..b..but Smithfield can't possibly be a polluter. They have a web page that shows they got an
Environmental President's Award award! Link.
Anonymous points to a blog post by a writer named David Kekok who claims his work on a different story was once plagiarized by Jeff Tietz, who wrote the Rolling Stone article cited in this post. I don't know anything about the dispute other than what's on Mr. Kekok's site here, and another blog, but it appears that Mr. Tietz strongly disputed the claims.
I dig your post about Pig farms and Smithfield Foods in particular. I only want to ad that if you really
want to turn people off to their products, I can think of no better way than their own (vintage drive-in)
advertising. Enjoy! Video Link.
Manuel says,
Here's a link to the pig farm in google maps for the site referenced in the "Pork's Dirty Secret" article.
[Ed note: those big, pink "lakes" in that map detail above, next to what look like housing for the pigs?
Filled with pigshit.]
Mark says,
If you go through the Smithfield site, they link to worldwatermonitoringday.org. They said they were
involved with this for the last three years. However if this is going on for the last several years,
where are the result from before? There is no link to previous years result. Also will the actual data
be made public or will it get filtered?
Just saw your pig postings about the trouble Smithfield plant in Tar Heel, NC as I got back from the
Science Bloggers Conference where folks from OnlineNewsHour began their talk with a bit from their
2004 show called "Pigs and Politics": A snip from the transcript:
"North Carolina's ten million hogs produce twice as much feces and urine as the populations of
the cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago combined. Industrial farms, most with thousands
of hogs each, store the waste in open-air pits, called lagoons. They spray the waste, untreated,
as manure on adjacent fields."
Tasty.
John Alderman says,
Look at these crazy pictures of a festival in Taiwan where it appears they sacrifice 2,000 pigs: Link.
Ian Hogben says,
I was reading about the (horrific) pig farm article and couldn't believe there was no mention of the unintentional
goatse of the farm's aerial map. From the user comment "Here's a link to the pig farm in google maps for the site
referenced in the "Pork's Dirty Secret" article.", the photo is SO TOTALLY goatse it's hilarious.
Nate says,
*sigh* I've never been so conflicted about eating meat after reading that post. So I hope Choppy the two faced pig
either brings a smile or a WTF. Reminds me a bit of Cy the kitten. Link.
Speaking of the poor pigs, ever seen a state of the art Jarvis bung dropper? Link. Be sure to watch the vid at upper right:
Link. Not to be confused with a bung cleaner: Link. Or bung ring expander: Link. Or lung gun: Link. Or spinal cord remover:
Link. Other fun links for kill floors and carcass prep: Link.
Go veggie! I attached a pic of the best way to taste a pig.
UPDATE: Many more of you wrote in with strong opinions on pigshit,
economic activism, and braised tofurkey.
Your comments after the jump.
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Stonehaven Productions
An artist's rendering of towers that would remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The technology works, but it would require millions of carbon dioxide filters across the planet at a cost of trillions of dollars a year.
By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 29, 2008
Here's a simple solution to global warming: vacuum carbon dioxide out of the air. Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University, said placing enough carbon filters around the planet could reel the world's atmosphere back toward the 18th century, like a climatic time machine.
After a decade of work, his shower-sized prototype whirs away inside a Tucson warehouse, each day capturing about 10 pounds of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas as air wafts through it. Only a few billion tons to go. In the battle against global warming, technology has long been seen as the ultimate savior, but Lackner's machine is a clunky reminder of how distant that dream is. He estimates that sucking up the current stream of emissions would require about 67 million boxcar-sized filters at a cost of trillions of dollars a year. The orchards of filters would have to be powered by complexes of new nuclear plants, dams, solar farms or other clean-energy sources to avoid adding more pollution to the atmosphere. Despite the scope of the proposal, the allure of high technology is irresistible for modern humans. Salvation has arrived again and again over the last century: the automobile, the jet, the Internet, the iPod. That dream has pushed scattered groups of scientists to work on massive schemes to reengineer the planet. One idea is to block sunlight, either by constructing artificial volcanoes to blast sulfur particles into the atmosphere or by launching millions of tiny satellites into space and arranging them into a giant mirror. Another concept is sprinkling iron over the oceans to nurture plankton colonies that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air and transfer it to the depths. But while the science of dialing back the planet's thermostat is straightforward, the execution is fabulously expensive, complex and grandiose on a scale that boggles the mind. "Nobody doubts it is possible to take CO2 out of the air," said David Keith, a professor of engineering and economics at the University of Calgary in Canada and one of several scientists around the world working on the problem. "The issue is, 'What does it cost?' " Some policy experts argue that blind faith in technology is a harmful distraction from the hard sacrifices needed to control global warming. "The temptation is to say, 'Let's get John Wayne on horseback or Bill Gates . . . and solve this problem,' " said Dale Jamieson, director of environmental studies at New York University. But some scientists say that the potential of such ideas cannot be ignored given the world's political paralysis on controlling emissions and its myopic addiction to cheap and dirty coal. "There are not that many alternatives," Lackner said. The attraction of a technological silver bullet lies in the failure of the world to solve global warming through the obvious solution: reducing emissions. The 1997 Kyoto accords were supposed to bring the world together to address the problem, but the two biggest polluters, the United States and China, have refused to cap their emissions, and Europe is failing to meet even its modest targets. Worldwide annual emissions of carbon dioxide -- the main culprit in global warming -- have climbed 28% over the last decade, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The rise has been largely driven by industrializing countries, such as China and India, which argue that they have the right to exploit their coal reserves to catch up with the West. It is clear that cheap energy is a drug that civilization will not give up. But big technological solutions could allow society to keep its drug. Among the options, carbon filtering is the most direct and best understood. If industrialization is a process of transferring carbon stored in the earth to the atmosphere, filtering seeks to put it back. The technology is decades old. Bottled oxygen used in hospitals started out as plain air before nitrogen, carbon dioxide and other gases were filtered out. Space capsules and submarines extract carbon dioxide to maintain breathable air for crew members. The process for removing atmospheric carbon involves putting one compound, usually a hydroxide, in contact with the air, setting off a reaction that grabs CO2 and incorporates its carbon atoms into a carbonate compound. Then, in a reaction that requires a large input of heat, the carbonate compound is broken apart, reconstituting and trapping the carbon dioxide. Researchers propose pumping the captured CO2 into the ground, a practice already used to increase the pressure in oil wells. Geologists say there is room in subterranean rock formations to lock it away forever. The beauty of carbon capture is that it scrubs the planet without intruding on it, unlike artificial volcanoes and sun reflectors, which could cause enormous planetary damage in the form of acid rain or giant shadows that stunt crops. The filters could be placed anywhere in the world, since carbon dioxide disperses throughout the atmosphere. For all its appeal, the process is hideously inefficient. Carbon dioxide makes up less than 0.04% of the atmosphere, and removing climate-changing quantities of it requires filtering massive amounts of air. Lackner calculated that sucking up all 28 billion tons of CO2 released worldwide each year would require spreading out his machines over a land area the size of Arizona. That seems like a reasonable sacrifice to save civilization, until you consider the expense. Experts estimate that it would cost up to $200 a ton to filter and store carbon dioxide from the air. That means the yearly vacuuming bill could reach $5.6 trillion. Even filtering the greenhouse gas from smokestacks, where it is hundreds of times more concentrated and thus much cheaper to capture, is still deemed too expensive for commercial use. The enormous cost raises the question: Who would pay? It is the same impasse that has stymied efforts toward a global agreement to reduce emissions. China argues that the West should foot the bill because it created the problem over the last two centuries. The United States says China must accept its share of responsibility as the world's new top polluter. The cost of the technology will surely fall over time, but without government action that is unlikely to happen soon enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Without at least a 50% cut in emissions by mid-century, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the temperature rise will exceed 2 degrees, resulting in worsening drought, a dangerous sea level rise and widespread extinction of species. Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, said that the failure to cut emissions might force the world to reshape the environment through drastic use of technology. The risks could be enormous, but the risks of failing to reduce emissions could be greater, he said. Crutzen said that only out of a "sense of despair" had he come to favor the last-ditch option of spewing more than a million tons of sulfur a year into the air. It's a dirty proposition that, in some ways, is its own environmental crime. But it works, as shown by the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, which temporarily cooled the planet by almost 1 degree Fahrenheit. "It might be the last escape route from the problem," he said. The power to reengineer the planet raises another question: Who gets to control the thermostat? Despite the perception that climate change is a global problem, it is in reality a series of regional transformations that benefits some places and harms others. Countries in the far northern latitudes have less incentive than tropical countries to counteract the warming. Russia has already laid claim to the North Pole in hopes that the arctic thaw will open access to new oil reserves. Canada is pondering the possibility of its vast expanse of tundra becoming a breadbasket. With enough carbon filters, a single country or even several rich individuals would have the power to set the world's temperature. "No matter how you go about it, there will be a lot of politics," Lackner said. For now, his machine, a solitary prototype, continues to hum away in the Tucson warehouse. With no good place to store the carbon dioxide it traps, the gas is simply released back into the air. alan.zarembo@latimes.com |
|
Environmental Law Prof Blog
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/biodiversity/index.html
March 17, 2008
Drink Water for Life
This article is written by Denise Olivera, Columbia School of Journalism, about the Drink Water for
Life Challenge originated by 1st Congregational Church, U.C.C. of Salem, Oregon. The article was
covered by the Great Reporter newsservice link The congregation pledges to give up some of its lattes,
sodas, etc. during Lent and give the money to our Pure Water Fund. In celebration of Lent, spring,
or World Water Day, please chose to follow this lead.
March 17, 2008 in Africa, Agriculture, Air Quality, Asia, Australia, Biodiversity, Cases, Climate
Change, Constitutional Law, Economics, Energy, Environmental Assessment, EU, Forests/Timber,
Governance/Management, International, Land Use, Law, Legislation, Mining, North America, Physical
Science, Social Science, South America, Sustainability, Toxic and Hazardous Substances, US, Water
Quality, Water Resources Permalink TrackBack
March 14, 2008
Environmental Law Prof Blog
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/biodiversity/index.html
Omani water not posh enough
A recent trend in Oman's more posh restaurant: serving exclusive or designer still water.
We went to lunch at The Chedi on the second day of eid. The waiter served us water from a
brand I've never seen before. When I asked to see the bottle it turned out to be Speyside
Glenlivet "quality" Scottish mineral water. When we were done with our bottle I asked the
waiter if we can get some local mineral water instead. Quality or not, it didn't taste
any different than any other water and didn't justify being 3 rials a bottle. The waiter
disappeared for 5 minutes and came back to apologize that "we don't serve local water."
How very uncouth of me to ask.
http://greatreporter.com/mambo/content/view/1638/1/
One of our,Bigest sources of bio mass...
pink lagoons
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Newton+Grove,+North+Carolina&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=35.295635,-78.347733&spn=0.008914,0.027122&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr
the lagoons pink.overapplication.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/14-week/
BIG Opertunity!!!
Smithfield Foods pig
shit as fule sorce.
Big factory pig farms are some of America's worst polluters
Posted by Xeni Jardin, January 20, 2007 11:04 AM permalink
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Newton+Grove,+North+Carolina&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=35.295635,-78.347733&spn=0.008914,0.027122&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Newton+Grove,+North+Carolina&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=35.281877,-78.338673&spn=0.004458,0.013561&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr
Rant - February 19, 2007 - Joanne
http://www.forkandbottle.com/rants/food/putdown_bacon.htm
Put Down That Bacon...
...or at least sit and ponder it's pedigree. Yes, it's come down to that – pedigree. Do you know where your food comes from? If not,
do you want to know? I'm not just talking about carrots and lettuce. I mean beef, poultry and pork.
The recent exposé by Rolling Stone Magazine really got to me.
I was outraged that factory farms, like the huge Smithfield pig ones, can be both so horrible to the pigs involved and so destructive
to the environment. Yet it's far too easy to pick up that pound of bacon and drop it into your supermarket cart and not think about
it, or the eggs or the nicely wrapped up steak. How did things get this far out of control? What are we, the consumer, thinking (or
not-thinking)? Why aren't we thinking?
I knew the situation was bad and, more than a year ago, we started to source better choices for everything from sausage to steak.
But the sad truth was that, after reading the Rolling Stone article, no one that I sounded-off to that day knew what I was talking
about (save for Jack). That's just it, the average American mind is not thinking about where the meat in their steak, burger or taco
is coming from. They never give a thought to the history or origin of their bacon and eggs. Is it really that most Americans care only
that food tastes good and is cheap?
Well the good news (?) is: It's not a sustainable form of farming, and eventually it will break (unless all the factory farms move to
Eastern Europe or elsewhere where they can continue to be nicely hidden). That's the thing, too - all of this is hidden from the
American eater - that alone should peak outrage by the American public, but it doesn't seem to. It's like this huge environmental
disaster, which is swept under the carpet but remains living and mutating there. Those factory farms are scared, too - they won't
let anyone in to see them. I'm sure they are afraid that, some roving reporter might actually expose the truth and that Americans
might start to understand and care about their food chain.
But not all Americans are ostriches. There's a minority who still use the thing above their shoulders: Like Dairy Queen at The
Ethicurean,, who posted a satellite photo of a pink lagoon of pig poop in North Carolina, and who outed Sysco's "White Marble
Farms"; like the minds behind the Meatrix (brilliant stuff); like Michael Pollan who taught us about chicken farming (and I have
*yet* to find a local non-stewing chicken to buy which meets my standards - anyone?); like Fast Food Nation's Eric Schlosser.
So what do I want you to do? First, just think about food that doesn't come from the ground (– I'm hoping you are already thinking
about lettuce, tomatoes, etc.). That deli turkey, the taco, the rotisserie chicken, the steakhouse hunk o' meat - does it really
"meat" your standards? Was the animal it came from healthy and somewhat happy? (Can it turn itself around in its pen? Does it
have to stand in excrement all day?)
Are you listening, yet?
Did you eat that unknown bacon?
Did you?
Ideas for Action - Take the next step
How to use awareness in practice:
Use your dollars to make your statement on this issue.
Buy local first – when you can.
Choose grass-fed, or the new "pasture-raised" label at the very least.
Know where the local farms are. Be choosey.
Change brands... go ahead take a risk. (And recognize the origins of
brands that you see, Smithfield, Tyson, Sysco, Perdue etc.)
Look for a place of origin on a package or sign - is it USA?
Know the Local sources.
Join or form a group and buy a part of an animal (1/4 cow, 1/2 pig, etc.)
directly from the farm and use your freezer to store real food, not processed.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/1
Boss Hog
America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish
and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat.
12840865-12840868-slarge.jpg
photo by doveimaging.com
Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year.
That's a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical
challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human
populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas,
San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth,
Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas,
Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.
Smithfield Foods actually faces a more difficult task than transmogrifying the populations of America's thirty-two
largest cities into edible packages of meat. Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do.
The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million
inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield's total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year.
That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround
the company's slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount.
Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste,
however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do -- even if it came marginally close
to that standard -- it would lose money. So many of its contractors allow great volumes of waste to run out of
their slope-floored barns and sit blithely in the open, untreated, where the elements break it down and gravity
pulls it into groundwater and river systems. Although the company proclaims a culture of environmental responsibility,
ostentatious pollution is a linchpin of Smithfield's business model.
A lot of pig shit is one thing; a lot of highly toxic pig shit is another. The excrement of Smithfield hogs is
hardly even pig shit: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure.
The reason it is so toxic is Smithfield's efficiency. The company produces 6 billion pounds of packaged pork each
year. That's a remarkable achievement, a prolificacy unimagined only two decades ago, and the only way to do it is
to raise pigs in astonishing, unprecedented concentrations.
Smithfield's pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are
artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty
fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death.
There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment
pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally
crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs -
anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits. The pipes remain closed until enough
sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out
into a large holding pond.
The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of
precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run twenty-four
hours a day. The ventilation systems function like the ventilators of terminal patients: If they break down for any
length of time, pigs start dying.
From Smithfield's point of view, the problem with this lifestyle is immunological. Taken together, the immobility,
poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems. They become susceptible to infection,
and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through
the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are
doused with insecticides. Without these compounds -- oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin -- diseases would
likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they're slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready
to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the
slaughterhouse under its own power.
As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.
The drugs Smithfield administers to its pigs, of course, exit its hog houses in pig shit. Industrial pig waste also
contains a host of other toxic substances: ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous,
nitrates and heavy metals. In addition, the waste nurses more than 100 microbial pathogens that can cause illness in
humans, including salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and girardia. Each gram of hog shit can contain as much
as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria.
Smithfield's holding ponds -- the company calls them lagoons -- cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around
a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not
brown.
The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement
and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.
Even light rains can cause lagoons to overflow; major floods have transformed entire counties into pig-shit bayous.
To alleviate swelling lagoons, workers sometimes pump the shit out of them and spray the waste on surrounding fields,
which results in what the industry daintily refers to as "overapplication." This can turn hundreds of acres -- thousands
of football fields -- into shallow mud puddles of pig shit. Tree branches drip with pig shit.
Some pig-farm lagoons have polyethylene liners, which can be punctured by rocks in the ground, allowing shit to seep
beneath the liners and spread and ferment. Gases from the fermentation can inflate the liner like a hot-air balloon
and rise in an expanding, accelerating bubble, forcing thousands of tons of feces out of the lagoon in all directions
makin bacon
1
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/1
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/1
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