Factory Hogs

DRIVING SOME MONTHS AGO in Northern Iowa in areas I had not seen for decades, industrial feedlots with big rig trucks and trailers, not tractors.  

Your 2 Cents’ Worth excerpts, Part One [selected reader's submissions/Des Moines Register]: 

To those who worry regulations would discourage further hog factories in Iowa, we already have more than 20 million hogs that produce the waste of 60 million people.  We have reached and passed the saturation point... .  We desperately need a moratorium on any future construction until strong regulations protecting people, air and water are enacted.

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So it turns out that “small” Iowa hog lots (a thousand hogs can be in a “small” hog lot) don’t have distance requirements, but are on the “honor system” to protect water sources.  Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

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For any Iowan who hasn’t figured it out yet, “feeding the world” means massively polluting our waterways, eroding vast amounts of topsoil, and spraying huge amounts of herbicides and insecticides so China can enjoy cheap corn-fed and soy-fed pork.

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From hog lots to wild turtles, Iowa is now the place where China extracts what it wants and leaves us with the environmental destruction and loss. 

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Let’s make use of Iowa’s pollution.  Come, people from other states, and see our toxic algae blooms, impaired rivers, and stinking hog lots!  This is what happens when you put Big Ag in charge of government.  Come and learn from us so it will never happen to you.