We're Swimming In It

Ok, ok, no more talk about diets and fitness and Paula Deen. Let's enjoy the day and go swimming.

here!

or here!

Oh. Wait. Whoops. These aren't swimming pools; they're cesspools. Wrong pools. My bad.

(For those of you who are stumbling upon this article pre- or mid-breakfast, you may want to finish those sausage links before you read on.)

I first learned about waste lagoons in Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. In the kindest and most innocent terms, the NRCS describes the lagoons as "waste treatment impoundment[s] made by constructing an embankment and/or excavating a pit or dugout" ... used to "biologically treat waste, such as manure and wastewater."

But Foer vividly describes these shit and sludge pools that have made and continue to make a significant contribution to nitrogen pollution and groundwater contamination. Have you ever driven down a rural highway (perhaps in North Carolina, my wife's home state), windows down, and smelled something unthinkably foul? You mind conjures up "manure," but there's nothing for miles ... only these large warehouse-type buildings in the distance, far off the highway. That putrid odor is open air waste lagoons -- and the harmful effects of the U.S. factory farming industry and its brilliant solution to hog waste treatment.

Yes, the pigs and other animals that we farm for consumption excrete waste just like we do. In fact, "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." (via GlobalResearch.ca) 

And all that shit has to go somewhere.

"The liquid waste contains nitrogen, salts, bacteria, viruses, pharmaceuticals, hormones, and other potential contaminants. Thus, under certain conditions, seepage losses from the sides and bottoms of earthen lagoons could potentially pollute soils and groundwater near AFOs (Animal Feeding Operations)."

"A wide range of alternatives to the lagoon and sprayfield system currently exist, which illustrates that it is not the lack of other options that is driving factory farms to rely almost exclusively on the lagoon and sprayfield system. Instead, factory farms continue to use this polluting system because they have been allowed to use farmland, rural waterways, and air as disposal sites for untreated wastes."

Veganism is a cause, not some fad diet. And it's not about any one person, or arrogance, or whatever preconceived notions people have about it. It's about a global initiative. It's about lakes of excrement, some measuring 120,000 square feet (that's 2 football fields), doing serious harm to our world and its inhabitants. And this cause needs our attention because (a) you wouldn't tolerate this if it was in your backyard, and (b) at present, this is entirely legal.

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Further Reading:

• Jonathan Safran Foer's acclaimed (and highly recommended) Eating Animals, available on Amazon.com for as low as $5.23
• "Pork's Dirty Secret: The nation's top hog producer is also one of America's worst polluters" from the Centre for Research on Globalization
• "Cesspools of Shame: How Factory Farm Lagoons and Sprayfields Threaten Environmental and Public Health" from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Clean Water Network