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Factory Hog Farms, Pandemics and Unlimited Liability: From Pigsty to the Sky“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. “Out to the hog house,” replied Mrs. Arable. “Some pigs were born last night.”“I don’t see why he needs an ax, “continued Fern, who was only eight.“Well,” said her mother, “one of the pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So, your father has decided to do away with it.”“Do away with it?” shrieked Fern. “You mean kill it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?”Mrs. Arable put a pitcher of cream on the table. “Don’t yell, Fern!” she said. “Your father is right. The pig would probably die anyway.” ----- Fern pushed a chair out of the way and ran outdoors. The grass was wet and the earth smelled of springtime. Fern’s sneakers were sopping by the time she caught up with her father. from -Charlotte’s Web Matthew 8:28-34When he arrived at the other side of the region of the Gadarenes, two-demon possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come to torture us before the appointed time?” Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” He said to them, “Go!” So, they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.It is obvious that Fern is a child yet much to young to realize that there are sometimes things worse than a quick death. And, likewise the exorcism of the demons in the Miracle of the Swine is a parable of a Jew where it is apparent, he was away from home. In fact, he was traversing the ten Hellenized cities known collectively as the Decapolis located in the Gaderenes along the eastern edge of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. Jesus caused the death of a herd of 2,000 pigs which was the property of someone else—a non-Jew. The apocryphal account of miraculous cure may have appealed to Jews but the reaction of the transplanted Greeks who suffered the loss was to tell Jesus to get out. The lamb was blameless, an innocent and Jesus would rescue one loss sheep but Jesus lived and died as a Jew, and he was imbued by his heritage to be negative toward hogs. The prodigal son’s father killed a ‘fatted calf’ to celebrate the child’s return not a pig because the pig is a filthy beast, unclean, and stood for gluttony and lust besides, the last two of the deadly sins. Early Celtic, Greek and Roman pagan communities in Europe celebrated pigs’ passionate exuberance and fertility but by medieval times Christians who extrapolated moral lessons from Nature found fault with such animal lechery. A pregnant sow gestates for just four months and a typical litter is from eight to twelve piglets who six months later are capable of breeding. The ancient Near East was dry and arid that supported sheep, goats and cattle which nomads could drive through the desert searching out scare grazing and water. Pigs are creatures of the woodlands, marshes and need adequate water. Early on, throughout the Near East, pigs could be found in villages near sufficient water supplies like along the Jordan River whose pigs scavenged village waste and also foraged within the wooded marshlands. Drier towns kept fewer hogs and the nomads kept none. As populations grew, pigs lost habitat as woodlands were felled and wetlands drained to plant crops. Dwindling pig bones found in archeological digs show that by 1000 BC few people were raising them in meaningful numbers. By the eight century BC or so, when the Jewish dietary laws were codified as divine in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, not many tribes were eating pork. It was later when pork-eating Greeks and Romans made inroads in dominating the Near East including Palestine that the matter blossomed into an issue of cultural identity. When observant Jews migrated from Palestine, they brought their divine dietary laws with them. More profound, the old Jewish prohibition influenced newer Muslim religion of the Near East whose roots also traced back to Abraham. Today, in modern Israel you can find niche pig farms that serve mostly non-Jews but try finding a pig in Saudi Arabia where the sale of pork is prohibited. Muslims with over 1.6 billion followers disdain pork as a food source. Things were different back in antiquity in Israel especially when living under foreign, pagan rule. The Greeks in particular unlike the Persians before and the Romans afterwards demanded that the Jews relinquish their customs so that all would become one people. Jewish leaders were put to death for refusing to eat the pig. The Romans had no such aspirations, and were mostly baffled and amused by the Jewish avoidance of pork. Just as Jews defined themselves as ‘non-Greek’ by abstaining from pork, the New Testament freed the early Christians from most of Jewish dietary law set down in Leviticus. Eating pork became a symbol of the new religion, similar to before the crucifixion of Jesus when Jews reinforced their differences from the Roman occupiers of Judea by strictly following their desert tribe’s strict dietary conventions. No peoples preferred pork more than the Romans who raised pork even in arid Palestine and northern Africa as they enlarged their imperial empire. In time, Rome itself imported three-quarters of their food from outside the Italian Peninsula shipping grain by boat from North Africa, olive oil from Syria, cured meats from Spain, and spices from lands further east—all paid in tribute to Rome. Pigs were raised only for food and the Romans raised nearly all their livestock right in Italy. Sheep, oxen, cows, asses and horses and some goats provided wool, leather, milk, cheese, plowing and transport--- all were raised for purposes and ended up as meat only after they had spent their lives working hard. The Romans often ate their pigs young, as tender meat cooked in a plethora of epicurean recipes. Prized Roman pigs were fattened on grain which was an expensive quite rare practice in the Ancient World. Roman pigs ate wild nuts—acorns, almonds, chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts--- that comprised mast from the forest floor or grains like wheat or barley in the sty. The empire had wealth and could afford to feed its pigs and its people. Pigs grew fat and tasty because unlike ruminants what they ate had a profound effect on the quality of their meat. Cattle, sheep, goats are ruminants that require microorganisms to break down the cellulose in the plants they eat, and the fatty acids deposited as marbled fat are more uniform and the taste of the flesh is less dependent upon what type of vegetation is consumed. Equines like horses are not ruminants but they too can digest plant cellulose----thriving on grazing the open grasslands. Pigs are omnivores with a varied diet, like us they cannot digest insoluble cellulose, eating only tender roots, seeds, nuts, shoots, bulbs, fruit and palatable leaves, and most importantly they store fat in the same form that they ingest it. Pigs earned a reputation for filthiness because when forced to scavenge they like dogs ate shit, blood and vomit from other creatures including humans, carrion and rotted garbage. They possess few sweat glands for their size and cool themselves often by wallowing in mud. Pigs congregate often near humans in the poorer quarters where refuse is strewn about or seek out designated areas where people without latrines defecate outdoors. Pigs and dogs often devoured the unburied dead on ancient battlefields. Roman cities often had aqueducts to bring fresh water and sewers washed away the filth. The pigs were clean, fat and superior and their flesh when cured stored well, often the flavor was improved with aging. Any meat or fish can be cured or dried but leaner meats like grass-fed beef and venison become tough. Pork, marbled with fat, stays melt-wateringly tender. Without moisture bacteria cannot grow. In arid regions, meat can be cut into thin strips and preserved by air drying. Scandinavians added salt and air-dried cod. Salt is deadly to bacteria by pulling water out of their cells as it also dries out the flesh. Native Americans dried bison and venison. Wood smoke can augment the preservation process by coating food with bactericidal compounds that also provide additional notes of intense flavor. For the Roman peasant farmer throughout the empire—from Gaul, Portugal, Spain, England, Germany----cured pork was a protein staple but just as needed was the lard. Fat which provides twice the calories of protein or starches was precious especially in colder northern Europe where olives could not grow. It also supplemented butter from cows especially along the coast of the North Sea. Ruminants are not that smart mainly because their food source is not that hard to decipher what to eat, if you don’t want to be ‘lean just eat the green.’ On a grass prairie, for instance, a bull’s food is everywhere its hooves touch. Also, they require large digestive tracts that act as fermentation tanks to digest the tougher plants and this requires abundant calories like the brain. People and pigs being omnivores need to discern and discover novel food sources that are nutritious, high calorie and not poisonous because they have much more compact digestive systems. To develop a bigger brain, one must first develop a smaller gut that subsists on dense, calorie-packed foods like fruit, nuts, seeds, fats, fish and meat. Humans through heat and fire accelerated digestion and expanded palatability by cooking foods like meats and roots. Pigs are primitive and basic in design with small eyes, a multipurpose set of teeth like humans, thick, heavy-set bodies all features that work in the underbrush, and in the bush the wild boars thrived. The Eurasian pig is adaptive and its natural range is extensive and they like rats can survive almost everywhere. Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony, once watched two sows drive off a wolf from its kill to devour the slain deer themselves. Clever and apt learners, feral pigs also watched the Indian squaws harvest shellfish and raided their oyster and clam beds to root and dig up shellfish at low tide. Hunting snakes they step on it with one front foot, kill it with a bite then slurp it down like a coiled rope of black licorice. Roaming pigs who never stop foraging, are adept generalists true to their forest dwelling origins and their soft, snout is wired the most touch sensitive parts of their brains whereas in humans our hands are primarily wired to these regions of the brain. A snout, finely gauged for olfactory and touch sensations function to reveal the forest floor in ways hidden from other hoofed animals. Cartilage beneath its gum erasure surface and muscles within the snout allow for precise rooting without the need to move its head even in rock hard soil. Their nostrils can be manipulated to filter out soil, sand and dust while still inhaling air. Unfortunately for them despite being tough, hardy and fecund, unlike poor tasting rodents, pigs are delicious. Also muscles that exercise evolve not only darker hue but more flavor like the more complex tones in dark meat in chicken. Poultry nowadays raised for meat use their legs to carry their weight but seldom fully employ their breast muscles because they never fly. In 1938 the United States raised over 60 million hogs compared to 39 million for entire western Europe. American pigs lived mainly on small mixed farms like they have had been raised a century earlier. They pastured on alfalfa and clover and the farmer grew crops like corn to feed their cattle, milking cows and hogs. Farmers bought whatever food supplements that were cheapest to add to the pigs’ diet from bran, brewers’ grains, whey, beet pulp, potatoes and stale bread and pastries. Due to the meat shortages during World War II, agronomists recommended that corn be added to high protein soy which turned out to foster more rapid weight gain if supplemented with animal proteins like skim milk, fish meal and slaughterhouse by-products. Since the 1920s scientist had understood the need for vitamin A, D and E but it wasn’t until the drug maker Merck & Company isolated a new vitamin, B12, that elucidated how the growth spurt in pigs was happening. Soon B 12 was being promoted as an important feed additive that could replace the added animal-sourced proteins. Pharmaceutical companies growing microorganisms need to produce antibiotics like streptomycin and others also generated in their vats pure B-12 as a leftover by-product. It was added to hog feed and before long farmers were seeking out pharmaceutical B12 because compared to other sources of the vitamin their animals gained more weight faster. The ‘pure’ B 12 or cyanocobalamin when analyzed contained antibiotic and it was the latter that was fostering the weight gain. With controlled studies, it was determined that hogs gained 13% more weight with small amounts of antibiotics added to the same quantity of feed. The Food & Drug Administration with minimal research approved in the 1950s several antibiotics for feed supplementation. By 1990, livestock consumed 25 million pounds of these drug additives annually because besides fostering growth they were also prophylactic in preventing illnesses. Twenty years prior it was already being touted that the modern American pork enterprise would collapse without antibiotics. Just as interstate highways promoted population growth to the suburbs, antibiotics allowed pig farming to shift pigs from the pasture to crowding them together confined in barns. Farmhands now had to work to feed them and work harder to clean up after them. The hog pasture was plowed under and the fields planted in corn or soybean for their feed. Pigs roaming in pasture supplement their diet and spread out deposits of their manure. A 250-pound hog excretes about four times more in both urine and feces as a similar weight human. Strict rules govern human waste disposal but not so with pig waste especially in agricultural areas. In the 1950s and 1960s, cheap labor became scare as rural labor was attracted to humming, urban industries. Hog farms following the initiatives of their poultry counterparts, turned to mechanization. Unlike cattle, both poultry chickens and pigs can be brought up to weight for slaughter quickly, 2 months and 6 months respectively. Pigs are juveniles when brought to market nowadays, young enough so they are still curious, keen and when allowed to, relish exploring the surroundings enthusiastically with their mouths and snouts. A Norwegian low-tech improvement first used in 1951 became instrumental in changing American hog barns into factories a decade later----the slotted floor which allowed pig waste to fall through narrow gaps into gutters below. Crowded, densely packed pigs trampled their manure through the grating and kept their sties cleaner. The manure could be sluiced away, flushed out with copious amounts of pressurized water and what once required scraping and shoveling now became a liquid. There was no need for hay or shavings for bedding. From silos, feed could be augured into automatic feeders, circulating fans and heaters controlled the indoor environment for temperature and humidity eliminated the need to open doors and windows, no need for a separate dunging area in barns and pigs prone to wallowing never got mud between their cloven hooves. Waste drained into manure lagoons adjacent to the housing barns. They also didn’t waste energy exercising and when cold outside they kept each other warmer saving on fuel costs for the furnace. Artificial lighting was used sparingly when a farm hand entered the barn and in time the confined hogs were monitored remotely with video under dim lighting. By the 1980s most hogs were raised by a farm practice known as ‘life-cycle housing.’ By the 1990’s the hog barn was standardized into an approximately 300-feet long, 60-feet wide metal confinement building constructed of metal that sat on a concrete foundation with casted drainage gutters. Breeding was controlled and purebreds were interbred to foster fast growing hybrids with uniform body dimensions. By 2000, three-quarters of sows became pregnant with artificial insemination from boar semen whose progeny had been tested for meeting standards and performance by researchers relying on advanced population genetics. Pregnant sows were moved to gestation crates, metal pens about 7 feet long and just 2 feet wide for four months, then transferred to farrowing crates of similar size that had a missing lower rail allowing piglets to nurse but also escape into a narrow area where the sow couldn’t roll over and crush them. The mothering sow could sit, lie and stand but not turn around, and no nesting material was provided to assuage her maternal instincts for caring for her young. The piglets had their sharp, incisor teeth clipped, tails docked, most male piglets were castrated to prevent ‘boar taint’ that caused an off-flavor in males that achieved sexual maturation before slaughter, pig ears were notched for identification and all got a fortified iron shot. The piglets completed weaning within a month and the mother was returned to the gestation barn for insemination. Occasionally, some sows managed to bore five litters in just two years. In the rush to increase efficiency, swine producers ignored quality and taste. Pale, soft, grey, mushy pork, the ‘other white meat’ that is low in myoglobin similar to the white breasts of poultry and the flesh non-oily fish like haddock is often tasteless. Factory farming made what was first employed as a marketing slogan to compete with the growing popularity of chicken a reality by making leaner hogs. Densely packed, crated or penned pigs do not use their muscles much. Milk-fed veal is also lightly hued because the male calf is crated and cannot ambulate.By 2002, the three million small farms in 1950 raising hogs dropped by 97 percent. By 2004, four out of five hogs in America lived at large factory farms each with 2,000 or more animals. By 2010, the largest hog producer—Smithfield Foods----dominated one-third of the hog producing market. The top four hog producing firms accounted for two-thirds of the market. Most hogs today are raised by independents who farm hogs under contract to the big corporation who own the animals and set the specifications on how they are to be raised. Industry guidelines from the 1980s allotted only eight square feet of pen space for a 150 to 250-pound pig. It is vertical integration where the big players many times control and own everything from the pigs to the processing at the packing plant to the retail delivery of the meat. Boar semen, proprietary feeds, drugs are supplied to the contractors along with stipulations on how the pigs must be fed, watered and cared for, all to increase efficiency and consistency. Lean hogs produced by genetics to uniformity, allow for more of the butchering process to be mechanized. Low-skilled, unorganized, low waged laborers recruited from Mexico and Latin America to the fast-growing meat packing industry in the American South endured poor conditions that led to them suffering the highest injury and sickness rates of any American industry. Packing plants employed kill and cut lines that because of automation processed up to 1300 pigs an hour. One packing plant in North Carolina slaughtered and disassembled 8 million pigs in one year. By 2006, 95 percent of hogs were butchered at processing facilities that handle each over 1 million animals annually. Modern confinement and large-scale meat processing lowered the price of pork significantly for consumers but cheap meat had external costs that were quite costly to people and pigs. Dr. Temple Grandin, renown animal scientist who has worked with the beef industry to develop humane slaughter protocols, and rightfully states that most of livestock were never be born if no one ate meat, states that factory raised hogs are lean but high-strung with a shocking propensity to drop dead despite their tender age. The stress endured also damages the quality of their flesh, a point that she states I feel to appeal to the pragmatic sensibilities of the many heartless among us. Shakespeare’s Hamlet asks famously, is it better to be or not to be but for the forlorn factory pig it may be preferable to never exist. It is ironic that human beings do not bestow on all animals who service our needs the right of to be and live at least minimally in a way commanded by Nature. Every creature possessing a beinghood that cannot be ignored or dismissed. Since 1820 most hogs were from the corn states of the Midwest, and Iowa still leads US production in 2020 with 23 million heads. But the pork industry shifted east in the 1980s and with tobacco sales dropping in America, North Carolina lured the industry with cheap labor, lax environmental regulations, warmer winter weather and even though corn and soy had to be imported to help feed the pigs because the operations were closer to the large eastern markets the overall cost declined. The state legislature backed laws friendly to the largest producers of hogs and chicken. Today it is the second largest producer of swine and ranks third in chicken farming. North Carolina today has 9 million pigs compared to 185, 000 for its close neighbor South Carolina; Texas 1, 040,000, Virginia 240,000, Tennessee 235, 000, Arkansas 131 ,000, Alabama 57,000, Georgia 80,000, Florida 15,000, and Louisiana 5,000. In the states of the former Confederacy North Carolina leads the way in Southern hog farms. Unfortunately, the lack of legitimate environmental regulation shifts the actual cost of waste disposal to the neighbors who had to bear the brunt of the pollution in fouled ground water, rivers, lakes and streams. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd caused extensive flooding and massive runoff from pig lagoons. The manure ponds often were huge open cesspools that emitted ammonia, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, methane and other pernicious odors that may even those accustomed to rural smells unbearable and hazardous for those living downwind. The neighbors endured not only horrific smells that force them to live inside with boarded up windows but were plagued by swarms of flies drawn to the decomposing filth. Geese and rodents that stray near the lagoons when analyzed have higher rates of antibiotic resistant bacteria and those humans living nearby suffer more risk of developing antibiotic resistant staphylococcal infections. In North Carolina, the counties at most 200 miles as the crows fly due east of the financial center of Charlotte like Duplin, Bladen, Greene, Jones, Lenoir, Sampson and Wayne with the most pig farms and lagoons are poorer and minorities and people of color are forced to endure higher public health risk in what can be classified as environmental racism. ‘Right to farm’ laws in all fifty states are intended to protect existing small, family farms from nuisance law suits when new neighbors move in but industrial farming has used its protections to pollute. A lack of clarity and enforcement on the US federal level exacerbates the conflict. A 2017 US Court of Appeals ruling forcing the Environmental Protection Agency to collect data and take action in agricultural air emissions was derailed because the 2018 Omnibus Bill repealed the emission reporting requirement for agricultural waste. Hogs stand over septic drainage pits breathing fouled air for their entire lifetimes, enclosed in buildings with often inadequately run ventilation systems for cost savings and breathe in levels of irritating gases like ammonia so elevated that workers don respirators. Methane is also a problem, bubbling up from foaming manure beneath the slatted floors; in 2011, in Iowa, one worker and 1500 confined pigs were killed when the manure gas below exploded. Occasionally dikes and dams did break in mishaps which killed millions of fish in nearby waterways but normally with evaporation and bacterial decomposition the sludge that remained was sprayed as a fertilizer on the adjacent fields. Too much of it was often applied to ground that could not absorb all of it and the runoff washed into streams. In 1997, North Carolina placed a moratorium banning new pig lagoons and spray fields. Most Americans are unaware that the federal government has subsidized the cost of soy and corn for years which amounted to $24 on every hog from 1997 to 2005. Small hog farmers who grow their own feed don’t benefit but the big producers saved greatly on feed purchased on the market. Also, estimates vary widely but the entire livestock industry in general, worldwide generates at the extreme minimum 15% of the gases that contribute to climate change. Higher estimates although unproven approach 50%. Your bacon and ribs priced at the butcher shop do not reflect such costs thanks to lobbying that ensures favorable treatment for the largest players of the industry. Such lobbying and the sheer economic clout of factory farming in agricultural counties and states erodes animal care ethics standards and justice. Tribalism and a willingness to turn a blind eye toward those who profit from livestock production has tainted decisions at trials in farming communities protecting the culpable in abuse cases. A Home Box Office [HBO] documentary special “Death on a Factory Farm’ detailed frank, animal abuse where a downed, neglected sow was euthanized by hanging from a chain fastened to the arms of a forklift for 40 minutes until dead while the defendant hog farmer, his son and a farmhand laughed. Charges were filed after a complaint to the Humane Farming Association who subsequently hired an investigator to pose as a ‘neutral’ employee, who once hired recorded undercover surveillance video as evidence. During his six-week stint in early 2006 on the hog farm of Ken Wiles he maintained a daily log cataloging abuses and wore a button camera with microphone. Despite playing the gruesome, prolonged death scene recorded on video in the courtroom, the Wayne County Municipal Court, Judge Stuart Miller cleared Ken Wiles and his farmhand, Dusty Stroud, who operated the forklift during the hanging of all animal cruelty charges. Wiles’ son, Joe, 22 years old, who managed the farm was found guilty of one count of animal cruelty for throwing piglets from farrowing crates into metal carts when moving them on the farm. He was fined $250 plus court fees, received one-year probation and required to attend a county humane society training session. The senior Wiles when asked why he didn’t just shoot the animal in the head claimed that he was concerned for the safety of his farmhands from a possible stray bullet. Joe Wiles, euthanized scrawny, runt piglets by slamming their heads against concrete flooring. The veterinarian testifying for the defense, Dr. Paul Ambrecht, that blunt force was acceptable to kill piglets and although asphyxiation wasn’t recommended by pork industry guidelines for euthanasia their recommendations were only options and not law. Veterinarians for the prosecution affirmed that the method of slow hanging was abhorrent. The judge confessing an inability to decipher between the opposing professional views during the day and one-half trial throughout the charges ending the June19-20, 2007 trial. Some farmers in attendance felt resentful that the defendants were being prosecuted by those who knew nothing about livestock farming but others walked out shaking their heads in dismay and disbelief. Meat consumption in China and Brazil has risen sharply and continues to accelerate, doubling the demand for meat from 1960s to 2000. The Chinese, Micronesians and Polynesians have historically treasured pork similar to that of the ancient Romans. Some Asian mothers suckle abandoned or orphaned piglets alongside their own infants. Chinese agriculture including growing rice and vegetables incorporated pig manure into the soil as fertilizer and pork for Chinese chefs has always been the most prized meat. Pigs in China were almost totally raised by peasants who had five or fewer up to the 1980s. They ate rice bran, weeds like water hyacinths and whatever was available. A top exporter of soybeans in the past, China now imports half the world production to feed it to its hogs with maize, vitamins, supplements and antibiotics. Traditional but diverse Chinese pig breeds grown on small farms are being displaced by Western hybrids raised in confinement similar to those in Brazil and North Carolina to meet the nation’s pork hunger fueled by a more affluent middle class. In 2013, Shuanghui International spent five billion dollars to purchase Smithfield Foods, the top American pork producer. Archer Daniels Midland as well as other commodity firms have spent $10 billion to buy up grain trading firms from here to Australia in order to sell the harvested grain to the Chinese market. The Chinese make no apologies for adopting Western practices because they feel similar to what the former chairman of Smithfield, Joseph W. Luter III, once declared in 2000 about vertical integration: “Vertical integration gives you high-quality, consistent products with consistent genetics, …and the only way to do that is to control the process from the farm to the packing plant.” He often also cited that he makes no apologies for Smithfield Foods, because he knows that they operate in a tough business. What might make ‘his industry’ even tougher is the 2019-2020 Covid-19 pandemic which originated in Wuhan China. It may be hard to hold Chinese peasants at a wildlife, wet market financially responsible for the worldwide pandemic and the economic loss and death toll. Those who have virtually nothing have nothing to repay for their mistakes. The largest pork and beef producers are conglomerates that are now on notice that for their intentional and continued malfeasance that will be held accountable. Animal-origin pandemics caused by unsustainable and cruel practices risk shareholders’ profit; they are not exempt from those who are harmed from seeking retribution. Pandemics that originate in domesticated, factory farmed animals opens up the agricultural conglomerates to liabilities that are unlimited similar to those who operate nuclear reactors for energy. Damages to the sky and beyond! To paraphrase a former hit Mastercard television commercial: “There are some things that money can’t buy!” What will blatant cruelty and disregard for decency in search of continued profit cost if it causes another pandemic? -----the prohibitive cost to corporate conglomerates found responsible will make survival within those industries most difficult, for it will be priceless. Priceless civilly and criminally for those making decisions at the top. Just maybe a child’s supplication for mercy may soften their hearts or perhaps the Lord will Himself command their demons to jump from a steep bank into a deep lake---or better yet, one of the lagoons of their own makings. By R. Anthony Saritelli----------------------- May 8th, 2020. References:Essig, M. Lesser Beasts-A Snout-To-Tail History of the Humble Pig. Basic Books, Perseus Book Group. New York. 2015.Pork Checkoff: State Rankings by Hog & Pig Inventory, 2019.Stink, Swine, and Nuisance: The North Carolina Hog Industry and its Waste Management Woes; Environmental & Energy Study Institute. August 10, 2018.Zippay, A. Judge Clears Wayne County Hog Farmers. Employee of Most Charges. Farm & Dairy. June 28, 2007.Interactive Map: Exposing Fields of Filth; Location of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in North Carolina. Ag-Mag. Waterkeeper Alliance. 2019. ................
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