Saturday, May 2, 2015

Breathing in Manure

For a long time my vision of CAFO's (confined animal feeding operations) has been hog farms like this picture from North Carolina, which produces $3 billion worth of hogs per year.

Apparently, something nastier is afoot in California. California makes me think of abundant produce, like this from a friend's Facebook page, taken in February 2015.

However, this article on the California's dairy farms, which produce 20% of the US's dairy products, almost made me glad to be in Baltimore. Huge amounts of toxic particulate matter in the air shorten people's lives, and the impact on global warming is considerable. Ammonia, volatile organic compounds, and pressure on Latin American forests are other toxic byproducts of the expanding industry. 

Yuck.