From the Annals of Factory Farming

Bacon is delicious. Ham is dynamite. Pig farming, on the other hand, can be problematic.

Please forgive me for sharing this story with you. It’s not the most appetizing one I’ve done recently. But I think it’s important. And thanks to my good old friend Raf for bringing it to my attention.

Incidentally, my kids were trained from the earliest of ages to call Raf, “Uncle Doodie.” He chose the moniker himself. So yeah, this post is about poop. Actually, it’s even better than poop. It’s about exploding poop.

You can read the entire text of the article from Tom Philpott here. But it starts off talking about the foams one might expect to see on a plate at one of the world’s top restaurants. However, it very quickly takes a dark turn down to the manure pits that lurk beneath factory farms.

Here’s how it works. Pigs are jammed into confined spaces with slats on the floor so these poor animals don’t have to wallow in their own filth. All their waste is concentrated in great pits underground. So that’s just gross. Still, these living conditions can lead to problems, so some pig farmers decide to provide their animals with subtherapeutic levels of antibiotics.

This is only an issue if you are concerned about superbugs. Those would be bacteria that develop a resistance to antibiotics and could sicken and kill the world. So far that situation is worsening, but it’s far from dire.

Okay. Well, that used to be the major danger, except a new one has emerged.

All that poop underneath the slats, well, it’s come alive. And it’s growing. It sounds like something out of the movie Dogma. But there is a layer of foam that’s trapping methane and growing on the surface of these poop ponds.

When the trapped gases release and it causes an explosion, this no longer becomes a laughing matter. We’re talking blowing the roof off of barns and throwing nearby farmers 20 feet away from the force of the blast. And this isn’t a one-time fluke occurrence either.

While nobody knows exactly why the foam is growing on the poop and why the phenomenon is expanding, the experts have devised a solution. The foam itself can be killed by dousing the poop pits with even more antibiotics.

What could possibly go wrong?

It sounds a lot like what we do with Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. You can put that stuff on anything. It’s a miracle worker. However, baking soda doesn’t create potentially deadly and unstoppable bacteria.

My solution is much more simple. Stop buying factory farmed pork.

That doesn’t mean that you need to stop eating bacon. Just know where your bacon is coming from. The same goes for ham. And your pork loins, pork chops, pulled pork, lechon, pernil, braised pork belly, baby back ribs, Italian sausage, etcetera.

I don’t know about you, but this story is so jarring that it’s going to help me think twice about buying conventionally produced pork products. Young Master Fussy will probably not be giving up his precious bbq pork buns, but I’ll make other choices when I can.

Luckily, All Good Bakers now has bacon. Just beware that sometimes their delivery is late and Wednesday mornings can be sadly baconless. At least there is Chipotle with a consistent supply of sustainably raised pork shoulders.

Pork’s too delicious to give up entirely. But even making small changes can have a big impact. I’ve seen it happen. It totally works.