Pork barrel politics

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

Corporate Hogs at the Public
Trough, a new Sierra Club report slamming
government subsidies to factory hog farms,
was released on September 15 in Kansas City
and September 17 in Oklahoma City. “This
money is not creating economic development;
it’s creating environmental destruction,”
said Missouri chapter director Ken
Midkiff. Added Sierra Club president
Chuck McGrady, “God never intended for
100,000 pigs to poop in the same place.”

“Concentrated animal feeding
operations are factory production i n v o l ving
huge amounts of industrial chemical management,”
which “should face the full force
of industrial pollution controls, the G a l l o n
Environment Letter editorialized on
September 30. Named for editor G a r y
G a l l o n, the $180-a-year electronic daily is
produced from Montreal by the C a n a d i a n
Institute for Business and the Environment.
Gallon wrote after touring the
Yamaska River region, where the Quebec
hog industry is concentrated. Pollution there
is worse, he indicated, than 20-odd years
ago, when exposes by ANIMAL PEOPLE
editor Merritt Clifton helped bring about a
major cleanup. About 250,000 Quebecois
drink from the Yamaska River, which at
times held more hog effluent than water.
British hog farmer Mike Elliot
told media on September 17 that 21 pigs’
heads found impaled on fences around
Liverpool and Merseyside were not a commentary
on police handling of a soccer riot,
as was supposed, but rather an intended
protest by other hog farmers against falling
pork prices. Elliot said the farmers had not
meant to offend anyone.
The Long Prairie Packing
Company, of Long Prairie, Minnesota, on
August 11 said it had agreed to a $1.9 million
settlement of the first male-on-male sexual
harassment case given class action status by
the Equal Opportunity Commission. Said
Associated Press, “One male worker [among
at least three plaintiffs] claimed groups of
men frequently held him down, sometimes in
a bin of raw meat or a trough of blood, and
simulated sex acts on him. He said at least
one supervisor took part, and another threatened
to fire him when he complained.”