Eating pigs is as ethically dubious as eating dogs. Lucky for dogs they don’t give bacon, I guess.
This should be less of an issue once the Bacon Meme loses velocity.
Seems like such a wasted opportunity. Why can’t we just harness the raw power of pig shit as a renewable energy source a-la Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome?
There is also the option of not operating huge fucking pig farms and not piling up the manure like that.
No one may know why the manure piles are exploding now, but it seems like it would be a useful thing to study. Hopefully a fix that doesn’t involve stuffing pigs with antibiotics can be found. In the meantime I’ll be contributing to a solution in my own small way by eating turkey bacon.
Fool! Every pig you don’t eat will just keep on making poop until we’ve all been blown to smithereens!
“The manure sits for up to a year before it’s pumped out, during which time it stews and decomposes, and all sorts of chemical processes take place.”
Yeah, nothing can be done about that. What a puzzler.
Maybe we should give the pig farmers tax breaks to build armored suits for their hogs.
Or give McDonalds R&D credits to figure out a process to turn the stuff directly into McRib batter.
You have organic matter plus an oxidizer (nitrates from the urine), and my guess about why antibiotics help is that microorganisms in the manure are breaking it down and generating methane (causing the foaming) and heat, and if the antibiotics help by killing some of the bugs (so less CH4 emission). They could probably vent that gas away and generate some useful power from it.
Oh the baconity!
If antibiotics are the solution, I’m gonna guess it has something to do with bacteria.
I thought that was what a McRib was, though?
I’m willing to bet the problem is H2S, which is generated by anaerobic bacteria and much less useful.
::sigh:: Someone has to say it:
Hipsters ruin everything.
i like my solution better: not eating pigs in the first place.
Mujokan’s got a point. We should definitely all be eating dogs, too.
Also? Stirring the shit (ha!) would help keep the pigsplosions down.
We watched “Modern Marvels: The Turkey” on the History Channel one year while hanging out with family during the holidays. We won’t touch turkey bacon ever again. There’s way too much extruded mystery in that product.
I heard a story on NPR recently, featuring a company that raised insects on farm waste of all sorts. I think this included pig poo.
The insects would be used as . . . animal feed!
Of course, they could just process the insects into protein goo and make that into McRibs.
My big wish for 2014. Well, one of them.
I read that as “aesthetically” first, oops.
Still, interesting train of thought resulting.
