I must have missed that one in the paper.  Have you called the DNR in Iowa?  I'm sure if there was a dead zone in an Iowa creek, stream, or river, they would like to know about it.  Can you name the offenders?  We can send out the police to have them arrested.

Sorry state of affairs.

Another important step for ordinary citizens after pledging to reject factory farmed foods is to put pressure on their legislators to support legislation restricting factory farming, at the national, state and local level.  

For example, there are several state bills aimed at stopping intensive hog confinement. Arizona passed last November a citizen ballot question to stop veal and pig factory farming.  At the national level, we can ask our legislators to stop giving subsidies to the meat industry. For example, in the recent Farm Bill, a provision was stopped that would have given a $12 million subsidy for the U.S. veal industry.  

I checked you website listed for the Iowa DNR.  On that site, since 1/1/2002, there are only 5 confirmed "hog Confinement" spills listed for the state and none were in Hardin Co.  For the fish kills in Hardin Co., 1 - natural environment, 1 - organic waste, 1 - up and down water temperature reducing spawning.   If, and I say if, these conditions, dead zones, were hog confinement causes, where is the DNR records to confirm?  Your listed site does not support your statements, nor do comments from Iowa Environemental Council.  There are lots of cases, in Iowa, of high bacteria levels when there are no animal untils for miles.  We hear of more problems with cities dumping their waste materials than farmers.  Grey's Lake in I said IN Des Moines is often shut down for bacteria levels, causes by the waste treatment plant.  Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones.

I must agree with jaborganic. I live in Hardin County, Iowa and have no recollection of any manure spills in our county. Granted there are people who think there are manure spills as a way to downgrade the hog industry. I think people are more upset with the large corporate hog farming, but it is no different than those farmers who farm thousands of acres. These large farmers pollute more with commercial fertilizer than the hog producers. I was once employed by the meat industry dealing directly with hog producers. Back in the early 90's the porducer base was of older gentlemen in their mid to upper 50's and with decling hog prices they decided to quit raising hogs and concentrate on crops. Several producers told me it was time to let someone else do it. Well, with the farm economy the way it was, no young generation of farmers wanted the risk of large debt, so they decided to stay with crop farming. So the large producer sold their idea to investors and lo and behold the "Mega" hog farm evolved. I guess someone has to raise pork. Needless to say these confinement operation are much more environmentally friend by containing manure instead of the run off from open lots. Do I like the way the industry has gone?....No, but I still like to eat my share of pork.

Lately, Iowa experience large rainfall amounts and several cities and towns had to discharge not fully treated sewage. If we crucify the hog producers we need to clamp down on the city municipals.

So, where are the manure spills and which river did it occur? Can't be the Iowa River beacuse I live right next to the river. We need to get the DNR invloved.

Manure spills are hardly a rare thing in Hardin County-where is the proof?  Not on the DNR site.
Show us the proof!

Tom read the article carefully: Let me highlight the key words here. "Can, most likely. The 1.5 mile stream they are talking about is a drainage ditch which is designed to take the water from these fields so the farmer can get a crop. You are assuming too much to put the entire blame on the hog confinements. Note that it entered a tile line which is located in either a corn field or a soybean field. Can you rule out commericial fertilizer? I think not. The crop year of 2006 Central Iowa was dry and was inneed of rain, when the rains did come a lot of nitrogen fertilizer leached from the soil profile.  Evidently you are not familiar with the way tile drainage systems work.

If I remember correctly:  in California, with all the irrigated fruit and veggie production, and all the people drinking and pooping in water, the number one user of water from the huge canal system is flood irrigation for grain production - 90% of which goes to feed livestock.  It is said that the number one agriculture export of the US is topsoil, something like 1" of topsoil per year.  

Most of that is coming down the Mississippi River and being ejected into the Gulf of Mexico along with all sorts of toxins and fertilizers, causing this huge dead area which extends over hundreds of square miles.

Most of that grain production goes to feed cows and chickens.  Most of that meat production occurs in huge mechanized feedlot situations - it is inevitable that there will be pollution problems.

All the processing and shipping and refrigeration and retail operations for meat have their own huge energy cost.

So, basically we have half the continental US land area converted from natural systems into a fossil energy consumptive eroded, polluting mess.  It wasn't so great in the Dust Bowl age of small heroic struggling farmers and it ain't so great today in the age of Smithfield and Tyson and McDonalds and Ethanol.  

Meat is a good way for a carnivore or omnivore to  get a nice iron-rich meal within its local ecosystem. Like mountaintop removal, the US agribusiness system is tolerated because people don't look very carefully.

If 7 billion humans must eat like lions and have it delivered in shrink film, we won't be doing it long.  Maybe we should bring back that Soylant Green.  Real tasty stuff I hear.

We've been saying it forever... it's the middle man that's making all of the money.

I grew up on a farm that raised hogs.  In confinement buildings.  That operation is long gone;  the markets described by Dairyman effectively closed it down.  Today, if I wanted to get back into a hog operation, my options would be severely limited.

You see, without a contract with a processor, it is very difficult to effectively raise and market pigs.  And the processors really don't want to spend much time working with a small farm.  It's a business decision - we call it "cherry-picking".

I've been inside several of the large modern facilities. They aren't uber-large around here, but they are massive.  Still, the atmosphere is much healthier for the animals than the operations of 20-30 years ago.  Nonetheless, we must deal with the waste - either in methane-producing manure digesters or as a potent source of nitrogen.

Nitrogen is Part A of a run-off problem.  As Dairyman noted, nitrogen leaching can easily be sourced from either chemical or waste nutrient applications.  Part B of the problem is Phosphorus build-up through manure applications... It's a feed issue that some are addressing through an additive called phytase.  One farmer I was talking to this fall really didn't want to talk about phosphorus or phytase he felt it was just a d** if you don't d** if you do situation.

Phytase/phosphorus aside, between the disappearance of open lagoons, the technological improvements of the buildings, and GPS-assisted nutrient application systems, we have the ability to raise pork better... even at a small scale.   But the reality is that we just don't have the market support to make it happen; and that the price of technology makes those improvements cost-prohibitive for many smaller producers.  We don't see the same price jumps for live hogs that you see for shrink-wrapped meat.

So in the end, we have two looming issues: 1) The Market - for which I have no suggestions. 2) Effective waste management.  From algae-based ethanol production to nutrient applications to methane-generating digesters there are better ways to utilize the manure.  Let's look for solutions - not choose the finger to stir it with.

As a final note:  For those who feel hogs should be free-range - please don't go there.  They are one of the most environmentally destructive animals I know of - mankind excluded.

In their "The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter," Peter Singer and Jim Mason list five ethical principles, regarding the production of our food, which "we think most people will share": Transparency, Fairness, Humanity, Social Responsibility, and Needs (preserving life and health) (pages 270-271).  The second and fourth are reflected in what Tom Philpott writes in this post:

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2. Fairness: Producing food should not impose costs on others.

The price of food should reflect the full costs of its production. ... if the method of producing food imposes significant costs on others without their consent -- for example, by emitting odors that make it impossible for neighbors to enjoy living in their homes -- then the market has not been operating efficiently and the outcome is unfair to those who are disadvantaged.  The food will only be cheap because others are paying part of the cost - unwillingly.  Any form of food production that isnot environmentally sustainable will be unfair in this respect, since it will make future generations worse off.

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4. Social Responsibility: Workers should have decent wages and working conditions.
...
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But the first also strikes me as extremely important:

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1. Transparency: We have a right to know how our food is produced.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, it's often said, we'd all be vegetarian.  That's probably not quite true -- some people can get used to almost anything.  But transparency is increasingly recognized as an important ethical principle and a safeguard against bad practice.  Consumers should be able to get accurate and unbiased information about what they are buying and how it was produced.
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Surely one underlying explanation of how the meat industry thrives, in addition to everything Tom has written here, is that those who raise and slaughter livestock are permitted to do what they do essentially in secret.

And one activity that those of us who would like people to reduce their consumption of meat might be usefully engaged in is working to have glass walls installed everywhere in the meat industry.