FINALLY HITTING THE FAN?

Let's have a pity party: Two monster-size livestock operations from Wisconsin and Idaho have run into the rising tide of anti-feces sentiment among the public. "Gripes about manure spreading" helped push Waukesha County's largest dairy farm out (with predictions for a domino effect among smaller dairy producers in the area), while a proposed "mammoth hog farm, upwind, was too grim" for officials and the public in Cassia County, Idaho - even though the project had been a much-ballyhooed "state-of-the-art" billion-dollar facility that would supposedly be stench-free. Opponents scuttled it by citing "nearly 150 hazardous substances coming from swine operations including methane and ammonia," as well as "fish kills and lawsuits over hog farms in other states." Sounds like the word is finally getting out that we don't have to roll over and take it while profiteers foul our land, water and air with animal waste. But it hasn't quite reached all the way to Washington, which this week lavished STILL MORE money on livestock producers while crop farmers complained that they were just as hard-hit but aren't getting these massive bailouts. If only there were a hog farm upwind of the Capitol building, you can bet they would smell the winds of change.