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Dairy farms are nothing compared to pig farms. Absolutely foul. The smell is so penetrating it feels like you can smell it through your eyeballs. Cow manure
by jlgreco 13y ago
Dairy farms are nothing compared to pig farms. Absolutely foul. The smell is so penetrating it feels like you can smell it through your eyeballs. Cow manure you can get use to, but I could never get use to pig shit.
Papermills are also infamously smelly, though you can get use to those pretty quickly.
- MichaelGG 13y agoIt smells pretty bad, but by the end of a day I just don't notice it anymore. Unless standing right near the manure pit.
- blankenship 13y agoMy dad’s extended family was involved in the papermill business in the hills of North Carolina. The running joke was, “Smells like money.”
- code_duck 13y agoYou can get 'used' to a smell of a papermill, I guess except that typically the fumes and particulates are toxic. There's a difference between merely experiencing an odor and ingesting unhealthy chemicals through respiration, though often people seem to not realize that the former often means the latter.
- phaus 13y agoI disagree. I spent almost a year at Fort Gordon in Augusta, GA for military training. That was 2003, I still remember what it smells like.
- jlgreco 13y agoI spent 18 years in a papermill town (the company, or the family that owned it, basically owned the entire town). Still remember what it smelled like, but it stops bothering you for the most part after awhile. The real issue is that they switch up what they are making every few months or so, so the smell changes periodically. Whenever that happens you start noticing the smell again for a few more days. After a few years you'll become pretty good at ignoring that general class of smells though.
- poulsbohemian 13y agoAgreed - there is a paper mill about 45 minutes drive from where I live and the smell really depends on the day. Some days you can drive by and not even notice an odor. Other days your eyes are watering. Driving the other direction about an hour there are mint growers and processors (they ferment it in mobile fermenters). I don't even like mint, but it makes for a nice aroma when the entire valley is minty fresh.
- code_duck 13y agoThe REAL issue is that they're poisoning everyone. It's hard for your organs to ignore that.
- jlgreco 13y agoYou keep saying that, but I'm not actually seeing it. Industry isn't good for you, but it is pretty damn low on my list of concerns.
- code_duck 13y agoNonsense. There is absolutely no question that emissions from papermills include chemicals and particulates that are harmful to human health. Whether you, personally are cognizant of it consciously is a different matter. From http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper "Pulp and paper is the third largest industrial polluter to air, water, and land in both Canada and the United States, and releases well over 100 million kg of toxic pollution each year.[5] Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for four percent of all the world's energy use. The pulp and paper industry uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry." This affects each of us negatively regardless of whether we notice or are concerned.
- greedo 13y agoSlaughter yards are the worst. Drive north on I-29 from Omaha to Sioux City and you can smell the city from 30 miles out. Its nickname is Sewer City, and it actually made it hard for Gateway Computers to attract talent.
- jlgreco 13y agoHmm, finally that cow logo makes sense.. ;)
- haberman 13y agoI think your information might be a little out of date. The Sioux City stockyards have been closed for over 10 years: http://amarillo.com/stories/032802/usn_smelly.shtml http://amarillo.com/stories/032802/usn_smelly.shtml I grew up in Sioux City in the 80s and you could smell a little, but even then the stockyards were significantly scaled back from their 1924 peak. I was there a few months ago and there is no smell any more.
- greedo 13y agoI make that drive at least six times a year. Still stinks to high heaven. It's about the only thing that makes my kids look up from their iPads. With the stockyards closed, perhaps it's a longterm residual smell, or processing plants that are still around? On a side note, I wonder how many head of cattle were slaughtered there over time.
- inafield 13y agoI'm not sure what is worse, pigs or chickens.
- bitops 13y agoI still remember being a kid visiting a pig farm in elementary school. Why they subjected us to this, I do not know. Well, at one point, we were "allowed" to stand next to the manure pit, which was a cylindrical tank with no top. I poked my head over... Did you know that some stenches can be so intense that they actually have wet vapor and can sting your eyes? I didn't know until that day. But after that day, I never forgot.
- duck 13y agoWhy they subjected us to this, I do not know. That is easy... to make sure you didn't become pig farmers.
- prawn 13y agoReminds me of this horrific and epic Rolling Stone article about pig farms. It's long, but worth reading: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/boss-hog-the-dark-side-of-americas-top-pork-producer-20061214 http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/boss-hog-the-dark-s...
- vanadium 13y agoHaving worked at a rendering plant for a couple of weeks during my (late) teenage years as an industrial temp worker, well, I can tell you what comes out of those places beats just about anything imaginable. Manure pits? Slaughterhouses? Way too fresh, my friends, to get anywhere near the full experience we endured. Think slow-cooked rot--and we were the ones on cleanup duty picking up bones and other ephemera left behind. Here's a good taste of what one could expect, and it really was amazingly terrible prior to the stench becoming peripheral from exposure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_%28animals%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_%28animals%29 A friend and I spent an entire summer working jobs nobody in our (typically) white, middle-class peer group would dare even consider to touch in order to understand for ourselves just how important and respectful these roles were in our daily lives. And boy, let me tell you, it was an amazing and formative experience; I wouldn't trade those experiences for the world. It was "Dirty Jobs" 10 years before the show came out, and in more than a couple of cases, likely illegal given our age versus risk at the time.