It's devastating. My heart breaks for everyone that has been impacted and for everything that has been lost. And the mostly untold story of where all those dead animals end up can be worse.
http://truthaboutpetfood.com/millio...ing-livestock-animals-allowed-to-be-rendered/
Man, talk about sensationalism! Tabloid journalism at its finest!
Even though they quoted it, the author
totally ignored this part of the statute:
some limitations due to timing challenges and access to carcasses during flooding events.
Now, a splash-and-dash summer thunderstorm could produce a flash flood that could drown a whole houseful of poultry, and drain away fast enough to make the carcasses accessible within a matter of hours. But we are talking
epic hurricane here, with some of the rivers only now reaching their crests, a week after the event began.
Do I really need to point out what said houseful of poultry would be like after a week of temperatures in the 80's? And, judging by my place, even if they aren't still completely underwater, I'm betting that most of those hog and poultry operations are still too soggy to be accessed by anything heavier than guys in waders. Slogging in and out, carrying a couple of birds at a time, is an incredibly labor-intensive and costly way to empty the house.
NOBODY, other than the author of the article, said that these dead animals will be disposed of in this manner. Whatever method of disposal is used, the state veterinarian has to sign off on it, and it is quite a leap in logic to assume that millions of rotting, maggot-infested corpses are going to get turned into pet food, simply because rendering is mentioned as a possible means of disposal for animals otherwise deemed not fit for human consumption merely due to the fact that they died the way they did.
Oh, and by the way, the "boil water" advisories are not because of inundated hog waste lagoons. The concern about contamination of drinking water is because loss of power means possible loss of pressure in municipal water systems, and the loss of pressure creates the possibility of ground water seeping into the pipes. There is much more concern about human waste leaking out of the city sewers, into the soil, and then into the drinking water, than there is about contamination from bacteria in the river water.
This is a massive environmental disaster. Efforts were made to try to avoid having it happen again; restrictions placed on what type of operation one could have in flood-prone areas, waste containment guidelines were beefed up, even buy-outs to try to get the most vulnerable areas cleared. Floyd was supposed to have been a once-in-a-hundred-years type event, but guess what? It wasn't, and even with all the heads-up and attempts to prepare, it has happened again. Is it reasonable to ask people to plan for a worst-imaginable-case scenario?
(plus I'm not NPIP certified)
but I do get their are challenges.
