ODOR is a four letter word!

Recently, Environmental News Network ran a story titled, Northeast Missouri Becomes Latest Battleground over Hog Farms. The article quotes Mr. Dick Lawler, as saying that he won't surrender Mark Twain Lake, a recreation and drinking water resource for 21 comunities in northeast Missouri, to a hog farm proposed nearby. He is leading the fight to stop what he calls a "declared war on our lake" by corporate interests. He fears contamination, odor and loss of the community's quality of life.

Northeast Missouri is one of the nation's latest flashpoints over corporate hog farms as agribusiness giants aggressively market opportunities to farmers looking to hold on. Cargill says that it wants to sign up 30 farmers a year in northern Missouri, western Illinois and southern Iowa to raise company-owned hogs closer to Cargill processing plants in Ottumwa, Iowa and Beardstown, IL. Each slaughters 18,000 hogs a day.

What Cargill hadn't counted on in its business plan was the resistance from northern Missouri. More than a dozen Missouri Counties have passed, and others are considering, health ordinances that control for odor and particulates, and require bonds, fees and annual inspections. The article quotes Cargill spokesman, Mark Klein, "We've not seen anything like what we've seen here, this domino effect of counties establishing de facto moratoriums." Marlin McCormick, who runs a grain elevator in Monroe City said that "Odor is a four letter word in this part of the county..." In Marion County, plans for a 7,490 hog farm collapsed under pressure of opposition from the Village of Emerson (population 60), when the producer withdrew his permit application.