shit foam and exploding barns [View all]

[undergroundpanther]

When you hear about foam in the context of food, you might think of the culinary innovations of the Spanish chef Ferran Adrià, who's famous for dishes like apple caviar with banana foam.

But this post is about a much less appetizing kind of foam. You see, starting in about 2009, in the pits that capture manure under factory-scale hog farms, a gray, bubbly substance began appearing at the surface of the fecal soup. The problem is menacing: As manure breaks down, it emits toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide and flammable ones like methane, and trapping these noxious fumes under a layer of foam can lead to sudden, disastrous releases and even explosions.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/05/menace-manure-foam-still-haunting-huge-hog-farms



Check out this amazing 2011 video presentation on the matter by University of Minnesota researcher David Schmidt. He opens by describing a 2009 explosion that lifted a hog barn a "couple of feet off the ground" and blew the farm operator himself 20 feet from the building. (Thankfully, he wasn't injured, and there were no animals in it.) And check out the footage, starting about 3:19 in, of the foam itself, which must be seen to be believed. At one point , a shovel dips into the mire and scoops up as sample—which jiggles and pulsates, alive, apparently, with microbial activity. Schmidt also does a great job of explaining just how manure foam can cause explosions.

http://vimeo.com/22358091

EeeeEEW.ewww.BTW,that foam for all appearances really is alive full of who knows what bacteria and viruses are co-mingling in that mess exposed to people shoveling it for the camera,people who work there and open air...It looks to me the shit foam is like a giant virus/bacteria incubation medium.And is it any wonder we have strange conaviruses and sars like viruses...These factory farms need to go AWAY.