That comment, while humorous, reveals something about how society views different components of production agriculture.
Poultry production is definitely lower on society's pecking order than milking cows or raising hogs.
But the reasons may not be immediately clear. The spread of large capital-intensive hog operations is perhaps the most hotly debated agricultural issue in the Upper Midwest and occupied center stage in the 1998 sessions of the South Dakota and Minnesota legislatures. Those who seek to limit the growth of such operations point to the danger to the environment they may pose, but also to the way in which they are a competitive threat to the smaller traditional family hog farm. Similarly, the decline of the traditional family dairy farm receives frequent and often impassioned comment in the public square. In Minnesota, the Legislature has repeatedly considered measures to prop up dairy producers' incomes by, in effect, imposing a tax on retail sales of milk, the proceeds of which would be funneled back to farmers.