But Julie and Jeff Jansen aren't greeting the warm weather with the same enthusiasm as they used to. They fear it will just remind them that their family's health is an expendable commodity in rural America's rush to chase a manure-spattered smokestack called factory pork. In late 1994, two manure holding ponds servicing hog confinement buildings went into operation roughly a mile from the Jansens' rural home in southwest Minnesota. The symptoms subsided whenever the family traveled out of the area. Last summer, Jansen and some neighbors used a borrowed hydrogen sulfide tester and a retired microbiologist to prove that levels of the toxic gas were at dangerously high levels in the vicinity of several manure ponds located throughout the county.
Winter brings some relief, but the lagoons are too large to freeze over completely.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is receiving a record number of applications for the construction of manure lagoons. Those words come to mind when taking in an aerial view of a hog park some 300 miles to the south of the Jansens in northern Missouri. In tow are ponds that from a distance look like they're brimming with water. In the closing hours of the 1993 legislative session, Missouri exempted three counties from the state's law restricting the corporate ownership of farms. The law was originally set up to keep land in the hands of independent family farmers.