#dairy farm barn fire

[collapsedsquid]

In July, the bird flu spread from dairies in Colorado to poultry farms. To contain it, two poultry operations employed about 650 temporary workers — Spanish-speaking immigrants as young as 15 — to cull flocks. Inside hot barns, they caught infected birds, gassed them with carbon dioxide, and disposed of the carcasses. Many did the hazardous job without goggles, face masks, and gloves. By the time Colorado’s health department asked if workers felt sick, five women and four men had been infected. They all had red, swollen eyes — conjunctivitis — and several had such symptoms as fevers, body aches, and nausea. State health departments posted online notices offering farms protective gear, but dairy workers in several states told KFF Health News that they had none. They also hadn’t heard about the bird flu, never mind tests for it. [...] Farmworker advocates also pressed the CDC for money to offset workers’ financial concerns about testing, including paying for medical care, sick leave, and the risk of being fired. This amounted to an offer of $75 each. “Outreach is clearly not a huge priority,” Boggess said. “I hear over and over from workers, ‘The cows are more valuable than us.’”

[eternal-pseud]

Fires on large-scale animal farms, or factory farms, are surprisingly common. Over the last decade, at least 6.5 million farmed animals, mostly chickens, perished in barn fires in the US, according to Washington, DC-based nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute (AWI). The fires are part of a broader pattern of mass casualty events on factory farms, where 99 percent of America's meat, dairy, and eggs are produced. Some are the result of human or mechanical error, but many stem from natural disasters, such as hurricanes, blizzards, and extreme temperatures, like last summer's scorching heat wave in Kansas that killed thousands of cows who were subsequently dumped in a landfill. Disease outbreaks, too, result in mass death or culling on farms.

- Kenny Torrella, Marina Bolotnikova, and Julieta Cardenas, "A fire killed 18,000 cows in Texas. It's a horrifyingly normal disaster."

Torrella, Kenny, Marina Bolotnikova, and Julieta Cardenas. "A fire killed 18,000 cows in Texas. It's a horrifyingly normal disaster." Vox, April 14, 2023. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23683141/texas-farm-fire-explosion-dimmitt-cows-factory-dairy.

[karagin22]

This doesn't sound odd at all...no way nope, nothing suspicious at all.

[aurorawest]

Me: Ah yes, I will now read the next book on my TBR pile, this sure-to-be lighthearted, dairy-farm-set, enemies-to-lovers romance.

Cattle Stop, by Kit Oliver, page 2: And there's the sharp taste of beer and the fire-warmed skin of Whit's cheek and the smell of him, all woodsmoke and clean sweat.

Whit pulls back, and Cooper chases after him. Slumps with the motion, into the curve of Whit's shoulder.

"You've had enough to drink," Whit says. His hand is nice on Cooper's chest. Firm as it braces him. Warm, too. And big.

"M'fine," Cooper mumbles.

"You won't remember this."

Cooper's mouth is wet. His hand is too. But cold, unlike his lips.

"I will," he says and come dawn, and the dew wetting his clothes and glittering on the grass, and the smolder of embers, Cooper rolls over, a throb going through his temples with the glare of sunshine and the thought, I did.

Whit's already tossing hay bales down from the loft of the barn and the cows are milling around their pen and the pigs are kicking up a ruckus. Cooper presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. I did remember, he thinks. I did.

[justbeingnamaste]

It is the biggest single-incident death of cattle in the country since the Animal Welfare Institute, a Washington-based animal advocacy group, began tracking barn and farm fires in 2013. The previous high was a 2020 fire that killed about 400 cows in upstate New York, according to Allie Granger, a policy associate with the organization.

Video shared on TikTok earlier this week showed plumes of smoke rising from the farm as the sounds of cows mooing could be heard. As of this writing, it has surpassed 1.5 million views on the platform and has been reposted by others across social media.

Similar video posted by ABC 7 Amarillo on Facebook credited "Bowie" with footage they shared.

Some viewers may find this video distressing. Viewer discretion advised.

[lethalice]

Megafarms need to die holy fuck

[lucky-strike-14]

I grew up one generation removed from, but effectively on, a small dairy farm. It was evident pretty early on that I wasn't farmer material, but I also experienced & observed a lot of things that a lot of kids probably don't, & I'm grateful for that. Anyway my uncles & grandparents spoke a not-100%-mutually-intelligible dialect of English other than my own, one I wished I'd learned to heart more, so I could speak more phrases of it, & that I'd recorded them speaking. When I moved 15 miles away to a city of 30,000, it might as well have been to Fairbanks, Nauru, or the Moon in terms of how our lives were signified & ordered, however deep the family ties may be, & those go back to the early 17th Century on this continent.

I remember my uncles & my grandfather arguing a helluva lot of the time, so one thing I guess I understand about farming is there's a right way to do things & either nobody around here fucking knows it, or somebody's too goddam proud to admit they were wrong about it.

I also remember the night the New Barn (built c. 1940) roof caved in under snow, & a couple of fire calls, & thunderstorms bad enough to make the cows decide to run. I remember counting how many times they could get in hay over the right summer against how many times they were getting it in that summer, & the price of feed against what they were getting for the milk. All set to the endless routine of daily & seasonal chores. I guess what I learned from all of that was that the best thing a farmer can hope for is a good, steady sameness, never getting ahead, but never falling (too far) behind, either, & for the unexpected to strike as rarely & gently as God, fate, or probability will allow. I got to enjoy a lot of that sameness, without having to pay any pipers for it.

I don't know that I actually ever had a point to all this. I mainly just wanted to agree & explain why. But yeah; farming. You really gotta be there before you get it.

Look, I don't know how prevalent the idea that farmers are dumb and uneducated still is, but to be clear, farming is fucking difficult as shit. You can get advanced degrees in specific areas of farming, and you might be surprised how many farmers DO have degrees. Trying to learn farming without a family background or direct experience does often feel like trying to do graduate level coursework if you skipped high school. Being a first generation farmer is just continually fucking embarrassing, because you're basically always gonna look like an ignorant idiot to a generational farmer. Even if--especially if--you think you've read all the research and you know better than him.

[raleigh-in-the-garden]

Over 18,000 cows die in Texas dairy farm blaze

[brandedcities]

18K cattle killed in Texas dairy farm explosion, one of deadliest fires involving animals

An explosion at a dairy farm in the Texas Panhandle that critically injured one person and killed an estimated 18,000 head of cattle is the deadliest barn fire recorded in more than a decade.

[qudachuk]

Animal welfare activists say the incident is "by far" the deadliest barn fire in recent memory.

[yhwhrulz]

Animal welfare activists say the incident is "by far" the deadliest barn fire in recent memory.