A drive down Stockyards Expressway is like a field trip for your nose.
American Walnut smells like a forest on an autumn day. The chemical manufacturers generate a sweet, sticky odor. The St. Joseph Stockyards smell like farm-fresh manure. Triumph Foods gives a whiff of singed hair on rendering days; other times it’s more like a backyard barbecue. Prime Tanning has a distinctive chemical smell. You can catch the aroma of grain from Ag Processing.
Sometimes industry stinks, literally.
Recent events have shined a light on local businesses and raised questions about their impact on public health. Some people believe industrial waste from Prime Tanning, now owned by National Beef, caused cancer.
On a separate matter, a pandemic threat is called swine flu, even though no pigs in the United States have the disease and people can’t catch it from pigs.
These issues have raised legitimate concerns, as well as a lot of baseless hysteria.
One woman called to tell me she was sick last week, and she’s convinced it’s because of people from Mexico working at the pork plant. So she is not eating any more pork and no vegetables imported from Mexico, either. Guess she’ll be busy this summer growing her own garden to supply her new vegetarian diet. I imagine she’ll reject any offers of free fertilizer from Prime Tanning.
Few of us had ever heard from the tannery’s program, where sludge left over after cow hides are turned into leather is spread over farmland. But when a legal assistant of movie-star fame helped file a lawsuit, we became intimate with the chemical variations between chromium 3 and chromium 6, able to reconstruct the molecular shape with models made of toothpicks and mini marshmallows.
I toured Prime Tanning several years ago, following a film crew from the History Channel’s show “Modern Marvels.” The producer of the documentary said at the time that he was most impressed with Prime Tanning’s environmental awareness.
When you think of the employees who worked at the plant for years and all the farmers who came in contact with the sludge on their land, you certainly hope that the chemicals were safe. On the other hand, if it did endanger people’s health, those responsible should be held accountable. It’s shaping up to be a case that will take a lot of time — and lawyers — to sort out.
It may be possible to avoid potential health problems, like ordering a self-imposed quarantine as a precaution against swine flu.
Modern life involves risk. We’ll each have to decide how much of a chance we’re wiling to take to enjoy its conveniences.
