Not Exactly Swine Flu, But Still Makes Me Sick!

This story first ran last year in Southwest Airlines inflight magazine, Spirit. An intriguing human interest story turned horrifying half way through. Below is an excerpt from the story about a pig farmer who takes advantage of the bountiful leftovers from the Las Vegas casinos to feed his pigs...

..."As the city's resident waste expert, [pig farmer Combs] helped architects design the MGM Grand's recycling dock when the resort was built in 1973. Here, every morning before sunrise, workers bring out the "wet trash," or food, in large, gray trashcans. An elevator raises and dumps the loads onto a table, where the workers sort the straws and plastic bags from the meat, vegetables, desserts, and breads. The food goes into three baby blue dumpsters stamped with "R.C. Farms Food Scraps." Each 1,000-pound dumpster empties into an R.C. Farms truck that heads up Las Vegas Boulevard to the next stop, before driving 13 miles north to the farm.

When the grub truck arrives at R.C. Farms, it goes to an area that resembles a giant game of Mousetrap. Combs, a perpetual recycler, built the jury-rigged contraption out of used parts and scraps. "I figure the good Lord, in His plan, made everything recyclable," Combs says. "Man just kinda messes everything up." That mess of shrimp, foie gras, and sushi pours off the truck onto conveyor belts that dump the soggy chunks into an enormous tank. Steam-cooking kills any bacteria. Oil floats to the top, creating a slick that the farm vacuums off and sells to detergent and cosmetics companies."

Yes, cosmetics companies. That plentiful buffet meal you couldn't quite finish may actually get a second life on your face. Those long, impossible to pronounce, chemical-sounding names are often code for pig slop. Of course, if you shop at CarenOnline or carefully read ingredient labels you don't have to worry. But beware of synthetic ingredients on makeup labels, shampoo bottles, and dish soap. That chemical just may have started out at a pig farm. In comparison to this horror, I'm no longer afraid of swine flu!

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