Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Another food facility fire - and over 18,000 dead cattle

 

The string of fires, explosions and other disasters at food processing facilities around the country came to Dimmitt, Texas yesterday.


Initial reports say that upwards of 18,000 cattle were lost in the fire last night at the South Fork Dairy in Dimmitt.

At this time, we know only a small percentage of the cows at the facility survived.

Sheriff Sal Rivera says the fire from the explosion spread to the building where they haul cattle before bringing them into the milking area and into a holding pen. Because of this, Sheriff Rivera says only a small percentage of cows survived.

According to the Animal Welfare Institute, this fire is by far the deadliest barn fire for cattle overall and the most devastating barn fire in Texas since they began tracking barn fires in 2013 ... Nearly 6.5 million farm animals have perished in barn fires since 2013, according to an AWI analysis.


There's more at the link, including some graphic images that are not for the faint-hearted, and several other linked reports.

Dimmitt's about four hours drive from where we live, and about an hour southwest of Amarillo.  A lot of cattle ranching and dairy farming goes on in that part of the world, but I hadn't realized just how big some of those operations were.  18,000-plus dead cattle in one dairy... that's a lot of milk cows!  The loss of so large a facility is likely to hit the town's economy hard.



Peter


14 comments:

Anonymous said...

The most heinous punishment must befall these perpetrators. This was not an accident, just like none of the others have been accidents.

Anonymous said...

Methane. You don't want to mess with it.

I'm acquainted with mega dairies like this one.
24/7,three a day milkings.
My $$$$ say half or more of staff are not citizens (wink, wink). Investigations won't go far because no one will stick around to talk (except the company narrative)

The cattle are bedded their entire lives on sand. Central alley is scrapped and washed with HUGE volume of low pressure water to a pit. Strainer separate sand from manure and sand then extracted, piled and dried for reuse. Probably zero straw (too much of a bactria threat)

Very depressing places for man & beast.

Several very large dairy farms from Stephenville TX area fled there following environmental lawsuit from Waco concerning runoff polluting municipal water supply. Couple of decades ago.
Then large cheese (think "industrial" fast food grade") & dry milk firms moved there to take advantage of mega dairies supply.

Also, mega dairies from Southern California moved in (& to Idaho, hello, Chobani yogurt!) after being sued for being largest contributors to "particulate" pollution (dry manure floating around, yeah!) in SoCal basin. Also, SoCal authorities wouldn't allow expansion of cheese plants due to water/wastewater treatment. Fyi, cheese making results in a LOT of low oxygen level water due to bacterial growth. Resultant fish kills

This was a disaster in the making for years. No surprise....at all.

Steve Sky said...

One is happenstance
Twice is coincidence
More than twice is enemy action

We've had how many farm/food plant fires now?

Who is behind this?

Magson said...

Larry Correia (who grew up on a dariy farm) doesn't believe it.

https://twitter.com/monsterhunter45/status/1646210864893116418

It will be interesting to see if there are more articles about this with updates and/or more info on how such a thing happened if 18K cows were actually killed.

Eaton Rapids Joe said...

They spelled "Dimmitt" wrong. The first vowel should have been an "A"

Anonymous said...

So I'm really getting the idea that from whatever source of the destruction is really a war of attrition . ( BTW , long time fan/follower of your blog )

Aesop said...

And what is supposedly responsible for a dairy plant exploding?
Cow farts?!?

BillB said...

Who is behind this? There could be many groups that might be the one behind this or it may be a coalition of some of the groups. The ones I can think of are PETA, Earth First, Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, World Economic Forum, Antifa, BLM, Communist Party USA, Gates Foundation, any group advocating world population reduction, any group advocating anarchy, Chinese Communist Party, the FBI, CIA, NSA, unacknowledged U.S. Government organizations/programs and any blue-pilled organizations.

P.S. -- Hey, FBI, did I hit enough bad words?

Old NFO said...

I think that number has an extra zero on it. 18000 is not possible in one location.

Who Struck John said...

I work in the industrial food equipment business. Food plants are inherently dangerous places for the unwary. If you have a lot of personnel turnover, like oh say the last 4 years, yes this can absolutely be caused by human inattention. The people who know the equipment leave, the ones who replace them are never thoroughly trained, next thing you know Murphy has achieved ignition somewhere.

SL said...

Google Maps shows 1000s of cows outside that giant building.
https://twitter.com/BlakeBednarz/status/1645883574598377473?s=20

SL said...

2,000,000+ sq ft.
South Fork Dairy
https://maps.app.goo.gl/mkaG3bFqCXErDwBK7

Anonymous said...

Methane buildup from slurry storage. A dairy this size probably even has on site electricity generating plant powered by slurry methane.
USDA has built several "demonstration" projects for dairies and confident hog facilities.
I guess you breathed in too much of that SoCal manure dust in your formative days

Anonymous said...

18,000 is not wrong. Probably a couple in Canadian prairie provinces that size. Dutch farmers relocated after getting multi-million Euro payouts to close up shop in Netherlands (to reduce EU out of control agri subsidies)
Saudi Arabia had a 30K cow dairy farm iirc