[Dahlseide]

You may be from Iowa but you haven't a clue - if I read you correctly. The issue is hog factories, thousands on small acreages, probably owned by meat packers for the most part. Where farmers are merely day laborers - working by the hour like McDonalds help. I like the idea of family farms and I am a proud member of the VRWC - Jefferson did have some good ideas though Hamilton's vision clearly has won the day.

PETA, Bobby Jr. etc are using the issue but I refuse to throw out the baby with the bath water. They would not be in Iowa, me thinks, arguing over a few head on quarter section. The issue is so-called, correctly IMHO, hog factories

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

I will say loud and clear: no one has the right to harm their neighbor.

Now, there are extremists on both sides of this issue. The extremists from the left are using the World Health Organization and this radical group of Bobby Kennedy's to make their point. I tell you their intent is to destroy the livestock industry.

There are hundreds of Iowa farmers who have been able to make their farms profitable by contracting with so-called large corporate producers. They were at the Capitol begging the legislature not to regulate the industry out of Iowa.

What a lot of people don't stop to think about is that once the livestock industry is gone, grain prices will be even lower than they are now and land prices will plummet. What industry do they have to replace agriculture? Technology must find an answer to this problem.

I also drive by poultry confinements almost daily. There is no smell from these facilities. Even the newest hog confinements are odor free driving by them.

People have the romantic notion that we can go back to the 160 acre farm with farmers making a living with some grain farming, some cows, pigs and chickens. It isn't going to happen. It's gone. Too bad, but that's the reality.

My husband was once a Volkswagen mechanic, too. Guess what happened to his profession?