What No One is Talking About With the Dimmitt, TX Fire
Imagine a huge prison filled with almost 20,000 inmates. All confined against their will.
Then, a loud noise cuts through the air. It sounds like an explosion. The entire complex becomes dead silent. They’re listening for a clue as to what is happening.
First, they hear it. The crackle of flames. Then they feel the warmth on their skin.
Fire.
The view of the smoke tower in Dimmitt, TX on April 10th, 2023.
The doors are locked, they’ve always been locked. Designed to keep them in prison.
They bang on the doors. They claw at the walls.
The prison staff all evacuate, leaving the prisoners to burn.
18,000 people burn alive. Their screams can be heard for miles around.
Afterwards, their charred corpses litter the ground. People are piled on top of each other.
18,000 of them.
It’s a terrible tragedy. And this really happened. It happened last week.
But would it change how you felt to know that…
Instead of human prisoners, it was cows?
Image credit: Jo-Anne McArthur, We Animals Media
On April 10th, 2023 there was an explosion and subsequent fire at South Fork Dairy Farm in Dimmitt, TX in which 18,000 dairy cows burned alive and 1 human was injured.
It goes without saying that this is a terrible tragedy, and all of those individuals suffered horrifically in the fire. They were trapped inside a building and literally burned alive.
Image Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur, We Animals Media
All the media coverage hitherto has focused on the financial loss to farmers and high prevalence of barn fires; some more liberal-leaning publications have even called out the massive scale of factory farms as partially to blame.
But in my opinion, they’re all missing the point.
Early reports suggest that the cause of the fire was their “methane management system.” Or rather, lack thereof.
Cows produce huge amounts of methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is 30X more powerful than CO2 in terms of its global warming potential.
Massive factory farms, such as South Fork, produce massive amounts of methane.
According to Texas state laws, a “large concentrated animal feeding operation” or “large CAFO” is defined as a farm housing more than 1,000 cows at a time.
South Fork housed 19,000. So it is a huge, massive, enormous operation that produces a lot of methane.
According to Texas state laws, each individual CAFO is required to apply for a waste management permit. In this permit, they are required to provide an individualized “nutrient management plan” that outlines exactly how they will manage and dispose of the waste that their facility produces.
If they meet certain requirements, they can even dump the waste into public waterways!
And each permit and plan is evaluated on an individual basis.
These permits are not public under the Texas Department of Agriculture. So basically, there’s no way to find out exactly how South Fork Dairy was “managing” their manure and methane.
But early reports released to the media suggest that this methane gas, however it was “managed,” came into contact with overheated electrical equipment and ignited.
Media coverage has focused on the surprising prevalence of barn fires. According to Vox, almost 6.5 million animals are killed in barn fires every year (92% are chickens).
Vox highlights the lack of safety regulations and reporting requirements. Some states don’t even require farms to report how many individuals died when a barn fire occurs.
But since the USDA started collecting barn fire data in 2013, the most cow casualties recorded were 548 in one fire. 18,000 cows is completely uncharted territory.
Media outlets have called for reforms in safety regulations and increases in safety drills and testing.
And yes…this sounds reasonable in theory.
But the idea of increasing safety regulations and drills is rooted in maintaining the status quo - and ultimately in reducing the financial losses of farmers. Not preventing loss of life.
County Judge Mandy Gfeller, the top executive in Castro County, lamented that each dairy cow who perished was worth $2,000, according to USA Today.
"You're looking at a devastating loss," she said. "My heart goes out to each person involved in that operation."
Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called for the community to keep the “injured worker, her family, the dairy owners and their families, and the cattle owners and those who work at South Fork Dairy in their thoughts and prayers.”
Not one thought, not one prayer, not one tear should be allocated to the 18,000 individuals who lost their lives in an irresponsible and terribly violent manner.
Image Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur, We Animals Media
It’s referred to as a tragedy because people lost money. Not because of the devastating loss of life.
What’s worse is that federal regulations allow for taxpayer-funded reimbursements for any losses resulting from barn fires.
These federal reimbursements ensure that there are no consequences for irresponsible behavior by CAFOs.
And so we, the taxpayers, will recoup South Fork Dairy’s financial losses.
I think we are looking at this all wrong.
Yes, it’s horrible that people lost money. Yes, safety regulations can always be improved.
But if we take a step back and look at the larger picture - should we really be doing this at all?
We wouldn’t have barn fires if there weren’t massive CAFOs in the first place.
We wouldn’t need to regulate methane management systems if we weren’t producing massive amounts of methane in the first place.
We wouldn’t have these huge financial losses if we were just farming plants.
This whole thing is like giving a child matches and telling them to play with the matches…and then being devastated when the house burns down.
Yes, it’s horrible the house burned down. But we gave the child matches and we told them to play with the matches.
Maybe we just shouldn’t be playing with matches.
The American Dietetics Association, the largest association of dietitians in the world, has classified a plant based diet as safe for all life stages including pregnancy and childhood.
A plant based diet reduces the risk of chronic diseases, and reduces all-cause mortality by 500%.
A plant based diet reduces our dietary carbon footprint by 50%, our dietary water footprint by 92%, and our dietary land footprint by 94%.
And a plant based diet minimizes the death and suffering of all living beings - humans, farmed animals, and wildlife.
The South Fork Dairy fire can serve as a wake up call for all of us.
It’s not about making playing with matches safer.
It’s about removing the matches all together.
Sources
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality