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Dutch and mullet take lead in rear emissions
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 3, 2000 It can happen to any of us. No matter how good our job is, how easygoing our boss is, how nice our work surroundings are, we can start feeling sorry for ourselves. The day-to-day grind starts to get us down. The once challenging tasks become routine. The esprit that once had us singing in the shower is now barely sufficient to get us through looking for matching socks. What? Am I getting ready to announce my retirement. Nah, not quite yet. I'm just congratulating myself on the fact that I don't work for the Netherlands Levy Bureau. Thanks to one of a fascinating series of stories from the Baltimore Sun written by reporters Tom Horton and Heather Dewar, I have learned about the Levy Bureau. Dutch farmers, according to Horton and Dewar, must report to the bureau how much their 4.2-million cattle, 14-million pigs and 108-million chickens eat. Then they have to report their farms' precise output: the meat and dairy products they ship away. And -- here comes the fun part -- they have to tell the bureau how much manure is left behind and what happens to every bit of it. "Using bar-coded samples, computerized and cross-referenced papers filed by haulers," the article states, "the agency meticulously tracks the manure with a system worthy of high-level hazardous waste." I have to agree with Horton and Dewar, who note dourly: "Other nations should track plutonium so closely." It's not as funny as it seems. The Netherlands is a closed-circuit country existing largely on land reclaimed from the sea. Its livestock population is highly concentrated, and nitrogen pollution, brought on by population and industrial growth, will be a bigger problem there sooner than it is elsewhere, but it will eventually affect the entire earth. And we already know that cow belches and flatulence are suspected of contributing to the greenhouse effect, that some say is causing global warming; and that there is another theory that dinosaurs, vegetarians for the most part, may have gassed themselves out of existence the same way in those pre-Beano aeons of old. This is a subject dear to my heart. I am, after all, the journalist who first made public, in 1991, the Jimmy Duncan Flatulence Theory of Why Mullet Jump. Duncan, who was a songwriter-fisherman-restaurateur buddy of mine, told me over cold beers and fresh oysters one night that Darwinian natural selection and flatulence are key to mullet jumping behavior. Mullet are vegetarians and therefore gassier than the rest of us. That means that smart mullet fishermen know how to find them by looking for, and casting their lines toward, the bubbles. Mullet who jump expel gas when they smack into the water and therefore don't get caught and are more likely to breed more mullet who jump more often. Non-jumpers wind up on a bun with some tartar sauce and limp french fries. So, whether it sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon or not, the Dutch fascination with poop tracking (Bar codes? Only the Dutch would have thought of that.) might well be the wave of the future in a world where algae blooms such as red tide, dying rivers and bays and damage to grasslands and forests might be linked to the excess of nitrogen runoff from fertilizer use and excess animal and human waste. It is entirely coincidental that I learn this only weeks before I leave for my annual vacation in the Netherlands. I will resist the temptation to stop by the Levy Bureau and see what the latest advances are in feces following. Even though, in an election year on the North Suncoast, an easy case could be made for such a study to be a justifiable business expense. I've reached further.
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