When the campaign bus hauling the new Republican supermajority pulled into Jeff City, the driver was Big Meat. Meet Big Meat: a global monopoly of four companies (and their enablers) who build meat factories in rural counties for mostly out-of-state buyers.
Frozen meat manufactured in Missouri and shipped to Asia leaves behind heartbreak: 4-acre toxic waste lagoons, noxious spew from slaughter factories, vast and nasty feedlots and waste-puking concentrated animal feeding operations, aka CAFOs.
Filthy meat factories have ruined almost every lake, river and thousands of water supplies in Iowa, with an estimated 20 billion gallons of toxic animal waste dumped on the ground each year. The owners behind Big Meat needed new lands for their oceans of waste.
So they bought Missouri. Specifically, they now own the right to build wretched, stinking meat factories without limit in every county in the state, along with the right to leave unlimited waste behind on our private property and waterways. New laws target watersheds such as Stockton Lake that deliver clean water to millions of people.