So fast food workers want 15$ an hour?

On a slight tangent, while we are on the supply chain of the discussion... I saw a documentary about a migrating lettuce farm out west in your area, that moves the ENTIRE operation (farm/processing/warehouse) seasonally from south to north and back as the growing seasons change... The plant was amazing and every bit of the product is either processed OR recycled... When they finished cleaning up before moving it was just one HUGE empty building, everything moves to the new location...

In the field the grooming/picking is totally automated, the processing is automated and the scraps/trimmings are processed and go to McDonalds and a few other chains for their sandwiches... It was fascinating to me (I used to work in high speed automation design)...

I don't recall the name of the farm but here is a small sample of the field machinery used, the cost of the lettuce to FF chains had better be small since they are basically getting the scraps/trimmings...

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/201...robot-farming/

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Originally Posted by Wendi

WMC built a lot of machinery for Farmer John and had to go there to install. He saw the kill in action. My friend works in Vernon and says you can smell the blood/kill in the air. YUCK

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When we shoved the cars in there, we had a little makeshift shelter we would sit in while the "pigboys" as we called them (employees of Farmer John who would unload the hogs from the cars) would unload the cars for us. We had a large 50 gallon drum for building a fire in to keep warm and we kept a 25' length of rebar up there with us to prod any of the hogs that did not want to go, as the longer they took, the longer we had to wait to go home, seeing as this was our go home move for the day. So naturally we wanted to encourage the hogs to get off the cars quickly. For those hogs that still didn't get with the program, we took the rebar and stuck it in the fire for five minutes, that usually got them hopping. But the worst was when even that didn't work. One of those poor pigboy bastards had to crawl into the car and chase it out. Through all that pig crap. To this day, that was the worst thing I ever saw on this job. So one day I went in looking for the restroom, and asked some focker where it was, and he pointed me to a hallway and to go down some steps...I did and ended up right on the kill floor. (They did this to all strangers and to us rails, it was a joke they played on us) Took me years and years to get to the point that I could eat pork again. Still don't really. As for the smell, that's Bandini, the rendering plant nearby. They take all the carcasses and render (incinerate) them to turn them into fertilizer. When I started working in 1990 in East LA yard for the UP off Washington Blvd., the smell made me vomit. There was a shower in the locker room and I would shower after the shift and still could not get it off me...over time I learned to shower repeatedly after working a yard job there...yeah, the smell is that gross and disgusting.

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Originally Posted by Wendi

WMC built a lot of machinery for Farmer John and had to go there to install. He saw the kill in action. My friend works in Vernon and says you can smell the blood/kill in the air. YUCK

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Thats not the only thing that smells in Vernon. My company is doing work at Exide batteries and I was there today for a few hours. The worst place I worked was / is a place in Chino that I seen the cows going in one door and being slaughtered out the other door. I think it was called Westmoreland.

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Originally Posted by Bobby V

Thats not the only thing that smells in Vernon. My company is doing work at Exide batteries and I was there today for a few hours. The worst place I worked was / is a place in Chino that I seen the cows going in one door and being slaughtered out the other door. I think it was called Westmoreland.

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I have worked at dairy farms, slaughtering houses, and virtually every refinery in So Cal which has its share of some bad smells including hydrogen sulfide, but hands down the very worse was the card board recycling plant in Fontana. I dreaded every time I ever had to go to that place. You would think it would be bad, but it is horrible.
The sulfuric acid/rotten egg smell at the Exide facility is bad, but it doesn't compare to the card board recycler in Fontana.

But for a well rounded array of foul oders, Vernon has them beat, and its much better now than it was 20-25 years ago.

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Originally Posted by gn7

I have worked at dairy farms, slaughtering houses, and virtually every refinery in So Cal, and hands down the very worse was the card board recycling plant in Fontana. I dreaded every time I ever had to go to that place. You would think it would be bad, but it is horrible.

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Yeah but have you ever worked at an egg ranch like Hickmans in Tonopah Az? In the summer? :D

There are a lot of feed lots up this way. Foster Farms is all over the place, Zacky farms, you name them, they are around somewhere. To me, Chicken farms have this foul(pun intended) funky smell, not as bad as other stuff, just nasty if you have never smelled it. Dairy's are aweful because of the sewage ponds they maintain from those four legged bastards, but I still think rendering plants kill them all....they should rendering plants on the moon. LOL...

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Originally Posted by Tishimself

There are a lot of feed lots up this way. Foster Farms is all over the place, Zacky farms, you name them, they are around somewhere. To me, Chicken farms have this foul(pun intended) funky smell, not as bad as other stuff, just nasty if you have never smelled it. Dairy's are aweful because of the sewage ponds they maintain from those four legged bastards, but I still think rendering plants kill them all....they should rendering plants on the moon. LOL...

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The rendering plant in at Bandini is bad. There is a lot of things that come out of the place besides fertilizer, like lard, and products mixed in with petroleum to make greases and heavy gear oils. Fertilizer is the VERY end product. Like I said about the Kal Kan plant, nothing leaves. Nothing about any animal goes unused.
I think different smells effect people differently. Nothing in Vernon or Bandini could be called pleasant. But to me the cardboard recycler still takes the prize. Seems hard to believe, but it is bad.

I haven't been passed the Farmer John plant in years. Do they still have a cute farm mural painted on the outside of the building. Its makes the place seem so pleasant and down on the farm.

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Originally Posted by Hotboat

Yeah but have you ever worked at an egg ranch like Hickmans in Tonopah Az? In the summer? :D

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When I was a kid we used to go to a very large egg farm on the Mississippi river bottoms and pick up a very large case of eggs for the extended family... THe flies are like a cloud and the smell in the summer was beyond description... :puke:

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Originally Posted by gn7

The rendering plant in at Bandini is bad. There is a lot of things that come out of the place besides fertilizer, like lard, and products mixed in with petroleum to make greases and heavy gear oils. Fertilizer is the VERY end product. Like I said about the Kal Kan plant, nothing leaves. Nothing about any animal goes unused.

I haven't been passed the Farmer John plant in years. Do they still have a cute farm mural painted on the outside of the building. Its makes the place seem so pleasant and down on the farm.

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At the Southern Missouri TYSON processing plants they use every bit of the chickens/turkeys... After all of the meat products are stripped off of the birds EVERYTHING else goes into a THERMAL / PRESSURE conversion set up that literally converts everything into a fuel oil type of substance... Feathers/bones/skin/scraps/feet... ALL turns into a fuel that they use to run the plans...

The same thing is done across Illinois with hog waste...

It is pretty much an accelerated version of how fossil fuels are created "in nature"...

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Originally Posted by gn7

The rendering plant in at Bandini is bad. There is a lot of things that come out of the place besides fertilizer, like lard, and products mixed in with petroleum to make greases and heavy gear oils. Fertilizer is the VERY end product. Like I said about the Kal Kan plant, nothing leaves. Nothing about any animal goes unused.
I think different smells effect people differently. Nothing in Vernon or Bandini could be called pleasant. But to me the cardboard recycler still takes the prize. Seems hard to believe, but it is bad.

I haven't been passed the Farmer John plant in years. Do they still have a cute farm mural painted on the outside of the building. Its makes the place seem so pleasant and down on the farm.

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You are right what smells downright evil to me, might not to someone else. But considering that you have been to bandini, and still the the cardboard place is worse, I'll just take your word on it dude, I don't ever want to get near it...LOL.....last I saw the Farmer John plant it was still up...but that was well over a decade ago....funny that there is a 7-11 across the street and I went in for a hot dog... ;)

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Originally Posted by Tishimself

funny that there is a 7-11 across the street and I went in for a hot dog... ;)

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OK, now that is some fuuuuny shit!