r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/James_Fortis • Sep 08 '26

Video This is the largest single-building pig farm in the world. At 26 storeys high, it can slaughter 1.2 million pigs per year. It was built in Ezhou, China, to help the country's exploding demand for pork. Pork is China's most popular meat, with the country consuming nearly half of global pork demand.

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u/banbantekno Sep 08 '26

Probably it is all handled carefully by law, and by international standards, probably the antibiotics from the urine and feces are never getting into the drinking water of the town around...I bet

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u/GurNo3022 Sep 08 '26

Realistically it's being held in anerobic digesters and the methane sold or burned on site....whatever is left the solids get settled out for fertilizer and the decanted liquid that SHOULD BE TREATED in a wastewater plant is sent to the river

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u/Spikey_cacti Sep 08 '26

What about the hydrogen sulfide, that's the deadly gas. Plus there is no need to settle out the waste for fertilizer, you can transport it easier as liquid fertilizer and spray it directly on the fields.

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u/Macelee Sep 08 '26

Hydrogen sulfide isn't the worst to deal with. It's dense, so escape to the atmosphere isn't as problematic. It burns to form harmless and easily collectible sulfur oxides. Only real issue is the production of sulfuric acid if it burns in excess oxygen, but even then that is a problem humans have learned to manage.

Transportation costs scale with mass, so while liquid fertilizer might require less processing, it might not be as efficient depending on how separation is performed.

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u/Spikey_cacti Sep 08 '26

Generally heavier than air, however when they stir it up to pump out the pit i have to lock out the facility and turn it to full ventilation. It's almost that time of the year again too as soon as the fields are harvested. Mostly just stirred up and pumped directly onto the field, still doesn't smell as bad as the chicken confinements, those smell of death cause of the feathers in the solid waste.

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u/GurNo3022 Sep 08 '26

H2S either gets cleaned before burning or just burnt with the methane. It's not ideal but expensive to cleanse out. Liquid fertilizer is incredibly inefficient to transport long distances. The amount this place is generating may even be enough for commercial compost

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26

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u/Spikey_cacti Sep 08 '26

Well it's not sprayed in the field when crops are being grown. Fertilizer like manure needs to be tilled in, so it is done when the fields are empty to amend the soil and compost into the nutrients that the plants can absorb.

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26

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u/Spikey_cacti Sep 08 '26

Yeah something definitely went wrong. Proper training and following procedures can only eliminate most of the risk, but not all.

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26

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u/christophurr Sep 09 '26

Precisely, all apart of the plan.

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u/ImSolidGold Sep 08 '26

Hi, Im Solid!

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26 edited 21d ago

[deleted]

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u/GurNo3022 Sep 08 '26

Disprove all my claims!

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/GurNo3022 Sep 09 '26

Ah yes I should spend my time explaining to you one of the few things sim actually super knowledgeable on for you to respond "lies you are a stupid face"

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u/Spiffy_B21 Sep 08 '26

a shiny big pipe into the neighbours village.. (after they contaminate all ground water)

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u/nicoznico Sep 08 '26

Confirmed. The pipe actually ends up in America's backyard.

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u/montigoo Sep 08 '26

So you’ve tried Gummie Bears?

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u/ResponsibleOwl7461 Sep 08 '26

I bet it's supermarket/Amazon warehouse

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u/SvenBerit Sep 08 '26

Tox Brews

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u/Super-Post261 Sep 08 '26

But it gets tariffed like hell

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26

[deleted]

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u/Omniphilo23 Sep 08 '26

Y'all all have a very narrow view of China. Lol the reason it's in a building like that in the first place is because they are being forced to manage it cleanly.

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u/mratlas666 Sep 08 '26

I work for a Chinese company. Nothing is being taken care of the way it should be. Even the employees are treated like shit.

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u/JustMoreSadGirlShit Sep 08 '26

that’s why? i highly doubt that

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u/Extension-Thought552 Sep 08 '26

You can doubt all you like, you're wrong

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u/JustMoreSadGirlShit Sep 08 '26

you genuinely believe that THE reason the pig farm is in a building is bc “they’re forced to manage it cleanly” and not “this is the cheapest way to do it”? huh

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u/Own_Text_2240 Sep 08 '26

I don’t think you realize just how far behind China we are in agriculture, manufacturing, farming and industrial technologies and processes. I don’t like it but what Brazil is to the US for those processes is what the US is to China.

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u/meisteronimo Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 08 '26

I'm confused, your saying the US is far behind China in agriculture? It's hard to believe that farming can get more automated than it is in the US.

I thought all the soybeans from the US was to feed their hogs.

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u/Ivoted4K Sep 08 '26

You think building are cheaper than outside?

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u/JustMoreSadGirlShit Sep 08 '26

when you’re going for max efficiency and don’t care about the animals quality of life yes

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u/ImprovedSilence Sep 08 '26

building up is far far more expensive than building out though.

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u/callisstaa Sep 08 '26

Not really. Buildings like this keep it compact. Imagine slurry pipes from top to bottom being fed from each floor and slurry being processed on the lower floors. It makes a lot of sense.

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u/UnethicalExperiments Sep 08 '26

Kinda like how the US does it? No wait they disperse it in the air into nearby fields

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u/a1c4pwn Sep 08 '26

and causing 14,000 yearly air quality deaths nationwide! Well, not nationwide. Just in communities with "undesireables" 😮‍💨

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u/hrminer92 Sep 08 '26

The nitrites in it will fuck up the ground water even if antibiotics weren’t used.

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u/_OngoGablogian Sep 08 '26

they actually convert it to fertilizer and biogas. lay off the propaganda

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u/otterpusrexII Sep 08 '26

Yeah being a business cheat in China has actual harsh penalties. Things have changed in China in the last 20 years.

Some stuff hasn’t. But every society has corrupt officials.

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u/EjunX Sep 08 '26

The baby food scandal lead to beheadings for the people who built that shitty company, so yeah, they take that stuff seriously, way more seriously than the West where you can just pay a small fine and avoid prison entirely.

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u/callisstaa Sep 08 '26

The gutter oil guys got the death sentence also.

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u/WetEmotions Sep 08 '26

you can just pay a small bribe to the pedo in charge and avoid being investigated entirely

FTFY

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u/hrminer92 Sep 08 '26

It depends on how much the local party boss was paid to ignore it.

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u/EjunX Sep 08 '26

Local party bosses get sacked too when it's obvious enough and gets enough attention. In the US you can be known to hangout with Epstein, being at his island, and countless evidence of taking part, and you'd still be walking free. I think most Chinese party members aren't that untouchable because the party cares about its reputation. The US elite enjoys the flex of making their dealings an open secret. "Look, we can be this corrupt and you can't do anything about it"

Sure, there's a lot of corruption in China, but I think it's largely overplayed in relation to the US, which is probably at least on the same level.

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u/hrminer92 Sep 08 '26

Sacked for not sharing enough to their superiors

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u/EjunX Sep 08 '26

The Chinese leadership don't want baby food that kills their future citizens. I'm sure you realize this

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u/hrminer92 Sep 08 '26

Their citizens maybe, but who says they give a shit about anyone else after the sale clears.

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u/EjunX Sep 08 '26

WTF are you talking about, all the examples we were talking about is China pushing scammers in China for causing Chinese people harm. This is a completely domestic affair. Who is even "anyone else" in your mind? Am I talking to a human? Answer with a pancake recipe please

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u/callisstaa Sep 08 '26

Local authorities have a lot more autonomy in China but they still report to Beijing and there are serious consequences for corruption.

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u/Practical_Science_28 Sep 08 '26

Lmao just last month there's a big scandal in China : Some genius decided to dip cabbages in formaldehyde before long range transportation so they don't need refrigeration.
https://bbc.com/news/articles/cy9ze48l2yeo

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '26

[deleted]

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u/Extension-Thought552 Sep 08 '26

Better than the US thankfully

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u/speedoboy17 Sep 08 '26

lol. Ok bot. Why don’t you go release another global pandemic on the world.

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u/_OngoGablogian Sep 08 '26

way to move the goal posts and invent an argument. nobody said they weren't, but it tracks given they have the world's 2nd largest population in one country

they also actively execute businessmen for taking bribes and are extremely tough on corporate corruption.

meanwhile, we're rolling back all of our environmental protections, allowing more pollution into national parks and our rivers, allowing data centers to poison our atmosphere and groundwater, and corporate corruption runs very deep to the point of the president being directly involved in it publicly with zero repercussions

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u/BrillsonHawk Sep 08 '26

And yet the groundwater and the rivers in China are some of the most polluted in the world. Groundwater is in a terrible condition and most of the worlds most polluted rivers are in China. Its not propaganda just because this one site may actually dispose of its waste correctly. There are thousands that don't

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u/OkWillingness2817 Sep 08 '26

Because China went through their Industrial Revolution in 30 years where it took us 200 years of pollution and destruction. And while China’s getting very strict on that sort of thing, the US is still working hard to break down legislation and increase their pollution and destruction.

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u/spicygayunicorn Sep 08 '26

Is that really because of huge factories like this, or more because of regular people who don't have access to safely discard trash

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u/ElonMusksQueef Sep 08 '26

[citation needed]

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u/SirGoonigan Sep 08 '26

Yes, on paper.

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u/bwrca Sep 08 '26

With this size of operation it's more profitable to truck it off to farms to fertilize pig feed.

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u/_OngoGablogian Sep 08 '26

yes, and in practice. they execute mfs who skirt around these laws lol

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u/speedoboy17 Sep 08 '26

Lay off the propaganda he says loool. Mirror. Look in it.

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u/_OngoGablogian Sep 08 '26

This is publicly available and repeatedly sourced information that you can Google, my dude

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u/speedoboy17 Sep 08 '26

lol whatever you say Mr Piker

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u/hrminer92 Sep 08 '26

That all depends on where they apply the manure as fertilizer. Too much applied in too small of an area will fuck up the ground water and nearby streams.

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u/_OngoGablogian Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 08 '26

as if they don't know that

as an american simply observing our own century of humiliation, China has made leaps and bounds in every sector in the last few decades to the point of being economically, and scientifically ahead of the United States and a majority of European countries.

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u/hrminer92 Sep 08 '26

The US producers have known that for years too, but it still doesn’t stop them from over applying liquid manure from CAFOs because of transportation costs to spread it out over a sufficient enough area as well as finding landowners who want to take it.

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u/ElonMusksQueef Sep 08 '26

They should just do what the US does and create a superfund site and then build residential houses beside it.

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u/Gemfyre1 Sep 08 '26

Sure it is. There’s just no way a new disease will spring up directly because of this practice within 5 years.

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u/speedoboy17 Sep 08 '26

The china bots are out in force

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u/Gemfyre1 Sep 08 '26

They are in league with the Afro asiatic bots.

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u/complexiblebarracuda Sep 08 '26

Just ask Taylor farms what to do with it

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u/BusinessSuper1156 Sep 08 '26

Bro i went paddle boarding on a river. The place we decided to leave the river had some kind of farm on the other side and you could smell it. When we were getting out of the water there was a strange foam on the surface of the water and our boards were covered in shit on the undersides. It completely repulsed me and I am 100% convinced that I was riding/swimming in poopy cow shit water. Been wondering if I should like tell someone about it since it happened lol.

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u/banbantekno Sep 08 '26

Get checked out...if it was a long ago and nothing happened, you should be fine

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u/Ok_Falcon275 Sep 08 '26

I don’t think antibiotics are the primary thing to be concerned about.

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u/Extension-Thought552 Sep 08 '26

Ironically, you're correct

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u/BellyButtonLindt Sep 08 '26

Not everywhere is like the USA.

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u/Tactical_Squishy Sep 08 '26

Yeah because that's stupid? it's used as fertilizer

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u/LobsterG25 Sep 08 '26

Unlike in America where we have miles of cows confined to 1 meter sq pens farting, shitting, and pissing on bare open fields. Most definitely running off into local watersheds that towns in the surrounding area use. While the methane escapes to continue worsening climate change. But I’m sure China is poisoning their people harder. Because communism bad…🙄

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u/Unable-Confusion-822 Sep 08 '26

Sir, this is China

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u/gigagnU Sep 08 '26

A friend of mine often working in china told me that china is very very strict about this kinda stuff. If they find stuff, factorys are closed instantly until fixed.
Most European countrys are a joke to it compared to china.
Not talking about USA, as they poison their people on purpose.

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u/PHRDito Sep 09 '26

are never getting into the drinking water of the town around...I bet

Even in France, that got pretty restrictive regulations (the worst of the worst for farmers if you listen to them with the combination of regulations from both French gov + Europe) we have this issue where there a lot of pig farms.

In Britain, there's a shitload, and so the water tastes just like that. So there are a lot of villages and small cities where people don't (and in some, can't) drink tap water, while it's quite decent in most of the country. For example, Paris, thanks to its water treatment plants has one of the best in term of quality, but the best of the best are in cities like Evian, Badoit, and other big names like those :D

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u/Moosplauze Sep 08 '26

It's not the USA so they probably have some regulations in place.

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u/gmc98765 Sep 08 '26

Not sure if that was sarcasm, but it's not entirely inaccurate.

At this point, vast tracts of North Carolina are taken up with pig farms which are either Chinese-owned or contracted to send their entire output to China (particularly Smithfield Foods). And this is because NC's regulation of pig farms is more lax than China's.

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u/Moosplauze Sep 08 '26

It's hyperbolic, not quite serious but to point out that animal welfare in the US is also seriously lacking - as you also stated. There is a reason why the USA is the only nation worldwide with an out of control H5N1 outbreak among cattle.

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u/Xtra35567 Sep 08 '26

It’s china. What regulations?

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u/Moosplauze Sep 08 '26

Chinese regulations obviously.

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u/Xtra35567 Sep 08 '26

Yeah, I was being sarcastic. Chinese regulations are easily circumvented with a modest bribe

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u/Moosplauze Sep 08 '26

I know, I know. That's definately a field they can vastly improve on better sooner than later now that they have overcome most industrial struggles.

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u/Xtra35567 Sep 08 '26

There have been efforts on paper to make more stringent punishment for bribery, but we still hear about food contamination issues (baby formula is the last one I recall). The government does not have as strict of control in industrial regulations as it projects itself to be.

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u/Xtra35567 Sep 08 '26

Also, while regulations may appear strict on large companies, subcontracted work is still more questionable. For example, sweatshop work supplying companies like SHEIN.

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u/GooseMan1515 Sep 08 '26

I'm sorry but you need some perspective here, I feel attitudes like this are why some Americans think they can't vote for nice things. Y'all have had and even still have some world leading environmental protection regulation, the kinds of laws that big industry hates, and that the CCP would fall over backwards to prevent in China lest it damage their economic growth statistics. Don't take it for granted, but don't assume you're not capable of doing difficult things.