Government Scientists Try to Take the Stink Out of Pig Manure (get your pig poop profile right here, folks)

Terry Whitehead's lab here is stocked with glass boiling flasks, Bunsen burners—and cans of extra-strength air freshener. The microbiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture works with pig manure in a quest for something that has largely eluded scientists and entrepreneurs: an affordable way to clear the air in farm country. Efforts to combat the acrid odor of swine manure, which typically is stored in giant pits, have increased as farms get bigger and suburbs creep closer. The smell can pit neighbor against neighbor, sparking complaints and court battles, not to mention environmental concerns. An expert in bacteria that grow without oxygen, Mr. Whitehead has been researching swine manure—bottles of which he keeps in his lab refrigerator—since the mid-1990s. He first experimented with an animal-feed additive to attack the smell but found more success with a brown powder made from the South American quebracho tree. He also has drawn on research at Michigan State University on borax, the white powder used in household cleaners. In the world of barnyard smells, pig and chicken manure are considered top offenders—much worse than the common cow pie. Pig-manure storage pits can produce hundreds of compounds, creating a nauseating stew of odors, from the sharp bite of ammonia to the rotten-eggs stink of hydrogen sulfide. The big challenge is getting any additive to work on the scale of a modern hog farm. An adult pig generates about 1.2 gallons of dung a day, and a single barn in the Midwest can house thousands of animals. Storage pits can hold hundreds of thousands of gallons of decomposing manure waiting to be spread on fields for fertilizer...more

I'll bet you're thinking this is nothing but a Pork Barrel Swine Swindle.  Besides, why is the gov't involved at all?  Can't the private sector work their own magic on this?

Just outside Iowa City, Iowa, Randy Lackender faced concerns from neighbors about the odors emanating from his hog farm. The 58-year-old farmer doesn't understand why people raise such a stink. "We have always had smells on the farm," he says. "It is a fact of living in the country." Mr. Lackender nonetheless installed special filters in his barns that use microorganisms to clean the air and tested an additive for his manure pits. The first approach proved overly complicated to maintain, while the other didn't work. Then he was offered a free trial of a product called ManureMagic from a small Texas company. The "magic" is a patented technology that relies on microorganisms that interfere with the decomposition process and limit creation of the worst-smelling gases, the company says.Mr. Lackender says his wife estimated that the stench decreased by about 75% in two weeks. "She has a very keen sense of smell," Mr. Lackender says. He says he now buys the product regularly.

I guess a 75% cure isn't good enough for the gov't, especially when the Hogs in Congress keep funding these Piggy Litter projects.