THE IRRITABLE BOWELS
OF CALIFORNIA'S COWS

The latest eye-watering news out of California involves gaseous cows that are killing us.

According to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, methane-belching cows now create more pollution in the Central Valley than cars, trucks, pesticides and that guy sitting in the cubicle next to you at work with the irritable bowels.

This is not necessarily news to anyone who has ever actually spent time in the Central Valley, which Californians have long regarded as the Gaseous Cow Pollution Capital of the World.

During a recent trip to Turlock, the Joe Livernois Column got up close and personal with the gaseous-cow phenomena. This experience was highlighted by a conversation with a visitor who lapsed into an extended sneezing fit before concluding that "this town stinks." And this person was from Los Angeles.

Naturally, officials from the California dairy industry immediately criticized the San Joaquin Valley air district's conclusions, accusing the district of being "cow haters who hate freedom and everything that cows stand for."

Industry officials then threatened to ramp up its California cheese advertising campaign that depict cows with names like "Madge" standing in pastures and engaging in whimsical human-like conversations.

As we know, these advertisements are apparently meant to spread the fiction that cheese is not produced from muck-covered dairies in which the cows are too busy passing gas to engage in comic conversation.

According to air pollution authorities, there are about 2.5 million cows in the San Joaquin air basin and each one of them produces almost 20 pounds of noxious gasses every year, the cumulative equivalent produced by the guy in the next cubicle.

Experts attribute the gaseous emissions to the revolting manner in which cows consume their food. Cows constantly swallow and regurgitate their food, a process that results in a steady stream of belching and flatulence. In scientific terms, this cud-chewing process is known variously as "rumination" or "writing a newspaper column."

Because of the air district report, the dairy industry will be forced to invest millions of dollars in expensive pollution-control technology. Technical experts are already coming up with new and inventive ways to instruct their cows to find a less disgusting way to eat.

Unfortunately, cow gas-prevention technologies involving industrial-strength corks have proven useless, generating an even worse pollution problem in the form of what scientists refer to as "exploding cows."

Dairy producers are understandably upset that pointy-headed do-gooders are trying to "improve" their operations with new regulations, just as the auto industry was upset with the do-gooders who imposed Draconian regulations on vehicle emissions several decades ago.

But vehicular smog-control device scams are now woven into the fabric of California's rich tapestry. Most of us now regard smog-control scams as a necessary trade-off we make in exchange for living in the greatest state in the union.

And we are confident that the dairy industry will eventually embrace regulations that will spare the children of the Central Valley from a lifetime of phlegm.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to smog my cow.