And now for some good news


This seems about right for America: an Iowa family’s basement fills with blood. Real, genuine blood. The stuff had backed up from a slaughter house next door.*

Kaitlin Dahl said the company uses a catch drain to capture most of the blood during the butchering process. That blood is emptied into an offal barrel and taken away by a rendering truck.

“When you split a bone in half, there will be some excess blood that will drip on that floor,” she said. “That was allowed by the county to go down the back drain.”

Did I say good news? I meant slightly less horrible news than what’s going on in the regular news.

*Remember the real estate mantra: “Location, location, location.”

Comments

  1. numerobis says

    Just $5k of damages for a basement full of blood? I’d have expected far, far more even if it was just clean water.

  2. Ice Swimmer says

    That’s a smelly nightmare, easily spoiling animal parts from the drain.

    What is the blood from slaughterhouses used for in the U.S.? Is is just disposed of? To be honest, I’m not sure what’s the proportion of beef and pork blood that used for food in Europe, but blood sausages are common throughout Europe and here in the north, also blood pancakes, for both of which, lingonberry (quite similar to cranberry) jam is the condiment of choice. Blood foods are a good source of dietary iron. If animals are used for food, the decent thing is to use all safely edible parts, IMHO.

  3. davidnangle says

    Hello! They couldn’t have pushed this story a little closer to Halloween? Wasted opportunity. Maybe the family could give tours of their basement, for a hefty ticket price.

  4. Rich Woods says

    @Ice Swimmer #4:

    Thanks, you’ve just reminded me to add black pudding to my shopping list. Fry-up after the rugby tomorrow.

  5. birgerjohansson says

    BTW, can blood carry prion diesease?
    And what about flies and other insects attracted by the smell?
    Location: I seem to recall a town in Texas that allowed a factory with…was it fireworks? to exist next to residential housing. Kabooom! I think this was during the Dubya years so I don’t recall the details.

  6. birgerjohansson says

    Idea. pipe excess blood into an elevator shaft, for “The Shining”-type practical jokes.

  7. jrkrideau says

    Lestina said the cleanup will be around $2,000.

    I think they need an expert in environmental/organic contamination.

    My basically uneducated guess is 10’s of thousands of dollars though it might be safer to demolish the building

  8. Snarki, child of Loki says

    Perfect for when you get a telemarketing call from a cleaning company:

    “Can you get BLOOD out of carpets?”

    “Yes, we can!”

    “I mean LOTS and LOTS of blood”

    “No problem”

    “Good! Can you come over, mmm, right now, without even pausing to tell anyone?”

  9. PaulBC says

    microraptor@8

    My thought more or less, but it seemed kind of gross to express directly. Granted, it’s very contaminated by the time it’s in your basement, so I agree with @9 that blood meal fertilizer would be a better use. (I feel bad for the homeowner though. Yikes!)

  10. davidc1 says

    Send for the local priest and get him to perform an exorcism ,then tell everyone your house was built on top of an old Indian burial ground ,i see a book deal in your future .