Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry visited a hog confinement yesterday as a backdrop for his call for federal air and water guidelines for large-scale livestock operations that generate millions of gallons of manure. Kerry says when you combine the waste issue and the quality of life issue, there’s a “pretty compelling argument that those large hot lots have got to live up to a higher level of responsibility.” Kerry says those sorts of facilities, without the proper regulatory oversight, wind up destroying people’s lives and property values. Kerry says the feds should help smaller-scale farmers, financially, to meet air and water standards. In addition, Kerry says meatpackers should be barred from owning livestock to help avoid a monopoly in the industry. Kerry says when more than 50 percent of the hogs raised in Iowa are in the hands of two entities, “something’s out of whack.”