The North Carolina hog industry’s answer to pollution: a $500m pipeline project – By Michael Sainato and Chelsea Skojec (The Guardian) / Dec 11 2020
Instead of implementing safer systems, activists say Smithfield Foods is seeking to profit from hog waste under the guise of ‘renewable energy’
Elsie Herring of Duplin county, North Carolina, lives in the house her late mother grew up in, but for the past several decades her home has been subjected to pollution from nearby industrial hog farms.
“We have to deal with whether it’s safe to go outside. It’s a terrible thing to open the door and face that waste. It makes you want to throw up, it takes your breath away, it makes your eyes run,” said Herring.
She explained they also deal with constant trucks on the road, hauling pigs, dead and alive, in and out of the area, feed trucks, and the flies and mice that the farms attract.
Eastern North Carolina has around 4,000 pink hued pools of pig feces, urine and blood as a result of the hog industry, where 9 million pigs produce over 10bn gallons of waste annually in the state. When the waste lagoons reach capacity, excess waste is sprayed on to nearby fields. In 2000, Smithfield Foods agreed with state officials in North Carolina to finance research to find and install alternatives to the waste lagoons and spraying systems, but none were deemed economically feasible.
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