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Pork + Environmental Justice
Environmental Racism & Hog Farms in N.C.
This 2022 Vox article details Big Pork’s environmental racism against Black North Carolinians. The 8.8 million hogs grown in the state produce over 10 billion gallons of waste each year, resulting in massive amounts of air and water pollution. Companies like Smithfield store the waste in enormous open pits, then dispose of it by spraying the waste on barren fields that abut low-income neighborhoods. And people are getting sick.
EPA and State Regulators Side with Pig Farmers
This Guardian article describes how, rather than responding to citizens’ reports of illegal spraying of hog manure, health and safety agencies and state legislators bury reports, and use every tool at their disposal to protect Big Pork.
Hog Farms Pollute the Air and Poison the Water
Hurricane Florence breached 100 open-air “lagoons,” sewage pits for hog waste, bringing to attention the problem of untreated hog manure winding up in waterways and polluting ground and drinking water.
Hog Lagoons and Hurricanes
This NPR report explains why hurricane season is a particularly precarious time for people living near hog farms. Lagoons full of waste fill up, overflow, and wind up contaminating the water, killing fish and putting supplies of drinking water at risk.
How Pork Became “The Other White Meat”
Big Pork’s brilliant advertising campaign, “Pork, the Other White Meat” was based on a lie. Pork is not poultry.
Iowa Citizens Standing Up Against CAFOs
Iowa citizens and NGOs are fighting CAFO expansion. Their goal is to force Big Ag mega-farmers to stop polluting waterways with animal manure, and to clean up hundreds of waterways they’ve already polluted.
Iowa Courts Prohibit Residents from Suing Pork Farms
Over 23 million hogs are raised in Iowa, making it the #1 producer in the U.S. Residents living near mega-farms sued — and won — when they demonstrated the farms surrounding their homes polluted the water and air. But the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the ruling, and went a step further, by protecting Big Ag from future lawsuits.
Science-based Research in Hog Country
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future have joined local anti-CAFO activists to clean up the air and water in areas with high concentrations of hog farms.
The Smell of Money
Watch the trailer for The Smell of Money, a 2022 documentary on hog farms and environmental racism in North Carolina. With nowhere to dispose of all the urine and feces produced by millions of hogs, farmers spray the waste on barren fields, many abutting neighborhoods of mostly low-income Black, Latino, and Indigenous people. Consequently, the air and water are making people sick. (You can stream the movie on Amazon Prime).
The Smell of Money: How Hog Farms in the U.S. Shit on Their Neighbors
Don’t have time (or the stomach) to watch The Smell of Money, a documentary on hog farming in North Carolina? Then read this excellent review in The Guardian. You couldn’t make this up.
Waterkeeper Allianance’s Aerial Footage of Polluting Farms
Watch this 5-minute video for an aerial view of North Carolina’s industrial hog and chicken farms. NGO Waterkeeper Alliance keeps track of hog lagoons — open pits full of hog feces and urine — and run-off from poultry farms, to document how the CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) are polluting the air and water, and endangering the health of local populations.