Posted on 05/05/2018 5:50:44 PM PDT by Libloather
A North Carolina jury awarded $50 million to neighbors of a 15,000-hog farm in Eastern North Carolina in a case being closely watched across the country by environmentalists and the hog farm industry.
The verdict, revealed late Thursday after a jury deliberated less than two days, is the first to come in a series of federal lawsuits filed against Murphy-Brown/Smithfield Foods, the worlds largest pork producer.
In this case decided in a federal courtroom in Raleigh, 10 neighbors contended that industrial-scale hog operations have known for decades that the open-air sewage pits on their properties were the source of noxious, sickening and overwhelming odors. The stench was so thick, the neighbors argued, that it was impossible to get it out of their clothes.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
I use pork shoulders & don’t remove any of the fat. One bone- a blade type. I put it into the crockpot & slow cook it all day. Garlic salt, Lawry’s salt & dry onions. Sure makes a nice dinner & very nice sandwiches.
One article I read said the homeowners were there before this particular farm was started. Also said there were other hog farms there before most of the residents moved there. So I still have questions, were the other hog farms smaller and less of an issue?
Of all farm animals, I've never found any other smell worse...and open pits allow the stench to travel pretty far. Sometimes, the people aren't wrong...
I take it you ‘ve never been downwind of an open pit (which is not legal, BTW, when the wind shifts - especially a huge commercial place?
It's not the pigs themselves - it the huge holding pits, like huge swimming pools, full of their wet manure. Pretty nasty... Pigs themselves, if given correct housing, are clean animals...
Good one ;) (so many ‘opine’ without reading the story
Those that lived there before the hog farm do deserve “some compensation” but not 50 million. Those that moved there after the hog farm knew damn good and well there was a hog farm and deserve nothing.
I am a pilot and am sick of new people moving in around our airports that once were in the countryside and now demand we cease operations. The airport was their first and they chose to live next to it. Personally I like living next to it.
I myself live 15 miles southeast of Fort Hood Texas. I live in their practice area. When I moved here I knew full well it was a practice area. Every day and sometimes at night I hear those choppers over my home practicing the arts of war. I love it. I also hear Fort Hoods Artillery. Both the choppers and artillery are the sound of freedom!
I moved just a stone's throw from Quantico Marine Corps Base in 1993. Back then there were always artillery and other exercises going on. F-18 and other fighter aircraft, as well as all types of helicopters, flew directly over our house every single day. After the second Gulf War started, and the military started getting their funding cut, most or the aircraft stopped flying overhead and I really miss that.
I used to work for a company that installed A/C units and appliances in trailers in North Carolina. Whenever a new unit was to be installed or worked on and we knew it was near a hog farm or worse yet on a hog farm, nobody wanted to go. That smell. I don’t know how those folks lived on them farms. I guess ya get used to it.
I realize that, having lived on farms in NW Illinois during my first 62 years, and raising hogs the old way (portable sheds and farrowing barns) in lots, and pasture, for a third of those years.
The outdoor lagoons (except when agitating it for removal purposes) never seemed as bad as the huge holding tank (basement) below the slatted confinement floor. Not sure why. Maybe because the some of the moisture would seep into the soil or dry from the sun and wind, and the top of the lagoon would dry enough to create a seal of sorts.
**Live in Lubbock, TX and when the wind is right, you’ll know about the cattle feed lots.**
Lol. Yeah, I’ve driven by the ones in Nebraska and near Dalhart, TX.
**Then there is the cotton seed mills...**
Yes, I’ve seen the artificial snow in the ditchs near the mills.
Out here in Ca-lee-for-nye-aa, the socialists in Sacramento passed a law a few years back mandating that egg farms treat their chickens humanely.
The law worked. All the chickens were sold and slaughtered, and the land was sold to a developer who turned the lovely, bucolic valley into cookie cutter homes.
All California eggs now come from neighboring states without the stupid regulation.
Another example of politicians exhibiting their brilliance and compassion.
I spent 5 years in SW Kansas. In the area of Garden City, Dodge City and Liberal were dozens of cattle feed lots. The smell was bad but not as bad as those hog farms.
The worst of all was a rendering plant outside Garden City. National By products. Just about what you would expect.
I grew up in northern Michigan and our house was less than a quarter mile from a tannery. Behind the facility they had huge pits that I assume contained lye or some such chemical where they would dump all the stinky refuse. Then periodically they would set them on fire and we would ultimately be down wind from that foul smoke........
I’m betting the hog farm was there before the others who filed the lawsuit. They knew in advance about the environment. Should have been tossed out of court.
This is akin to people who move into houses around airports and then file lawsuits because of the noise.
These hog framing operations are not what you are thinking—pig farms have consolidated into massive industrial operations and the resulting smells bear no resemblance to the loamy manure smell you may remember from your farm days. This company is also now owned by the Chinese, who couldn't give a whit about pollution or the local population.
As for the local inhabitants, the NC rural landscape is full of largely black towns that have been there since the days of slavery, and I'm pretty sure this is the case in this situation. I highly doubt the complaining neighbors are Yankees from New York who have built a housing development nearby. Everyone deserves to breathe fresh air when they walk out their front door. I'm normally anti-EPA because of their history of abuses, but in this case, there was definitely a problem that needed to be fixed.
This used to be a site for discussion, now it's full of reflexive racist rhetoric in too many cases. Gives us all a bad name.
"I totally disagree with the verdict as it was the choice of the neighbors to reside there and I can safely assume the hog farm didnt just pop up overnight . The appeal is already in the works . I am just curious about the jurors....seems to me that they might be transplants as opposed to the persons who filed suit."
From the late 70's till the late 90's my family & I drove through there on our way to our favorite bass fishing waters.
No such thing as a "pop-up" hog farm...But there are hundreds of "pop-up" residential communities that have turned NC into the step-child of NY, NJ, and New England...
You hit the nail directly on the head . I was raised in Massachusetts and was/still am disgusted with the political left that runs roughshod over the citizens (liberal leftists .) It is the same with all of surrounding states with an end result of the cost of living (housing mainly) being absurd ! So what happens is the idiots cash out and buy cheaper down south and carry the disease of liberalism with them . I am an exception to this mindset as I am an avid conservative who loves this great republic and I yearn for smaller less intrusive and over reaching government period . One state in the north is leaning more to the right and that is Maine . I just left their after 10 years and now reside in Louisiana...
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