Agriculture may be North Carolina’s largest industry, but the farmers who produce our food remain under constant attack.
There’s a coordinated effort being led by groups that want to shut down our farms. A key part of their strategy involves paying for “news stories” that portray our industry in a negative light.
The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of those groups. Its latest “sponsored story,” in an obscure online publication, takes aim at North Carolina hog farms, blaming the industry for contaminating water in a church well.
Dozens of these stories have been published over the years. Many of them begin with a dramatic story, containing a tiny sliver of truth, that is designed to spark outrage among readers.
For many years, these stories featured a Duplin County woman claiming that hog waste was being sprayed eight feet from her kitchen window. It would be horrible if it were true.
In reality, there was a 100-yard forest between her home and the nearest sprayfield. Also worth noting: the farmer hadn’t used that sprayfield in years. Nevertheless, she continued to show up in article after article with complaints of constant, unbearable odor and claiming her house was sprayed with lagoon water from the sprayfield.
Now, a new story — also false — is starting to appear in attacks on North Carolina hog farms.
This one takes place at a church in Sampson County. There’s a well on the property with contaminated water. The preacher claims a nearby hog farm is most certainly the culprit.
But there’s no evidence whatsoever to support that claim. And the church isn’t interested in finding the truth.
The folks at Smithfield Foods, which operates the nearby farm, were concerned. They studied the situation and made an important discovery: the church is located at a higher elevation than the hog farm. Which means any waste coming from the farm would have to travel uphill to reach the church.
Based on physics, it seemed unlikely that the farm is responsible for any issues with the church’s well water, but they wanted to be sure. So, they wrote the preacher a letter.
We’d like to meet with you to discuss the situation, they said. And we’d like to pay for a forensic study of the groundwater to pinpoint the cause of the contamination, they told the preacher. We’ll reimburse you for the cost of the new well if we are at fault.
He didn’t respond. So, Smithfield sent another letter. The preacher’s failure to respond surprised them.
He declined their offer to meet. Apparently, he didn’t want to talk with them about the issues with the nearby farm. And he wasn’t interested in a study that would shine a light on where the contamination was coming from. However, he continues to malign the hog farms in the media, always tied to an article sponsored by an activist group. One of which, his daughter happens to work for.
Maybe that’s why he’s not really interested in the truth.
