Looking Back: The Smithfield Lawsuits

It was three years ago this month when the nuisance lawsuits against Smithfield and Murphy-Brown were settled. It came on the same day that an appeals court upheld the questionable rulings of a biased judge and the exorbitant awards of a Wake County jury located far away from North Carolina hog farms.

A lot has changed since then, and a lot has remained the same. Here are some of the highlights:

What’s Changed

• The NC General Assembly has passed legislation that preserves and protects the Right to Farm. This includes updates to the Farm Act that clarify who can sue farms for nuisance (neighbors who live within a half-mile of the farm); when they can sue (within one year of any substantial changes to farm operations); and how much they can recover (no more than the fair market value of their property). The legislation also states that punitive damages cannot be awarded if a farm has not violated their permit within the past three years. Challenges to these laws were rejected by the NC Supreme Court.

• A trial lawyer at the heart of the Smithfield litigation is currently running for the Republican nomination for Governor of North Carolina. Bill Graham is a partner at Wallace & Graham, the Salisbury law firm that spearheaded the Smithfield lawsuits and originally filed lawsuits against individual family farmers in North Carolina. “This is not just a case. This is a cause,” Graham said of the lawsuits, which sought no changes to our farms — only money.

• An increasing number of North Carolina hog farms are now covering lagoons to capture methane emissions and generate renewable natural gas. The lagoon covers reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce odors, and minimize the potential for flooding. Predictably, activist groups who frequently complain about odors and flooding are staunchly opposed to these biogas projects.  

 What Hasn’t Changed

• Attacks against the pork industry haven’t stopped. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and the Duplin County chapter of the N.C. NAACP filed a Title VI complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2021, alleging that DEQ is violating the civil rights of minorities in Duplin and Sampson counties by issuing biogas permits on hog farms. (Activist groups filed a similar complaint in 2014 regarding the issuance of  hog farm permits. That complaint was settled in 2018 with no finding of discrimination.)

• The Attacks Continue, Part II: Activist groups continue to spread false and misleading information about NC hog farms, including studies designed to raise health concerns. One example — a “study” by a Duke University professor that alleges residents who live near NC hog farms have elevated risks of disease and death. Despite the lack of  any evidence that ties health claims to hog farms — even the study’s authors acknowledge that there’s no causation or correlation — the media continues to reference flawed studies like this.

• The Attacks Continue, Part III: NC hog farms were at the center of another lawsuit against Smithfield Foods. This suit alleged that animal waste and associated odors and dust from a Duplin County farm traveled beyond the property line and were “trespassing” on the neighbors’ property. The creative attempt to get around the restrictions on nuisance lawsuits was dismissed in September 2023.

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 We know that those who are opposed to animal agriculture will continue to attack our hog farms. But, rest assured, one thing that won’t change is that NC Farm Families will stand up and speak out for our farm families. We’ll continue to sound the alarm about the legal and political threats facing our industry and work to educate residents about the positive steps being taken on our farms.

Fayetteville Observer Editorial: The Part He Left Out

Tim White began by referring to North Carolina’s lagoon and spray field system – which is mandated by state law and regulated by the state government – as a primitive waste-disposal system.  Just like the Texas lawyer in the nuisance trials in Raleigh, he painted a gloomy picture of hog farmers, saying that “mists of sprayed swine effluent drift from farm fields to coat nearby houses or cars” and that “neighboring home values have had the daylights kicked out of them.” And, finally, he described the passage in the General Assembly of the 2018 Farm Act as a bitter partisan wrangle with Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other when, in fact, the bill was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.Let’s see if we can’t add some color to the dark, gloomy picture Mr. White painted of the pork industry in North Carolina.Smithfield Foods has invested over 17 million dollars in research – done by leading professors at North Carolina State University – to develop new and better ways to manage hog waste.  In addition, Smithfield was obligated to employ any new method that the professors found to be both effective and economically feasible.  However, none of the research yielded that result. Mr. White left that out of his op-ed.Mr. White also seems unfamiliar with home values in rural eastern North Carolina counties. I built my home on our family farm right in front of our existing spray field and it appraised last year for more than when I built it in 2010.  Compare that to Mr. White telling readers that hog farms have kicked the daylights out of their neighbors’ home values.Finally, one last word about the 2018 Farm Act: Democrats and Republicans came together to stand with the people who work hard to provide a safe and healthy food supply for this country.

I respect Mr. White’s right to voice his opinions about hog farming. But, at the same time, people need to hear facts instead of political rhetoric. And facts were the part of the story Mr. White left out. Lastly, once again, I’d like to thank Lt. Governor Dan Forest, Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler and Democratic – and Republican – lawmakers for their efforts to protect NC Farm Families.

--Chad Herring, Executive Director of NCFF  

Let's Shoot Straight Mr Dove

The Waterkeepers leader in North Carolina, Rick Dove, just posted a comment on Farm Families’ Facebook page, and he doesn’t like our video Eighteen Years Ago.Our video tells the story of what happened, almost twenty years ago, when Mrs. Elsie Herring complained about a hog farmer spraying too close to her home: How the company investigated her complaint, agreed with her, moved the farmer’s irrigation equipment and planted a wide buffer of trees between her home and the farmer’s field.That happened almost twenty years ago. But, a few months ago, one of the Waterkeepers’ allies reported, on its website, the farmer was spraying too close to Mrs. Herring’s house now.We made a video to set the record straight. And Rick Dove didn’t like that. He claimed our video was “alternative facts.” Here’s the video so you can judge for yourself:

Not long ago, Rick Dove had a problem with ‘alternative facts’ himself.The morning after Hurricane Matthew, Dove set out to spin a story to the press about an environmental disaster – and blame it on hog farmers. So he climbed into an airplane to fly over flooded farms to take photographs.We know now, according to state records, only one half of one percent of the lagoons on hog farms were inundated during the floods. One other lagoon on a shuttered hog farm (that hasn’t had a hog on it in five years) had two minor ‘breaches.’

In all, on 99.5% of the hog farms, nothing happened to harm the environment. But that wasn’t the picture Rick Dove and the Waterkeepers wanted to paint. So he resorted to a ruse: He posted nine pictures, all taken from a plane, all taken at different angles, of one flooded farm. But he didn’t explain, This is one farm. He posted four pictures of another farm, two of another, four of another. Dove even posted a picture of a flooded municipal waste treatment plant in Hookerton and called it a hog farm.Dove then spun his story to the press. The Washington Post even published Rick Dove’s photo of a flooded municipal waste treatment facility in Hookerton and called it a hog farm.Those were “alternative facts.” And Rick Dove hasn’t set the record straight.