More False Tales About the Hog Industry: A Response to Food & Environment Reporting Network

The latest attack on North Carolina hog farmers arrived Friday — an article about the ongoing nuisance lawsuits that was full of false and misleading information produced by anti-agriculture activists and a freelance journalist named Barry Yeoman. 

It reads like a “greatest hits” album, filled with a familiar cast of characters repeating claims that have been debunked time and time again. The outfit behind the story — the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) — Is that same group that published a wildly inaccurate and discredited story about livestock complaints in North Carolina earlier this year.

FERN is funded by the Schmidt Family Foundation, which has a goal of harming animal agriculture.The foundation recently provided $190,000 to FERN, in part, for “modern muckraking.” It has been funding an array of efforts that are aimed against modern agriculture, including directly paying for an ongoing effort to organize class-action lawyers to bring more lawsuits against, among others, Smithfield Foods.

It’s unclear why anyone thinks that destroying farms, driving up food prices and dismantling rural economies is a worthwhile endeavor.

If you read the article, it’s important to understand the context of what you are reading — that is, what you are reading is underwritten by a well-funded advocate who is against agriculture. It isn’t actual independent journalism, though it’s presented with that veneer.

One of the more laughable passages seems to suggest that state Rep. Jimmy Dixon, a farmer himself, is somehow compromised because the pork industry has accounted for about 12 percent of his campaign contributions.

This, in a story that is 100 percent paid for by an anti-agriculture advocacy group.

The tale is as one-sided as the trials were – recall that no juror, not one, ever visited any of the farms that were on trial. The Texas lawyers on the other side of the courtroom didn’t want that. They didn’t want the jurors to see and smell for themselves.

The story prominently features Elsie Herring, the most-quoted neighbor of a hog farm on the planet. She is given free rein to say that the farm she lives near “is blowing waste” on her. This is simply not happening, and no respectable media outlet should repeat these falsehoods.

The story also lends much credence to Steve Wing, who was both a UNC-Chapel Hill professor AND founder of the N.C. Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN), which is also funded by Schmidt and advocates against agriculture. 

Wing, now deceased, was described as a “committed activist” in his obituary… and has said to students that he literally “made arrangements” with advocacy groups in his “research” in order to “subvert the interests” of the university. That much is apparent in the various discredited studies by him.

The story seeks to frame this issue as one about racial division, which is one of the saddest and most despicable aspects of these cases and of the continued efforts by those who wish to close our farms. There remains a continued effort by these activists to divide people based on race. It should be rejected by all fair-minded people, especially when what they say is flatly false.

The irony of the story is that numerous media outlets who have spent time on our farms contradict it. True journalists describe the farms in terms that are vastly different than litigants in lawsuits. And so do neighbors, including in the trial Barry wrote about.

Just last week, a group of media members visited a farm in Sampson County. 

Shortly after the media arrived on the farm, a husband and wife – the farm’s closest neighbors – came walking back to say hello and offer their own testimony.

“We’ve enjoyed living out here,” the wife said. “The farm doesn’t bother us.”

What bothers us all is something else: inaccurate tales told by advocates who are disguising themselves as the media.

Disrespecting Farmers and All of Duplin County

When I was growing up, cartoons were supposed to be funny and entertaining. Now, they are just mean-spirited and insulting.

Earlier this week, Capitol Broadcasting, the Raleigh company that owns WRAL-TV and a host of other television, radio and digital media outlets, published an editorial cartoon that suggests picking up the NC General Assembly and moving it to Duplin County.

The message: Let’s send legislators to the worst possible place in North Carolina we can imagine. The cartoon shows pigs, chickens and turkeys next to the legislative building, which is seemingly surrounded by waste, flies and odor.

I’m offended. And everyone else who calls Duplin County home should be offended about the way our community was wrongly portrayed.

Who wants to bet that the person who drew that cartoon has never set foot on a Duplin County farm?

If he had, he would know that our farms are well regulated and well maintained. He would know that our family farmers take pride in their farms and treat our land with respect. He would know that most of our farmers live on their farms and raise their children and grandchildren here.

Duplin County is home to beautiful countryside and fine, upstanding people who care deeply about their community.

But let’s not let truth get in the way of taking a good jab at the legislature — and a disgraceful shot at everyone who lives in Duplin County.

In making recent proposals to relocate DMV headquarters to Rocky Mount and DHHS headquarters to Granville County, the legislature has adopted a bold strategy: moving certain state offices to rural communities outside of Raleigh, where real estate is much more affordable and the demand for good jobs is high.

Fortunately, Duplin County is benefiting tremendously from its agricultural roots. The pork and poultry industries have created good jobs here and contributed significant tax dollars to our local economy. That, in turn, has helped improve our local schools and services.

I’m proud to call Duplin County home, and I’m proud to bring people here to show them what life on our farms is truly like. I would hate to imagine our community without the valuable contributions of North Carolina’s family farmers. Thank you for all that you do.

-Chad Herring– Executive Director, NC Farm Families

Cheap Shots Taken in Recent Article About Hog Farmers

It’s no secret that the newspaper business is struggling mightily. Here’s the impact: Smaller staffs means that The News & Observer and others now rely on stories they didn’t write more and more frequently. It pays for some stories, like those by the Associated Press, while others are free.

We tell you this because The News & Observer just published a story about hog farmers that was written by ProPublica.

Who is ProPublica?

It’s a nonprofit news group that receives funding from, among other sources, foundations that also support groups opposed to animal agriculture. ProPublica writes the stories, then provides them to newspapers looking for stories to publish.

The negative slant of ProPublica’s story about hog farmers is no surprise. It read like a compilation of all the unkind stories written by partisan groups like the Waterkeepers Alliance. And it featured familiar characters, like Elsie Herring, repeating a familiar litany of complaints: She can’t go outside. She can’t open her windows. She’s a prisoner in her own home. All because she lives near a hog farm.

But at the top of the same story in The News and Observer there was a picture of the ‘woman who can’t go outside’ — standing outside in front of her home.

Herring once claimed the hog farmer next to her home sprayed his field “three or four days on a slow week” and sometimes “daily” and sometimes “at night.” (She’s also claimed that he sprays eight feet from her front door, which clearly isn’t true.)

Every time a farmer applies effluent, the law requires him to keep a record for state inspectors.

So, what do the records show? That he uses that field very infrequently. Records from 2017 show that the farmer only used the field near Herring’s home twice — and he continues to use the field only on rare occasions.

ProPublica didn’t tell you that.ProPublica wrote about the pork industry’s supposed “political clout,” reporting that farmers and farm groups have contributed more than $16 million to politicians over the past 18 years. But it didn’t mention the political influence of those opposed to hog farming. Trial lawyers, in particular,are politically well connected, both individually and through their powerful political action committee.

You find the same type of slanted reporting throughout the story.

ProPublica reported that 33 lagoons “overflowed” during Hurricane Florence. But it failed to mention that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality correctly characterized the overflow as “diluted storm water” in a public meeting last week. The fact is that more than 98% of the state’s 3,300 lagoons came through the hurricane just fine.

ProPublica wrote about the nuisance lawsuits against Smithfield Foods. But it didn’t mention the lawsuits were started by predatory out-of-state lawyers who promised big paydays for those who signed up. The attorneys were thrown off the case for their unethical behavior in recruiting clients.

And ProPublica wrote how in a state “where Confederate Monuments still stand,” agriculture has its roots “in the plantation system and slavery.”

Is that unbiased investigative journalism? It sure sounds a lot like the work of someone with an activist agenda.

ProPublica’s cheap shots went on and on. And The News and Observer published every single one of them.