Our rural areas are suffering from poor waste management and a resistance to change — all while China is profiting.

Analysis. From The Epoch Times. North Carolina is the home of more than 2,000 large-scale hog farms, primarily clustered in the rural eastern region of the state. … factory-scale hog farming takes a tremendous toll on the surrounding environment, as hog excrement ends up polluting waterways, land, and air.

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More than 200 of these North Carolina hog farms are owned or operated by Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world, which in 2013 was acquired by the WH Group, a Chinese pork conglomerate that has been accused of feeding its hogs illegal chemicals.

But as reported by Rolling Stone magazine in 2018, that wasn’t the only safety concern raised by the sale:

“The Chinese government had a track record of using nominally private entities as proxies for state power … In 2011 … the government issued a plan directing Chinese companies to buy foreign food producers and farmland. In two years, Chinese nationals went from owning $81 million worth of American farmland to nearly $1.4 billion …

China Dumps Its Agricultural Waste in the US

In years past, the United States outsourced dirty industry processes to poorer countries. Today, China is doing the same, and it’s treating the United States as a developing nation. Granted, U.S. environmental policies—which have gotten increasingly lax over time due to regulatory capture by industry—are what allow for this “hostile takeover” in the first place.

Believe it or not, China doesn’t allow hog waste to be sprayed on fields as a means of disposal, as is routinely done here in the United States. In China, hog farmers are forced to spend big bucks on wastewater treatment, digester systems to convert manure into natural gas, and odor control systems to shield nearby residents from the stench.

All of that makes pork about twice as expensive to produce in China than in the United States. Usha Haley, a professor at West Virginia University who has studied the Chinese takeover of American agricultural assets for well over a decade, told Rolling Stone:

“China will not care about the health of people living beside the hog farms. China will act in its own self-interest to leave the pollution here but take the valuable clean pork back to China.” …

Hog Farms Wreak Havoc

Thousands of pigs are kept permanently indoors in these industrial “farms,” known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Urine and feces are piped outside into a giant open lagoon, and when the lagoon gets full, the waste is sprayed onto nearby fields. …

Indeed, several studies have concluded that living near CAFOs has a detrimental impact on health. For example, one 2018 study by Duke University found that people living in close proximity to hog CAFOs have:

• Higher all-cause mortality.
• Higher infant mortality and low birth weight.
• Higher mortality due to anemia, kidney disease, tuberculosis, and septicemia.

The massive amounts of hog waste produced by these industrial farms also pollute well water and surface water with nitrates, phosphorous, and fecal bacteria, which in turn contributes to algae blooms that kill fish and can cause life-threatening illness in humans.

The largest cluster of hog farms in NC also happens to be located in a coastal floodplain, which further heightens this water pollution risk, as storm flooding washes the hog waste into the surrounding ecosystem. …

Biogas Permits Will Further Impact Underprivileged Residents

You’d think this kind of pollution would be curbed by the federal Clean Water Act and other environmental regulations, but that’s not the case. … the EPA primarily regulates only the largest concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Besides, getting rid of hog waste by spraying it on fields is perfectly legal, even though nearby residents end up getting showered with fecal matter on a regular basis … And now, their situation may get even worse.

In 2021, North Carolina regulators authorized four Smithfield-owned CAFOs to convert their animal waste into biogas fuel by installing anaerobic digestion systems, all without conducting a comprehensive impact analysis or including air and water mitigation requirements. …

Biogas Will Make a Bad Situation Worse

As if that’s not bad enough, the 2021 Farm Bill passed by the North Carolina General Assembly also calls for the creation of a general permit for biogas production from CAFO waste, which will make it easier for other farms to follow suit. And as you’d expect from captured legislators, the draft of this general permit contains the same deficiencies as the four individual permits initially issued. As noted by the SELC in a supplement to its original complaint: …

“Like the individual permits, industrial hog operations permitted under the Digester General Permit will produce dangerous new waste streams that will harm people living nearby … These operations will be authorized to dig new hog waste lagoons or cap existing unlined ones, install digester systems, store digester waste in open-air potentially unlined lagoons, and spray the ammonia-rich digester waste on fields across eastern North Carolina.

“Since Complainants filed their complaint last September, the harms authorized by North Carolina’s issuance of the individual permits and the general permit have become even more evident. As stated in Complainants’ 2021 complaint to OECRC, digester systems exacerbate pollution and negatively impact human health.

“Several studies have shown that digester waste emits substantially more ammonia than hog waste from conventional lagoons. …

More Than a Nuisance

As explained in The Outline article, hog farms have been the center of lawsuits for centuries. Hog sties stink, but with the emergence of CAFOs that house thousands of hogs at a time, neighbors have more than a never-ending stench to contend with. …

At the end of the day, most of the lawsuits today center around the fact that CAFOs are being built in rural areas where people are already living, thereby encroaching on their right to enjoy their own homes and properties. …

Lawsuits against hog CAFOs are always referred to as “nuisance lawsuits,” but a farm spraying liquid dung that drifts and settles all over your house, car, and yard is more than a nuisance. It robs you of your quality of life and can have serious health ramifications to boot.

Despite that, in 2017, the North Carolina legislature implemented new rules to limit “nuisance damages” to fair-market value only, which, of course, dramatically declines as soon as a CAFO is erected nearby. That year, it passed another law limiting nuisance lawsuits to properties located within a half-mile of the source, even though the smell and liquid dung mist from a hog CAFO can carry a lot further than that. …

We Need Real Change

Without a doubt, we need real change in the United States—change that will put an end to China viewing our land as a sewer. Such change won’t come easily, however, seeing as how legislators and regulators alike are in the pocket of industry and place their own greed ahead of human health and well-being.

If China can implement wastewater treatment and odor control systems, there’s no reason we can’t. Poor rural residents, most of whom can’t afford to move even if they wanted to, should not have to pay for cheap bacon with their very lives.

Aside from that, clean soil and water concern all of us, and both need protection from CAFOs in the form of strict regulations. We also ought to have restrictions on the sale of agricultural assets to foreign nationals. …

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(Excerpt from The Epoch Times. Photo Credit: Canva)