TO THE EDITOR:
Deborah Johnson is essentially a lobbyist and chief cheerleader for a $15 billion global corporation. Her claims in her April 11 letter that the industry “strictly manages waste” and “takes good care of animals” are hogwash.
Hog farming is one of the great tragedies of environmental and social injustice in North Carolina. Wendell Murphy and other wealthy hog barons in our General Assembly legalized huge, open and unlined cesspools and giant sprayers that disperse feces, urine, blood and bacteria into the air and water in poor rural areas. The Pork Council ensured that any new legislation didn’t apply to existing hog factories. Last year, they lobbied to exempt hog factories closed for as long as ten years from new regulation.
Poor people of color are forced to live and die in the bondage of stench and flies, in the name of greed and profit.
Four environmental justice groups have filed an Environmental Protection Agency discrimination complaint against the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
And there’s no justice for the hogs. Castrating baby piglets, cutting their tails and clipping their teeth —all without anesthesia — is standard practice in the hog industry, as is confining mother pigs in gestation and farrowing crates so small they can’t even turn around. That is not “taking good care of animals.”
Last year’s new ag-gag law prevents us from recording what happens inside these pig concentration camps. Thanks to drones, Google Earth, the horrible stench and environmental activists monitoring our rivers, we know what goes on with the cesspools.
Salette Andrews
Carrboro
