No Way! NC Landowners Say Stench From Nearby Pig Farm Hurting Property Values!

[hatrack]

What do China, its rapidly growing middle class and toxic manure lagoons in North Carolina have in common? Absolutely nothing. And even if they did, don’t mention it. So say attorneys for the Chinese company that now owns America’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods. They have asked a federal judge to forbid people who live near these manure lagoons from mentioning the new Chinese owners – or the country of China or pork exports to China – in court. The attorneys are defending the company against at least 25 nuisance lawsuits.

More than 500 North Carolinians who live near the company’s sprawling lakes of toxic pig manure brought the complaints. They contend that their health and property values are being hurt by the manure lagoons and that the Chinese owners are making the situation worse by expanding pig farms to export more hams, bacon and loins to China.

One manure lagoon cited in the lawsuit captures 4.3 million gallons of feces, urine and flush water per year. To empty the lagoon, its foul-smelling sludge is sprayed on adjacent fields – creating a fine mist of feces, urine and water that neighbors complain blows onto their properties and homes. The lawsuit calls it a nuisance.

EDIT

Members of the North Carolina General Assembly seem less than sympathetic to these types of lawsuits. The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, reported that these 2013 lawsuits “come at a time when the General Assembly proposes to change the law to prohibit any newcomers to hog farm neighborhoods from filing nuisance suits. An amendment introduced in a senate committee meeting also would make it so neighbors who lose in court would have to pay the legal bills of the corporate farms.”

EDIT

Hm. I wonder how many of these landowners voted for the current members of the North Carolina General Assembly? Are those members maybe . . . Republican?

http://www.revealnews.org/article/north-carolinians-say-expansion-of-chinese-owned-pig-farms-stinks/

[sharp_stick]

1. Well you get what you vote for

and the State of NC has been allowing and promoting these hog factories for years. You can't drive inland of the 95 without being inundated by the stench of massive hog operations.

[pscot]

4. Vote for shit

and shit is what you get.

[BlueJazz]

2. I welcome our new sprayed feces and urine Overloads.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. That proposed bill is what TPP will do on a global scale.

The bill will serve to devalue the land around the hog pens so it can be bought up cheaply by the hog company.

Pig odor is quite horrible, I really feel sorry for the people being abused by their own legislature and courts.