Pig poop lagoon

Future Perfect

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Tech News, News

4.5 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

North Carolina is home to around 9 million pigs. Many of those pigs live in big factory farms, and all of those pigs produce a lot of waste. On these factory farms, that waste is collected in big outdoor lagoons, and then sprayed out across fields as fertilizer. People living in communities nearby complain their daily lives are disrupted by the stench, and they fear that it’s affecting their health. On this episode, three North Carolinians team up with a lawyer to try and fight back against these lagoon and sprayfield systems. Further listening and reading: ProPublica’s Talia Buford has done in-depth reporting on the problems of overflowing pig waste lagoons in North Carolina, and you can see images of the aftermath of lagoon flooding from Hurricane Florence collected here. Pig waste from factory farms is not just a problem in North Carolina. You can read about issues in Iowa, Minnesota, and Ohio. A profile of the late epidemiologist Steve Wing, whose research into hog waste deeply informs this episode The Natural Resources Defense Council’s 2019 report on CAFOs Marianne Engelman Lado directs the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School, which digs into a wide range of similar environmental justice issues We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to [email protected]. Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week. This podcast is made possible thanks to support from Animal Charity Evaluators. They research and promote the most effective ways to help animals. Featuring: Marianne Engleman Lado, Environmental Justice Clinic, Vermont Law School Hosts: Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox More to explore: Follow all of Future Perfect’s reporting on the Future of Meat. Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Follow Us: Vox.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:26.3	Reverend Ella Skipwith schedules her life around a smell.
0:30.6	She wakes up and goes to check for it, almost like the weather.
0:34.0	I open the door to see if the odor is out there.
0:40.3	Okay?
0:41.3	If it's not out there, then if it's anything that I have to do outside, such as more than
0:47.3	long or rake the leaves or anything that I have to do outside, I try to hear up and do it
0:52.3	why the odor is not there. Because once the odor gets
0:56.5	started, you cannot go outside. You have to keep your windows closed and you have to keep the doors
1:02.8	closed so that the odor does not get in the house. This odor is the smell of hog waste from giant industrial hog operations.
1:14.0	And it's a common smell in counties across eastern North Carolina.
1:18.3	The state is the third largest producer of swine in the U.S.
1:22.0	It's home to more than 9 million pigs.
1:24.8	All those pigs generate a lot of waste, and that waste generates the odor that people
1:29.6	like Ella have to live with. For decades now, they have struggled to gather in their yards
	...

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