Another Smithfield Hog Farm Found Guilty by Jury

A second jury trial in North Carolina against Smithfield Foods ended last Friday, and the jurors’ verdict was “guilty” once more in the nuisance case. This time an Eastern Carolina couple was the beneficiary of a $25 million award, reported the Raleigh News & Observer. “Elvis and Vonnie Williams live in Duplin County, near a 4,700-hog farm owned by Joey Carter, a former Beulaville police chief,” writes Anne Blythe, author of the Raleigh News & Observer article. “The Williamses did not sue their neighbor, though. They sued Smithfield Foods as part of a legal strategy that a team of lawyers began crafting in 2014.” The jury reportedly deliberated for three days before making its decision. This is the second of 26 lawsuits by 500 neighbors complaining about hog operations in eastern North Carolina, wrote Farm Journal's PORK digital editor Sara Brown in an earlier article on Farm Journal’s PORK. Testimonies during the first three-week trial say Smithfield should have taken more steps to modernize manure technologies on the farm like in other states, Brown wrote. Even though pig farmers in North Carolina are doing nothing illegal, the lawyers have targeted Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world. New technologies are used when economically feasible, industry leaders say, but Smithfield has said some of those technologies are too expensive at this time. They estimate it would cost approximately $1 million per farm to change their manure-handling systems...MORE