North Carolina has been grappling for years with the enormous quantity of waste produced by its hog farms. But the state now has more than twice as many poultry farms, and they are responsible for creating over four times as much nitrogen and phosphorus waste as the hog industry, says a new report from the Environmental Working Group.
EWG argues the state must consider the impact of poultry waste when thinking about how to regulate the agriculture industry. “If you’re setting standards for pig waste, you can’t ignore the recent explosive growth of the poultry industry, which has largely flown under the radar,” said Soren Rundquist, EWG director of spatial analysis, in a press release.
North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality is currently accepting public comment on waste permits for concentrated animal feeding operations, which it reviews every five years. Advocates say that the environmental impact of the poultry industry in the state should be an integral part of the conversation, alongside the hog industry, which has captured media attention in recent years.
While the state has had a moratorium on building new hog operations since 1997, the poultry industry has ballooned in recent years. There are now over 515 million birds in the state, according to the EWG report, “Under the Radar.” Between 2008 and 2016, more than 60 poultry operations opened every year in North Carolina. Between 2016 and 2018, that rate doubled to more than 120 operations per year. In all over 10 years, 735 new industrial poultry operations opened in the state.
The report found that many of those poultry farms crowded into the counties of the state already most heavily populated with pigs. Duplin and Sampson counties are now the top counties for both swine and poultry. The report found that 23 percent of the decade’s new poultry operations are located in these two counties. The counties together boast 82 million chickens and 4 million pigs — and just over 120,000 people.
When people drink or inhale water and air containing pollutants from these operations, they can experience a range of health effects including asthma and bacterial infections.
North Carolina residents have participated in a series of lawsuits against Smithfield subsidiary Murphy Brown in recent years, blaming the pork company for poorly managing its waste and polluting waterways. Plaintiffs have so far been awarded millions of dollars in federal nuisance trials. The lawsuits were predominantly brought by African-American residents of Duplin and surrounding counties, who disproportionately have experienced the effects of industrial farming in the state.