The Real Cost of Hog Farming: How North Carolina’s Pork Industry Fuels an Environmental Justice Crisis
By Erika Pietrzak, October 29, 2025
Billions of gallons of hog waste are poisoning Eastern North Carolina, and the communities hit hardest are Black and brown families living nearby.
Eastern North Carolina is known for its beautiful beaches, large military base, and barbeque. The last of these, however, has a dark side impacting thousands of residents. Since the 1500s, when colonizers first brought domestic swine as a reliable food source, North Carolina has been one of the leading pig producers in the United States. This kind of farming produces significant pollution in the air and waters of the state’s residents, disproportionately affecting Black and Indigenous communities.
After a decrease in prices in the late 1990s, small hog farmers were pushed out of the state’s hog industry. Since then, fewer large operations under corporate contracts have consolidated in the coastal part of the state. Today, pigs outnumber residents in eastern North Carolina by nearly 30 to 1, consuming vast resources and producing significant amounts of waste. These hogs are often located in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) where thousands of hogs are kept in the same building, producing extreme concentrations of “ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, hundreds of volatile organic compounds, dusts, and endotoxins.” Beyond the respiratory dysfunction these pollutants cause, the smell considerably decreases quality of life near CAFOs and may be associated with mental disorders and lower immune functions. Despite these dangers, most hog operations are located in areas with high dependence on well water for drinking. The low lying flood plains and high water tables make eastern North Carolina’s hog industry particularly harmful for the region.
North Carolina is the third largest state producer of pigs and hogs with almost two thousand more than the next closest state. The sheer number of pigs produces a significant odor that reduces property prices and forces many residents to purchase candles or scent for their homes, even miles away from the farms. This is exacerbated by large industrial hog operations that spray billions of gallons of hog urine and feces across North Carolina’s fields. Testing nearby CAFOs found high levels of nitrate in drinking water supplies and groundwater contamination, signifying that the sprayed manure is polluting crucial water stores. Despite the industry saying that they have educated the local communities on hog farming impacts, residents say otherwise.
Source: Civil Eats
Over the last few decades, residents have noticed increasingly negative impacts from the hog industry in Eastern NC, with premature death and unequal pollution being some of the biggest complaints from the residents. In 2021, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality passed a Farm Act that “allow[s] hog operations to use giant pits of untreated hog feces and urine to produce methane gas, or biogas, while spraying the harmful waste on surrounding fields with minimal oversight.” Despite being criticized for perpetuating harm by enabling the continued use of harmful lagoon-and-sprayfield systems for the waste left after biogas capture, rather than enforcing cleaner technologies, the state enacted the law in 2022. The law lacks common sense protections against pollution and goes against the state law requiring clean technology, despite such solutions existing for hog farming.
In 2022, Sampson and Duplin county pushed “for protections from the hog industry that primarily dumps pollution on Black and Brown, Latino, and Indigenous communities, and areas where household income is below the state average.” The Southern Environmental Law Center led the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate discriminatory practices in the state’s hog farming pollution practices. The false narrative of public education given by the industry and the increasing encroachment on neighborhoods present one case of the racial gap in environmental health, serving as a “multiplier on deep seated inequity.”
The locations of these hog farms are expertly chosen to most impact marginalized communities, taking advantage of these communities’ lack of perceived political power. A study conducted in 2000 found that 534.3 of the 1,440 million pounds of hogs (37.1 percent) are located in the highest poverty areas (more than 21 percent impoverished), with each increasing poverty group increasing their proportion of hogs. The highest quantile poverty group was 7.2 times as likely to have hog operations when adjusted for population. The same trend was found for non white populations, with 513 million pounds of hogs found in areas with 44 percent or more nonwhite populations (35.6 percent). The highest quantile nonwhite group was 4.7 times as likely to have hog operations when adjusted for population.
One potent example of the hog industry’s impact in Eastern NC is Billy Kinlaw, a white man who purchased land in the rural 350-person, majority-Black community of White Oak. Kinlaw had no intention of ever living on this property, but intended to grow his contract for Murphy-Brown (Smithfield Food offshoot). On his nearly three-thousand-acre lot, Kinlaw quickly housed over fourteen thousand hogs in a dozen swine houses with three waste lagoons surrounding them. The homes around the farm, mostly filled by families who had been there for generations, had to endure “the flies, buzzards and endless sounds of pigs squealing … the noise and disruption from the parade of heavy trucks rambling down unpaved roads; minute particles of feces that marred their homes, cars, mailboxes and laundry from hog waste flushed into open lagoons and sprayed onto feed crops as fertilizer.” One of these neighbors, Joyce Louretha Richardson McKiver, led one of 26 federal nuisance lawsuits by more than 500 plaintiffs against Murphy Brown. In 2018 and 2019, 550 million USD were awarded to 36 plaintiffs, though that was then changed to a mere 98 million USD. The Smithfields attempted to get a retrial, but the three judge court appeals panel rejected the attempt, saying that the company continued harmful practices knowingly, “exhibiting wanton or willful disregard of the neighbors’ rights to enjoyment of their property.”
Source: WHQR
Some of the hog waste gets turned into energy, but it is not clean energy, which biogas tends to be called. Billions of gallons of untreated hog waste are stored in lagoons, “which are essentially pits of urine and feces, pollut[ing] our rivers and streams, dirt[ing] our air, creat[ing] an unbearable stench, mak[ing] people sick, and can even lead to premature death.” The waste’s harmful nutrients, bacteria, and pathogens contaminate nearby water systems, including drinking water. The pollutants create algal blooms, which kill fish and develop “dead zones” where marine life is forced out or deceased. These deadly areas seep into people’s homes and land when heavy rains and floods occur, exacerbating already harmful extreme weather events. This biogas is sprayed onto other fields as “the cheapest, most harmful way possible to handle the billions of gallons [of] hog waste produced at the 2,000+ industrial hog operations in N.C.” The waste not only contaminates waterways, but also fills the air and causes nearby people to get sick.
Barbecues in North Carolina have a dark side that many overlook when enjoying pulled pork or bacon. The state’s hog industry dominates the eastern region, where large-scale farms often surround low-income and minority communities. These neighborhoods face polluted air and water, along with increased health risks and diminished quality of life. This is just one example of how environmental justice harms thousands across the United States. Raising public awareness about these kinds of environmental injustices is essential, and we must dedicate time and resources to solve them. Since the end of the Justice40 initiative, advancing these solutions has become even more difficult. It is even more important now to uplift narratives of environmental justice issues, donate to organizations fighting them, and participate in efforts to solve them.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
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