Smithfield Foods is in big trouble following a drone exposing how vile the environmental practices are at one of the pig farms located in North Carolina. Filmmaker Mark Devries is the person who flew the drone over the hidden farm to find out what is going on behind the thick forest that surrounds and covers the farm. The drone was able to film a huge cess pool about the size of four football field beside the warehouse that is packed with thousands of pigs.
A former local farmer, Don Webb said, “It is a cess pool that you put feces and urine in a hole in the ground that you dump a toxic waste in.” All of the pig waste is flushed into the giant pool that is large enough to cater to the waste needs of a small city. What disturbs us more is what happens with the waste.
The waste is moved into huge garden sprayers from the pool that are strewn about that premises that emit toxic mist into the air. Once it catches wind, the pellets of urine and fecal matter end up contaminating the neighboring communities. As per a local resident, Elsie Herring, “You think it’s raining. We don’t open the doors, windows but the odor comes in. It takes your breath away and then you start gagging, you get headaches.”
That ‘cesspool’ is called a manure lagoon and is a common practice on farms of all sizes.