Published on: 2002-11-24

Smithfield Packing Co. in Tar Heel will be allowed to slaughter nearly 8 million hogs a year beginning Dec. 1.

And starting the next December, the plant will be allowed - under a new permit issued by the N.C. Division of Water Resources - to kill nearly 8.5 million a year, or about 85 percent of all hogs slaughtered in North Carolina each year.

Staff photo by Steve Aldridge Miriam Lorenzo, left, and Jorge Barrera check hog waste as it goes into a nitrification tank at a contract grower's farm in Duplin County. The two work for a Spanish company that supplied some of the equipment for the facility.

Pork industry officials have pushed for the increased slaughter cap because they say too many of the state's farmers must ship their animals out of North Carolina for slaughter.

Some environmental advocates believe that increasing the capacity of the state's slaughterhouses will lead to more hogs - and more manure, odor and environmental problems - in a state where farmers already raise nearly 10 million a year.

Another group of people, from scientists to legislators, believe the problems associated with millions of hogs are about to be solved. They are trusting that science, the entrepreneurial spirit and good business will prove to a wary state that big hog farms can continue to inject billions into the state's economy without destroying its environment.

On Monday, Lewis Fetterman steered his minivan down a dirt road leading to a hog farm in Duplin County. He stopped the van to disinfect its wheels, a biosecurity measure that each visitor to the farm must follow. Disease carried in on a tire could devastate the 13,000 hogs that are housed in the 18 barns on the farm.

Fetterman has been in the hog business most of his life. At one time, he was the president of Lundy Packing Co. in Clinton, working alongside his wife, Annabelle, whose family started the business more than 50 years ago. Fetterman, who is 81, is officially retired. That does not mean he has quit working.

A couple of years ago, Fetterman started a business he calls Super Soil Systems USA Inc. He recruited soil scientist Ray Campbell to help him get the business rolling. Together, they are trying to figure out a way to solve the biggest problem that has cropped up as North Carolina's hog population has boomed - what to do with the waste that so many hogs produce.

Farmers dump the waste into open lagoons, where the solids settle and bacteria help break down some of the material. Then they spray some of the remaining liquid on farm fields and pump some of it back into the hog houses. But the lagoons can leak or overflow, polluting groundwater and streams and rivers. More than 40 lagoons were flooded - and dumped their waste - during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

''We're trying to prove to the world that we can do away with lagoons," Fetterman said.

To that end, Fetterman and Campbell have been building a unique waste management system on the Duplin County farm. The system combines several technologies that together are supposed to separate the solids from hog waste and remove the nitrogen, phosphorous and pathogens from the remaining liquid.

The Super Soil system is one of 18 technologies being built and tested with funding from Smithfield Foods under an agreement the company signed with state officials in July 2000. The intent of that agreement was to find alternative waste treatment methods to replace the lagoons and spray fields. Smithfield provided $25 million to the project.

Once successful new methods are identified, Smithfield has agreed to implement them on its 275 company farms.

Mike Williams, who is coordinating the effort at N.C. State University, said new technologies will be found. ''We have something real on the horizon," he said. Within the next year or two, the feasible alternatives will be clear, he added, and he will present his recommendations to the state.

Fetterman and Campbell believe their system stands a good chance at being chosen.

''What we're doing is making nature work efficiently for us," Campbell said.

The Super Soil system works by first separating the solids from the liquid manure. Those solids are then used to make different kinds of planting materials.

Staff photo by Steve Aldridge Ray Campbell holds a growing medium made from treated hog waste. This medium is used to start pine tree seeds.

Campbell has already developed and tested several such materials, including one used to grow tobacco transplants and another for ornamental plants and shrubs.

After the solids are removed, the water is piped into several tanks, where bacteria are used to turn nitrogen into harmless nitrogen gas and to remove phosphorous. The process removes 70 percent to 75 percent of the nitrogen, 85 percent to 90 percent of the phosphorous and 95 percent of the copper and zinc.

Removing the nutrients is critical. Today's spray fields must be monitored closely for nutrient overload. If the nutrients build up and run off, they can reach surface waters, where they cause algae blooms and fish kills.

Of the 18 technologies being tried, about half are nearly set up and ready for testing, Williams said. Other systems will be completed in 2004, two years after the state's initial deadline. Williams said it will take that much time to collect the necessary information about the waste-disposal systems and make the most educated choice about which ones should be installed on Smithfield's farms.

Independent farmers and those who grow hogs under contract for Smithfield would be encouraged to replace their lagoons with the new methods as well.

In 1997, North Carolina instituted a moratorium that forbids the construction of new hog farms or the expansion of existing ones. That moratorium will expire in September 2003 unless legislators decide to extend it.

Michelle Nowlin of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill said she is concerned that the state's decision to raise the slaughter capacity at the Tar Heel plant will place pressure on state legislators to lift the moratorium. She said the state should have waited for the results of the research into new methods before allowing such an increase.

Any growth in the industry should be stopped until the waste and odor problems associated with factory farms are fixed, Nowlin said.

''This sends the wrong signal as to where we are in facing this problem," Nowlin said.

Last year, South Carolina strengthened its regulations on the construction of large hog farms. People there were concerned that North Carolina's booming hog industry would push south into that state, fueled by the capacity of the Tar Heel slaughterhouse. Many of South Carolina's existing hog farms are in the Pee Dee region of the state, just over the border from North Carolina and near the plant in Bladen County.

Marion Sadler, a program director for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, said the concerns arose when two large pork companies expressed an interest in building large slaughterhouses in the state and two farmers applied for permits to build big hog farms.

''The concern has been that with a moratorium in North Carolina, the swine industry was looking to move into South Carolina big time," Sadler said. ''Is there a concern about family farms turning to factory farms? Yes, and we have tried to update our regulations accordingly."

Under South Carolina's regulations, hog farms with more than 7,000 animals cannot be located within 25 miles of each other. The state also toughened regulations that keep livestock operations farther from neighbors and surface waters.

Both companies that had planned slaughterhouses in South Carolina withdrew their applications.

Sadler said officials in South Carolina are watching closely to see what waste-disposal methods come from North Carolina's research. South Carolina farmers are obligated, by the state's regulations, to implement the best available technology on large hog farms, those with more than 7,000 animals. On those large farms, they are required to do so regardless of cost. On smaller farms, the best technologies that are economically feasible must be implemented.

While many people are awaiting the results of the tests of the new technologies, Smithfield has been working on other ways to make its farms more environmentally friendly.

Don Butler is a spokesman for Murphy-Brown, the management company for Smithfield's farms. He began two years ago to implement an international environmental standard on each of the 275 company-owned farms. The standard, which is known as ISO 14001, is the same standard that large manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard and General Motors, use to limit environmental problems associated with their businesses.

Smithfield is the first livestock production company to attain the standard, Butler said. The company had to identify every aspect of the business that could adversely affect the environment. Then Smithfield had to develop procedures to manage those areas that were identified. All of Smithfield's farms east of the Mississippi River have been certified, Butler said, and the company is working on a similar environmental management system for the Tar Heel slaughterhouse.

Staff photo by Steve Aldridge Lewis Fetterman, left, and Ray Campbell talk on the catwalk at a plant set up to separate solids from hog waste and to remove nitrogen, phosphorus and pathogens from the remaining liquid.

''It has changed the culture of our business," Butler said. ''Before, the people inside a farm might say that environmental protection was the other guy's job. Now, we are required to train everybody whose job may have an environmental impact. They own a piece of environmental responsibility."

Under the system, each farm manager is required to inspect a checklist of items - from lagoon levels to the condition of fans and other equipment - every day to make sure that everything is working properly. Periodic internal audits of those inspections by company officials and independent teams are also conducted.

Butler said the environmental management systems have reduced regulatory violations on company farms by 87 percent in the last two years.

Butler said some bad press in the last several years helped motivate the company to try to meet the international standard.

''Now, we compare ourselves against the same standard that IBM uses," Butler said. ''If we are environmentally responsible as judged by independent auditors, we need to be able to say to the world, 'We achieved this standard.'"

Nowlin, of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the international standard is a public relations tool that does not guarantee that the company will protect the environment.

''It is definitely a positive," Nowlin said. But the inherent problems of factory hog farms remain, she said - the odors, the build-up of nutrients in the soils around the farms and the open pits of waste.

Williams, of N.C. State University, said he believes that the ongoing research will help with those problems and that state officials will keep the moratorium in place until the results are available.

''Clearly the message I get from the General Assembly, as well as the industry and environmental groups, the people that I work with," Williams said, ''is, yes, the sense is the moratorium will be continued until we make these technology determinations."

Staff writer Nomee Landis can be reached at landisn@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3595.