The Chinese owners of Smithfield Foods are on the hook for $50 million, thanks to a federal court in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ten neighbors filed suit arguing, that the waste treatment methods of the world’s largest pork producer were not only substandard but have been willfully ignored by the company for decades. The plaintiffs’ attorneys singled out anaerobic lagoons where waste from 15,000 hogs was stored behind livestock pens before being liquefied and sprayed onto nearby fields. “These cases are about North Carolina family property rights and a clean environment,” attorney Mona Lisa Wallace told The News & Observer. “We are now preparing for the next [trial], which is scheduled for the end of May.”
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