Swine time

Smithfield Foods seeks to boost production at its big Bladen County slaughterhouse. Let's have a cleanup first

Pigs are big here. Fueled by phenomenal growth in the 1980s and '90s, this mass-production industry stretches across Eastern North Carolina from sows' confined breeding pens to the world's biggest pork factory. With 19 percent of America's pigs, we're the second-ranking swine state behind Iowa. There are more pigs (nearly 10 million) than Tar Heels.

Yes, pigs are big, and after a shaky start tainted by environmental catastrophes and public complaints, it looks as if the industry is here to stay. But if we're going to live with this business, the business must become easier to live with.

Smithfield Foods' push for a permit to supersize its slaughterhouse in Bladen County -- it's already said to be the largest such facility in the world, able to dispatch upwards of 30,000 hogs per day -- is a chance to help make that happen. Any increases there should be tied to progress on the outstanding environmental issue associated with the industry: its continued reliance on open-air waste lagoons.

It's true that Smithfield, its subsidiaries and other producers have stepped smartly away from some of the worst farming practices of their early days. Hog lagoons are now less susceptible to overflows, more care is taken with the spraying of effluent onto fields, and waste-related nitrogen is less likely to pollute streams.

Following through on a legal agreement with the state, Smithfield has spent millions to help finance research on improved waste-disposal methods. That research, under the auspices of N.C. State University, has uncovered methods with promise but, so far, costs that remain a disincentive for conversion. Demonstration projects are under way. Just wait.

Yet out in the flat, low-lying fields that stretch toward the coast, thousands of plastic pipes still drip the biological waste from all those millions of hogs into open pools, diluted only by the water used to flush the barns and by the rain. The technology, meant to achieve decomposition of the waste in the lagoons, is still basic. The stink still fouls the air.

It has been 16 years since Smithfield's Bladen County slaughterhouse won its initial state permit (without a thorough environmental review), 11 years since The N&O won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on the industry's power and problems, seven years since then-Attorney General Mike Easley called for a strict timetable to eliminate lagoons as he brokered a deal with Smithfield and Premium Standard Farms to study alternatives.

Now, Smithfield seeks to slaughter up to 1 million more hogs a year, about 12 percent more than currently allowed. It needs a permit to discharge the additional treated wastewater from the plant into the Cape Fear River. The state has 90 days to decide.

This request dovetails with discussion about the expiration, in September, of a 10-year moratorium on new lagoons in the state. Some industry critics want the moratorium extended; others urge a permanent ban on new lagoons, forcing any new farms to use newer methods. Let's widen the deal.

Piglet to pork chop, this is an integrated industry. It has shown that it can change for the better -- for example, Smithfield recently agreed to phase out the much-criticized breeding cages. In exchange for slaughterhouse expansion, North Carolina should at last require a real schedule for replacing the old-fashioned lagoons. And the state should bear down on safety enforcement at the Bladen plant to make sure increased pork production doesn't mean a surge in worker injuries.

The industry here enjoys natural advantages and access to markets. It's time to deploy the hog world's best practices.