‘Suffocating closeness’: US judge condemns ‘appalling conditions’ on industrial farms

Pork giant Smithfield has settled with North Carolina residents who sued over stench, flies and truck traffic from Kinlaw Farms

A US judge has issued a blistering condemnation of industrial farming practices. The judgment comes as one US meat giant finally settles after a six-year legal battle with plaintiffs who sued the company over the stench, flies, buzzards and truck traffic coming from its industrial swine farms in North Carolina.

J Harvie Wilkinson III, one of the judges in a case that pitted locals against the Smithfield subsidiary formerly known as Murphy-Brown, decried the outrageous conditions" at Kinlaw Farms, the operation at the center of the lawsuit - conditions that there is no reason to suppose were unique to that facility".