THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 2, 1996 TAG: 9608020432
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: 68 lines
A Virginia company is telling the state that expanding its slaughterhouse in Bladen County would have less impact on North Carolina's environment than a similar plant proposed by a Nebraska firm.
Carolina Food Processors Inc. argues that the state should approve its plan to kill another 40,000 hogs a week in Bladen County because any effects of its expansion are going to happen anyway.
The type of explosive growth in the hog industry that worries state environmental officials will come only if another slaughtering plant is built in the Southeast, the company said, attempting to deflect attention toward one of its competitors, IBP Inc.
``Another plant will stimulate growth of independent growers,'' Carolina Food said in a report requested by state environmental officials.
The Nebraska meatpacker has proposed building a slaughtering plant near Rocky Mount or at Marion, S.C., but it has run up against strong opposition in both areas.
State officials required Carolina Food to show the environmental impact of its proposed expansion.
The company filed a 400-page report and five books of supporting documents, but it did so under protest. Company officials said pork production is something they cannot control.
Carolina Food contends that North Carolina's hog population will increase by some 4 million swine on 410 new farms by the end of next year even if the Bladen County slaughtering plant isn't allowed to expand.
But agricultural economists counter that farmers will slow production if slaughtering houses aren't built or expanded because it costs about $7 more a head for a farmer to have a hog slaughtered outside North Carolina.
Environmental advocates agree that slaughtering houses are partly responsible for the explosivegrowth of North Carolina's $1 billion swine industry.
``Growth has been spawned by plans to slaughter here - not somewhere else,'' said Michelle Nowlin, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill.
State environmental officials wouldn't comment on the report because the company's permit is still pending, but are expected to schedule a public hearing after reviewing the documents.
Since 1989, the state's hog population has grown by 5.9 million, or 223 percent, making North Carolina the second-largest hog producer in the nation. Public pressure for tighter regulation also has grown, especially after a series of hog-waste lagoon spills last summer.
In the next year and a half, projected expansion of the industry - which Carolina Food expects to provide the hogs it needs - will add 410 new farms and expand 85 existing farms, the company concludes. Those farms, primarily east of Interstate 95, will produce about 4 million gallons of hog waste a day that later will be pumped onto more than 13,000 acres of farmland, according to the report.
Expansion of the industry or the plant won't harm water or air quality, company officials said, because the new or expanded farms must comply with stricter state rules.
``An extensive literature review produced no documented evidence that properly designed, constructed and operated swine farms are significantly contributing to water quality degradation in North Carolina,'' the report states.
With water conservation programs recycling 1.5 million to 2 million gallons of water a day, a 33 percent increase in the size of the plant would result in only a 10 percent increase in the amount of wastewater discharge, the report said.
Company officials also said they've received only two complaints in the past four years about odors from the plant. by CNB