Big Poultry in North Carolina

North Carolina’s poultry industry has taken flight. Farms now stand near the mountains, the coast and the state’s largest cities. The state’s largest ag industry raises more than 1 billion chickens and turkeys each year. The birds generate billions of pounds of untreated waste. Some of the pollutants seep into streams and rivers. Don’t know much about it? That’s no surprise. Legislators cloak big poultry in secrecy. Environmental regulators almost never inspect the state’s 4,600-plus poultry farms. They can’t monitor where all the waste goes. They don’t even know where most of the farms are. Neighbors complain about the stench and other nuisances. But state laws leave courts and local governments nearly powerless to help. Multi-billion dollar companies running the show shift financial risk to contract farmers, who often live with massive debt and little income. All of that is by design. But what’s the cost?