Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 10/15/15


Smithfield Foods Inc. provided a statement to Meatingplace in response to the legal fling by the Southern Environmental Law Center charging that the company's hog production operation was in violation of a consent decree entered into with environmental groups in 2006.

At issue is the data collection and testing that was to be done by an outside consulting firm. The filing, on behalf of Waterkeeper Alliance and Sound Rivers, charges Murphy-Brown, a unit of Smithfield, with blocking the consultants' work.

Smithfield's statement said, in part:
"Smithfield Foods strongly denies the statements made by the Waterkeeper Alliance. We are fully complying with the agreement that we reached with the Waterkeeper Alliance in U.S. Eastern District Court in 2006. We welcome the court’s review of this matter.

Under the 2006 agreement, we agreed to a risk-ranking system that evaluated whether 260 hog farms in North Carolina presented any potential groundwater risk. The system identified only 11 of the 260 farms (4.2 percent) as warranting further evaluation for potential risk.

Following that evaluation, Smithfield independently commissioned a third-party study to conduct onsite investigations and data collection at those 11 farms. The Waterkeeper Alliance instead insists that the farms undertake what it calls “corrective” steps that we believe are unnecessary and inefficient and that even pose safety risks.

This is simply a disagreement over what the agreement requires. We at Smithfield have sought to resolve the disagreement for two years. We even entered into mediation, which was unsuccessful. It will now be up to the court to resolve the matter."

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