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If you’ve spent any time in eastern NC and ever inquired about that peculiar odor, chances are you’ve been told, “That’s the smell of money!”
That is the stock response industrial hog farming and Smithfield supporters use when trying to gaslight anybody who questions why the mainly poor, Black residents are burdened by air, water and land pollution that comes with packing tens of thousands of hogs onto a few acres of land.
The Smell of Money is also the name of the new documentary by noted filmmaker Shawn Bannon. The documentary chronicles what it's like living near these factory farms and having state legislators who not only enable them but work to strip the farm neighbors of any legal options to remedy the situation.
Jamie Berger (Pandemic of Injustice) wrote the project and actress Kate Mara (House of Cards) and writer-director David Lowery (The Green Knight) signed on as executive producers.
The documentary recounts the unbelievable David v. Goliath battle led by Elsie Herring that most people in the Coastal Plains already know.
Herring lived in Duplin County on land that has been in her family for more than a century. It became almost uninhabitable when the concentrated animal farming operations (CAFOs) moved in and brought buzzards, flies and horrible odors from industrial swine operations.
After being rained on by hog shit pumped from the waste lagoons of the neighboring farm (a process still used by thousands of North Carolina hog to this day), Herring rallied a bunch of poor, mostly Black Duplin and Sampson county residents in a decades-long battle against Smithfield Foods, one of the world’s most powerful companies.
Elsie Herring. Photo Credit: Earth Justice
Herring and her colleagues signed petitions, pleaded with their elected officials and even testified before the United States Congress––all to no avail.
In 2013, she and the community teamed up with Salisbury lawyer Mona Lisa Wallace to take the world’s largest pork company to court in an epic, nine-year legal battle to reclaim their rights to clean air, pure water, and a life free from the stench of hog poop.
“One of the things that possessed me to take this case was just the humiliation of getting on a school bus and everyone making fun of you for smelling like hogs or waste. Hearing those stories broke my heart,” said Wallace.
In response, Smithfield launched an aggressive social media campaign and hired a slew of lobbyists to push for laws to hinder the cases.
Wallace’s lawsuits against Murphy-Brown LLC d/b/a Smithfield Hog Production involved 500 plaintiffs and 26 separate multi-plaintiff lawsuits. Wallace won every jury trial, earning her the NC 2020 Trial Lawyer of the Year award.
Both infuriating and informative, the documentary includes nationally prominent voices like New Jersey Senator Cory Booker as well as locally prominent ones like Larry Baldwin, the Waterkeeper Alliance’s campaign coordinator for Pure Farms, Pure Water.
The Smell of Money made its International Premiere at the Hot Docs Festival and its World Premiere at the Sarasota Film Festival where it won the Documentary Feature Jury Prize. The film will also be screened at the Mindful Eating Film Festival in August 2022. Herring did not live to see the film completed. She passed away in May, 2021 but left a legacy as an environmental warrior.
**Cover photo credit: The Smell of Money
