Unlike wildfire smoke or oil spills, pollution from hog farms is not something you can easily capture in a photograph. This issue is the subject of Wastelands, a nonfiction environmental legal thriller by Corban Addison, an attorney and novelist. The 400-page book reports on a series of court cases filed against Smithfield Foods by neighbors of its industrial hog operations.
Read MoreThe truth is no one really knows how much factory farm waste is escaping into our environment because no federal agency collects consistent and reliable information on the number, size, and location of large-scale agricultural operations, nor the pollution they’re emitting. Without this information, no one can monitor and hold CAFOS accountable for mismanaged waste and related health and environmental damage. Stanford Law Professor Daniel Ho and PhD student Cassandra Handan-Nader are hoping to change that.
