In Duplin County, North Carolina, pigs outnumber people by a ratio of 35 to one and their waste amounts to an enormous problem. This is a place where hog excrement sits in uncapped “lagoons” several acres wide before being sprayed into the air at 200 gallons per minute. It’s where even the slightest breeze can grab hold of the foul odor and carry it to outdoor cookouts, yard games, and porches many miles away.

Waste mismanagement 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. In the process of relating the legal battles, Addison reveals the many examples of environmental pollution and racial inequality embedded in our industrialized food system.

Unlike wildfire smoke or oil spills, pollution from hog farms is not something you can easily capture in a photograph. It is true that aerosolized hog feces from Smithfield Farms end up in neighbors’ laundry and on their kitchen counters. It is also true that the putrid stench makes some residents unable to go outside in their own yards. But proving injustice when Black plaintiffs are up against one of the wealthiest industries in the United States? Addison frames this as nearly impossible.

Smithfield Farms is no longer American-owned. A Chinese company bought it in 2012. The reason? It’s much cheaper to raise hogs here. The Chinese government doesn’t allow its hog farmers to use lagoons and spray fields with waste. In China, hog operations must work to protect neighbors. Addison writes that in terms of hog waste management, “China is a paragon of progress and North Carolina is a backwater of pollution.” In Duplin County, he writes, “waste is sprayed out into the air and onto the soil until the ground can hold no more of it, until a breath smells of effluent and the streams run with poison.”

In 2013, after years spent filing health and safety complaints, more than 500 North Carolina residents who lived near confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), most of them Black, sued Smithfield. Wallace and Graham, the legal team that agreed to take on the case, began by representing Brandon Taylor, a 26-year-old Smithfield employee who died from inhaling toxic fumes of hog sludge. Over the next seven years, Wallace and Graham move on to represent the neighbors, eventually bringing five “nuisance” litigations to federal court between 2018 and 2020. 

Addison excels in explaining legal jargon, which can be tearfully dull, in a clear and informative way. Even so, I struggled to stay alert during his long courtroom scenes—until switching to an audible version of the book. Listening to the back and forth of attorneys and witnesses paired with Addison’s vivid visual descriptions made me feel as if I was right there in the courtroom. I found myself caring deeply about the outcome of the lawyers’ opening speeches, witness testimonies, and strategy deliberations.

Some may criticize Addison’s writing as overly dramatic or fraught with tropes. He casts Smithfield allies as evil barons, describing one state legislator as “cantankerous…with florid jowls and an ivory duck-bill bouffant.” But given that this same elected official “threatened plaintiffs” and called their legal team “pimps and rapists,” it’s hard not to agree with the unflattering portraits.

Considering the length of the book, I would have preferred more information about the racist history of industrial sitings. Warren County, just two hours north of Duplin County, is regarded as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. In 1982, more than 500 members of the predominantly Black county were arrested for protesting a disposal facility for polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated soil.

Although the landfill was constructed as planned, the protests sparked nationwide action against disparities in health risks from pollution, including the 1987 Toxic Waste and Race study by the United Church of Christ. The landmark study identified race as the “most significant factor in siting hazardous waste facilities” and demonstrated that three-fifths of Black and hispanic people in the United States lived in a community with a toxic waste site. The same holds true for North Carolina’s first CAFOs, also known as factory farms, which were located where “most of the neighbors were poor and Black, the children of sharecroppers with limited education.”

Addison doesn’t dwell on the other victims of factory farms, but his book makes it hard not to think about the profound level of animal cruelty involved. Pigs are intelligent and social animals, with a preference for cleanliness. But very early in their lives they are herded into tiny, extremely crowded pens filled with each other’s filth. It is heartbreaking to know that pigs, so affectionate they’re often compared to dogs, spend their very short lives without ever breathing fresh air or spending time in the sun.

As a student of environmental health, I am not new to the genre of environmental nonfiction. But Wastelands stands out for its ability to illuminate the gory underbelly of large-scale animal agriculture. In the end, Addison’s compassionate and empowering storytelling of environmental law makes Wastelands a worthwhile read. Unlike most environmental novels, it ends with a win. I think that’s reason enough to give it a try.

Nicole Burns is a Stone Pier Press News Fellow based in Seattle, WA.

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