Equity In Every Drop: Series Two

Series two includes six episodes focused on the issues and advocacy priorities of our Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign.

In this first episode of Series Two of Equity In Every Drop, Jamie Berger, a filmmaker whose movie, The Smell of Money, highlights the impacts of factory farming in North Carolina, and Larry Baldwin, the coordinator of Waterkeeper Alliance’s Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign, join to discuss the true costs of industrialized animal agriculture.

The conversation provides an overview of factory farming, including the impacts on waterways and ecosystems, as well as the burdens placed on local communities. Larry Baldwin, who has worked on the issue of factory farms and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), brings decades of insight and experience to the conversation. Jamie Berger, who spent years documenting the issue for The Smell of Money, is reunited with Larry Baldwin, who is featured prominently in her film.

The episode highlights the true cost of factory farms and provides the listener with a transparent look at who is paying the cost for all those sides of bacon.

Stay tuned! New monthly episodes will be posted here and anywhere you get your podcasts. Click “Subscribe” in the episode widget above to access links to popular podcast apps.

Thank you for listening, sharing, and supporting our mission to ensure everyone’s right to clean water. Together, we demand equity in every drop.

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Waterkeeper S 2, Ep 1 – The True Costs of Factory Farms

Thomas Hynes: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to another episode of equity in every drop. We are joined today by Larry Baldwin, the campaign coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance’s Pure Farms, Pure Waters efforts. The Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign addresses the failure to regulate pollution from industrialized swine, poultry, and dairy.

These facilities are devastating rivers, lakes, and estuaries, and lowering quality of life in countless communities throughout the United States. We are also joined by Jamie Berger, whose recent documentary film, The Smell of Money, follows Elsie Herring and her rural North Carolina community as they take on the multi billion dollar pork industry.

Jamie’s writing has been featured in Vox, The Guardian, USA Today, The News Observer, and more. Throughout her career, she has used writing and visual storytelling to draw attention to issues ranging from environmental racism to the climate crisis to other injustices wrought against people, animals, and the planet.

Thank you both so [00:01:00] much for being here. Now, Larry you and I work together and I’m grateful to know you. And Jamie, I’m so happy to meet you here today. And I’m fanning out a little bit. So thank you both so much for being here. And I’m a fan of you too, Larry. Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m a big fan of yours.

I just have met you before. So thank you both so much for being here. I was hoping at the beginning here we could talk a little bit about the situation with factory farms and sort of give our listeners a 10, 000 foot view of the situation. And Larry, I was hoping that you could, you could walk us through the work that Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign at Water Keeper Alliance does, but also just the situation writ large.

Larry Baldwin: Sure. And it’s a pleasure to be on Tom and, and certainly to be on with Jamie Berger is like, that’s just huge for me. And you’ve talked a lot about the, The great work she does. So I’m not going to embarrass her too much more. 

Thomas Hynes: Time, Larry, we’ll run out of time. 

Larry Baldwin: So the issue in North Carolina is not necessarily specific just to [00:02:00] North Carolina in the United States or in the world for that matter, but North Carolina has kind of become, I guess, to some degree, a focal point.

And a lot of that’s because of the work that Waterkeeper Alliance has been doing for probably over three decades now, when it was first realized that this industry is creating the kind of problems it is. It continues to do with our waters and our communities and until that was kind of recognized, there wasn’t a whole lot of thought given to how we actually raise our animals these days.

If you talk to most people about how our pork, our chicken, our dairy are raised, it’s kind of, it’s kind of equating that to the old, the old movie, Charlotte’s Web. over the pig who was doing backflips in the barnyard and, all the animals were happy. Everything was great. Unfortunately, that’s still the concept.

A lot of people have as to how we raise our animals for food these days. The term that you used industrial is a, is, is perfect. Way to [00:03:00] categorize it what that looks like on the ground is you have thousands Hundreds of thousands depending on whether it’s swine hogs or poultry which could be chickens or turkeys Crammed into a building they have basically no interface with the actual outdoor environment.

They’re in that barn for their entire lives until they’re taken to, to a slaughterhouse for processing. It is a, it’s a despicable way of raising animals. Whether you’re an animal rights supporter, either way, we wouldn’t treat our own pets the way we’re treating these animals. So then by combining them into a small space, confined space, they produce a lot of waste.

And that waste has to go somewhere. In the case of the hogs, it’s, it’s basically a liquid waste. So it drops through the floor into what we call a cesspool. And then it’s applied to the ground. Basically no treatment whatsoever. [00:04:00] In the case of the poultry, it’s kind of more of a solid waste. But the same thing.

They collect that waste and put it out onto a field somewhere. There are, Creek streams, rivers running through or being influenced by that runoff from these facilities. So the amount of waste, if we’re looking just at North Carolina is immense.

 

Thomas Hynes: Tell me about, I mean, I don’t want to be gross. Jamie hasn’t eaten yet today, but what, like what I almost don’t want to ask the question, but I think we need to know, like, what’s the, What’s the scale that we’re talking about?

 And just to go back once, one second, we talk about these facilities and also, you know, Sorry to go back even further.

Charlotte’s web was my stay home from school sick movie that I was allowed to watch when I was like staying home from school. You know? Uh, so I definitely understand that, that reference. 

But what’s happening now is that we’re in these the, the, these facilities are like the length of football fields, right? And we would call them slaughterhouses, but they also go by concentrated animal feeding [00:05:00] operations or CAFOs, right? That’s a term we’re going to use a lot of just for our audience.

But back , to the, to the terrible question at hand, 

so how much, however you want to answer this terrible question, how much waste are we talking about to one of these facilities create 

Larry Baldwin: short, the, the waste that’s, that’s produced at these facilities, whether, and I don’t call them farms, I call them facilities. 

Thomas Hynes: It’s an important distinction, yeah. 

Larry Baldwin: It’s, it’s almost incomprehensible to some degree.

If you take one average hog, 250, 300 pounds, there’s been studies done as to how much waste they’re producing. And an average size hog produces Between eight and 10 times the amount of fecal waste. And I know that’s not a great subject as a human does every day to put that into comparison, there can be as many as 10, 000 hogs on the ground at any given time in North Carolina.

 So they are producing an incredible amount of weight. [00:06:00] And you mentioned the term cesspool earlier. They like to call them a lagoon. Well, a lagoon is not what these things are. It’s an open cesspool and they can be the size of a football field or larger.

Larry Baldwin: And there are probably roughly 000, 4, 200 of these in North Carolina right now. Completely exposed to the elements, completely exposed to flooding, which we have issues with in North Carolina. If you switch over to the poultry side, particularly the chickens, the numbers sometimes are not always exactly the same, depending on who you talk to, but an average bird produces four pounds of waste in its lifetime.

So you take a facility which has a barn that holds 35, 000 birds. And you start doing the math, 35, 000 times four pounds per bird, and they’re able to rotate those birds through that one barn five or six times a year. Tom, the [00:07:00] numbers become unbelievable. I mean, we’re talking billions of pounds of waste.

So what we are doing is we’re basically dumping that waste on the ground in Eastern North Carolina. Virtually no processing, no treatment being done. before it is put out on the ground. 

Thomas Hynes: So, I want to go back , to the hog numbers and I, this is so gross. We’re, we got to talk about it. So one hog is producing, let’s just say 10 pounds a day of fecal matter waste, and there are, that’s 

Larry Baldwin: 10, 10 times per day as a human.

10 times the volume. 

Thomas Hynes: This is so like one facility is producing the amount of waste of like a small to medium sized city, right? Exactly. 

Larry Baldwin: Exactly. 

Thomas Hynes: Sorry though. Are there, I mean, there are, there are no cities in this country that like don’t have wastewater treatment.

I mean, that’s like, yeah. Okay. And that’s just one. That’s, that’s insane. That’s actually insane. 

Larry Baldwin: well, it, it, [00:08:00] it really is insane because as you indicated, you know, cities and towns, 

the first two things they’re going to look at if you’re building a new town is water and wastewater. You got to get it coming in, but you also have to get rid of it.

If we said, okay, we’re going to build a new town down the road from you all, and it’s going to have 20, 000 people, but we don’t want to spend the money on waste disposal treatment. So we’re just going to, everything that comes out of your house is going to go into a pit, a cesspool. Okay. And then periodically we’ll spray it out on the ground around your community.

People would absolutely lose their minds. It just wouldn’t happen, but we’re allowing this to happen with this industrial method of raising hogs and chickens. 

the the immense proportion of this, I wish I could take everybody up in a small airplane, like we do with a lot of people 

Thomas Hynes: with Southwings. Yeah. 

Larry Baldwin: Yeah. Like we do the company Southwings provides us that opportunity. People come back from those flights. [00:09:00] Just like, it’s almost how, how are we allowing this to happen? But you can go to the Waterkeeper Alliance website. And look at the Pure Farms, Pure Waters page. And you can see some aerial images.

The aerial images are great, but seeing it in person is just, it’s staggering. And that the concentration is not just of having a hog farm in one place and a poultry in another. They’re now what I consider to be the term I use is co mingling. So you’re going to have a hog facility right next to a poultry facility.

And then we start getting into issues of, of diseases and disease transmission. We are basically primarily in Eastern North Carolina with the hogs and the chicken. We’re sitting in a Petri dish and we’re also, we’re already seeing issues such as the avian flu that you may have been hearing about. The immensity of the problem.

pollution that they are creating in any one of [00:10:00] these facilities. It’s just, it’s appalling. Then, we can talk about the odor and all that stuff, but it’s. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah, that’s a good segue to Jamie. Yeah. but, but can you just talk to me about, I’m going to just use the word charade, 

 so tell me what these facilities, like what, like, what are they saying they’re doing with it because they’re not treating it.

And there’s this method of using this for a lot of you tell me, like, what, what’s done 

with the all of these lagoons worth of waste 

Larry Baldwin: sure. And if you’re talking about the lagoons or you’re talking about the, the, the huge piles of poultry, they call it poultry litter. It’s poultry waste. It’s poultry crap, basically. And these piles, when they take them out into a field, they can be hundreds of feet long, 20, 30 feet high. 

and they’re just taken out put into a field eventually it’ll be applied to the field so when you look at all of these issues our biggest problem is that there’s very [00:11:00] little enforcement.

There are some laws, regulations in North Carolina that we can access, particularly in, in respect to the swine industry, but they’re not monitored by the state, and they’re not enforced by the state. So, in effect, these hog facilities are, if they are really good, they can operate within their permit.

They’re supposed to be a non discharge operation, which means nothing that they produce is going to leave their property. Well, that’s ridiculous in its own right, because as soon as it rains, it’s leaving their property. When it comes to poultry, we can’t even get access to information from our Department of Agriculture as to what specific numbers, how much waste.

So the people of North Carolina and our organizations, there’s a veil, particularly in reference to poultry. But the problem really is the enforcement. In my opinion, there are [00:12:00] very few of these facilities that I’ve seen who can operate under the regulations that they’re supposed to be operating. So basically the, the answer to your question is nothing’s being done.

If a violation does occur, if we see a violation and we can report it and it can be verified, then some action can be taken, but there’s very little being done. Unless you look at the efforts with this film that you’re going to talk with Jamie about the public has got to become aware and 

actually, they’ve got to be mad. We’re mad as hell. And we’re not going to take it anymore 

It’s the position that we should be taking. And it’s a, it’s a uphill struggle. We’re going to continue because when you look at the impact again, as you’re going to hear, um, Jamie referred to, to the communities is another issue.

How do we, as your neighbor, allow that to happen? 

Thomas Hynes: Right. And I think that’s, yeah, and I think that, when we have, I know I’m a city slicker. I [00:13:00] live in New York City. I have no idea. My food just arrives at the grocery store. I have no idea. I mean, I do obviously because I work here, but I think most of us who live in more urban areas say, well, I don’t know, it just arrives.

So it might as well be from a family farm. I mean, like we don’t, like there’s not really any transparency on this. And I think that like a lot of things, once you really see what’s going on, you do get mad. And I think this is sort of what we’re not trying to anger people, but we do want to like shed some light on this.

And I just want to talk real quickly though, about when I was saying like what they say they’re doing with the waste, is it true that they spray this leftover waste I mean, this is what I, my understanding of it and there’s , way more being applied to the land than the land can use , for fertilizer and agriculture.

And then that, when it rains, it just runs off or the wind takes it or tell, tell me about, I mean, cause that to me seems like a farce, but tell me what they say they’re doing and what really happens.

 

Larry Baldwin: If we talk to these growers, [00:14:00] not farmers, growers in the field, and some of them will talk to us politely at times they, they feel that they are operating within the regulations that they are required to do so.

And that may or may not be true. The system itself is not working. The regulations are not strict enough. Why is it that that small town we talked about has to treat their waste, but the facilities have to do basically nothing. So it comes down to an issue that they, they actually feel that they’re doing things the right way.

They’ll tell you, I love to hunt. I love to fish. I like being out in the environment. But then one of the questions would be, do you do that on your own facility? Because the odors themselves. So, it really is kind of a smoke screen that’s being laid down. The other issue that comes in with these [00:15:00] growers being very forthright is that they can’t take the chance of speaking against the industry.

Because then their contracts can be lost completely. It’s, it’s a system that benefits the top dog, what we call the integrators, the Smithfield foods, the, the Tyson foods, the, the growers are under immense pressure and immense financial burden to produce the food that we see in the supermarket. The growers, in my opinion, Tom are one of the victims.

Of this industrial agriculture method, because they get into this, they sign a contract and it’s almost impossible to get out and they are going into debt. Year after year after year, but what other choice do they have but to keep grinding?

Thomas Hynes: That’s terrible and they sound like there are a lot of victims here. Before we Bring jamie on I just want to talk [00:16:00] a little bit more about how this impacts water, Because you know for our listeners, I think you know, we all know it explain to me how Bacon production because I’m just putting in the simplest terms that Americans can understand as America loves its bacon.

How is that, how is adding bacon to your eggs? How is that harming water quality? I know the answer, but for our listeners cause I, that, to the lay person, I’m sure that those seem totally incongruent and not related at all, but we know that’s not true, but take us through that. 

Larry Baldwin: Sure. And whether it’s, the bacon or the pork chops or the chicken breast or the chicken legs.

It comes from these animals and that’s, that’s about as, as plain as we can put it. So you’re right, we, this country does have a love affair with bacon but you have to kind of back that up and consider the impacts of where that bacon came from. It did come from that hog who’s in a building with a thousand other hogs.

Basically waiting in their own [00:17:00] crap, the same with the poultry, that chicken leg that they’re eating. It came from an industrial facility and the quality of the meat even comes into question. So you have to really kind of back it up and say, okay, how badly do I need this bacon? Because where it came from is imposing extreme environmental.

and environmental justice issues on the people of North Carolina. So it really is, if you stop and kind of, like I said, I use the term, back it up, consider where your pork or , your dairy or your poultry comes from and understand that Somebody is suffering because of what we choose to eat.

So that’s probably the best way I can, can kind of get people to visualize that. It’s not just a strip of bacon. It’s an environmental, an environmental justice impact [00:18:00] to our planet. North Carolina. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah. And I, I just, I recall, and this is sort of a, it’s not a non sequitur, sort of like a random observation and just someone who’s been on the internet for most of his adult life.

It just felt like 10 or 15 years ago, like bacon was like a punchline almost. It was like, Oh yeah, bacon. It was like just a thing that people said. And it was like on dumb t shirts and like, Oh, as long as there’s bacon. And it like became this, like, I don’t know. I mean, and I was probably guilty of it myself before I started working.

In this capacity. But it was like, Oh, yeah, like, like, it was funny. And there’s nothing funny about it. Like, it’s actually nothing funny about it. It is causing all this harm to all these communities. There’s a huge price on it that we just don’t see, don’t know, or I would believe we care about it if we know about it.

But there’s nothing funny about it. And it’s like, There’s a huge cost to us that we’re maybe not paying at checkout or maybe not paying at the restaurants because I think those pollution costs have been basically [00:19:00] outsourced to the communities because these growers and these facilities are not paying to treat their waste.

So we’re not paying for it upfront, but definitely paying the price throughout all these communities.

 

Larry Baldwin: Okay. So the, the question of, again, kind of answering what you talked about with that bacon that you buy at the store we do have a love affair with bacon in North Carolina. A number of years ago, I don’t recall exactly when it was. We did five studies across the state, five different cities, focus groups.

And they didn’t really know that we were, it was talking about CAFOs in particular, but that was one of the topics. Most everybody in those focus groups disagreed or was concerned with the way we produce our meat. The one thing they would say though, do whatever you have to do to fix this, but don’t take away our bacon.

And to me, I’m thinking, I don’t even like bacon. 

To me, it’s like, really? That’s what this has come down to? 

Thomas Hynes: it’s almost like, I don’t know [00:20:00] if like, we got, like, and I love Homer Simpson, I’m not gonna disparage him in this podcast or any podcast, but It’s almost like this, Homer Simpson, like, uh, oh, bacon. And like, almost became like a personality type, or like, um, I could just picture people, like, listing it as their interest.

It’s like, it’s a side at breakfast, you know? Like, it’s not an interest. And I’m really taking us into a, an eloquent, off ramp here, 

so we’ll bring us back. But I, but I do think it’s, it is this thing where it’s like, Oh man, like don’t take my bacon. And it’s like, what foot do. You know what it costs? Like, do you, like, do you really like it that much? Is it really that good? Yeah. And 

Larry Baldwin: and at the term we use, Tom, it’s, it’s, you’re externalizing the cost.

Thomas Hynes: Yes, yes, yes. 

Larry Baldwin: That’s if this industrial industry had to pay to process the waste, treat the waste, you would see the comparison between industrially raised and what is commonly referred to as as sustainable farming. I’m, I’m not a big fan of that term, but to put it sure they would become a [00:21:00] lot closer, right.

And would provide the opportunity for people to eat if they’re meat eaters, more healthy meat. meat that does not have the same impact on the environment. It’s that industrialization, the compaction of all of these animals in a very small area that creates the problem that we’re seeing for the environment and for the communities impacted.

Thomas Hynes: Yeah, I mean, it’s not going to be a personality trait once it costs what it should cost.

Larry Baldwin: And again, you know, if you, I don’t know, if you want to talk about the two websites, the Waterkeeper Alliance website or, or the, uh, Riverlaw. Riverlaw. us. us. Yep. 

Thomas Hynes: and those are just for our listeners. 

That’s, uh, one of our colleagues, Rick Dub, who’s been working on this issue for forever 

Who I would say really pioneered this technique of, of aerial photography. Right. And, and really, cause we can talk about it.

You can say, Oh yeah, that’s bad. And when you eat bacon, it, [00:22:00] it hurts these communities and it pollutes the water, which is still kind of abstract. Right. But , what Rick did and continues to do I think profound and and helpful and has has such a great impact is to just get up in the air and take pictures of these facilities to give you an idea of the breadth and the scale and the size of them.

And 

Larry Baldwin: So, aside from being able to to, to go up in an airplane yourself riverlaw. us, there are images, there are videos, just, I mean, it’s, to me, it’s probably one of the most comprehensive websites that deals with this one issue, with the CAFO issue. So, between the WaterkeeperLines.

org and go to the Pure Waters page. And to the riverlaw. us it will give you a real sense of the enormity of the problems. 

Thomas Hynes: So this is, I mean, it’s not even really hard to understand, right? I mean, you have a small to mid sized cities worth of feces and, and waste that is not being treated In these low lying [00:23:00] areas, unguarded, anytime it rains, anytimes there’s a storm or flooding and correct me if I’m wrong, hurricanes

is that correct? 

Larry Baldwin: That is , very, very correct.

Thomas Hynes: so, so, I mean, , this impact on local water is inevitable, right?

Larry Baldwin: It is inevitable, Tom, and it, you cannot convince me. Are there some of these growers who are doing a fairly good job?

Sure they are. But when you have a hurricane that’s coming up the coast, there’s really not a whole lot you can do. In the past, we have past hurricanes, we’ve seen these lagoons, cesspools, overflowing. We’ve seen them actually burst open. And now you’re sending millions of gallons. of wastewater into the environment.

The, the fault, again, for me, does not lie with the growers. The growers are trying their best. But the system as a whole, even if you’re referring to poultry, they’ve got to get rid of this stuff. And the best way to do that is take it out into a field, either spray it, in the the case of poultry, [00:24:00] of the hogs or to land apply it as we refer to it when it comes to poultry.

North Carolina, particularly eastern North Carolina, and a lot of the state as well, we’re very close to some source of water. There’s been ditching that have been done, there’s creeks and streams, and these facilities are showing up or have shown up right next to water bodies. It’s the design that was allowed to happen would never happen again today.

So. The impact to water quality is huge and in many ways it’s not even known because we can’t be, we have 15 river keepers in North Carolina. They can’t be out there every day focusing solely on taking water samples. They do and they do a great job. We have some amazing river keepers just amazing people.

The state doesn’t do that. They don’t have the resources. To check into these facilities. So the, the industry itself relies on [00:25:00] that to say, we’re not, we’re not impacting the environment. We love the environment. Well, sure. They do because that’s where your waste is going. 

Thomas Hynes: These facilities are, uh, correct me if I’m wrong, they’re but like there’s like a little bit of lack of transparency as to where they’re going to be, how they’re operating, and then the communities that they operate in get little say on where they are and what they’re up to.

Is that right?

Larry Baldwin: A lot of these facilities and I think it, it shows up in, in Jamie’s film that we’re going to talk about shortly.

You can’t see them from the road. You may get an odor here and there, but they are fairly well concealed. So the visual aspect of these facilities, hogs or chickens, is kind of lost on the public. You see the buildings, it’s just a farm building, but it’s what goes on inside that building when it comes to the animals themselves, and then what comes out of those buildings.

Going into the environment and going into the communities, like I said, we should be embarrassed that we [00:26:00] subject communities and folks to the kind of impacts, the odor, not being able to use their own well water. We should be embarrassed that we’re allowing this to happen. And unfortunately in North Carolina, it’s predominantly in communities of color, low income communities.

Thomas Hynes: I completely agree. And, we’re talking about the way these places operate and sort of the lack of transparency and you can’t see them. 

There’s not a great amount of regulation, 

 You also mentioned odor, which I think is, which is a great way to transition to our next guest.

Jamie Berger filmmaker, documentary maker of the film The Smell of Money. Jamie, thank you again so much for being here. I will just show my lack of objectivity. I saw your movie and loved it. I am a huge fan of your work and I have shared your work with everybody I know, and I’m going to continue to do that here today.

So thank you. It’s really great to have you. Thank you for being here. Tell [00:27:00] me about your movie. Tell me about what the name, the smell of money means. Tell me everything and I’ll, I’ll, we’ll get started and then I’ll follow up because I don’t want to ask you a thousand questions all at once. And that’s what I’m feel like I’m, I’m gearing up to do so.

Please tell us about your tell us about your movie to start. 

Jamie Berger: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here I am the biggest fan of Waterkeeper Alliance there is and I’m sure I’ll get it to get more chances to rave about you all But to give you a little bit of background about the movie, like you said, it’s called the smell of money It’s a feature length documentary 84 minutes.

Not too long And it’s about these issues that we’ve been talking about. It’s about primarily the impact of concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs, as you said, on communities in eastern North Carolina and on the environment. So it really kind of takes a, a personal look at how people are affected by this, how the land, how the waterways are affected.

by pollution, primarily from the pork industry. [00:28:00] And it, took us about four and a half years to do this filming. We spent a lot of time in Eastern North Carolina. And our goal with the film was really to try to, to get to know the people on, like I said, a very personal level, to get them to feel comfortable to tell us their stories.

And to make it a very kind of human centric film, I think many documentaries , take the approach of trying to, provide a lot of facts and figures. And of course we included some of those as well, but we really wanted this to reach people on an emotional level. We wanted people to feel like Larry said, feel that anger, feel that frustration.

Feel that empathy for people who, who experience pollution from, from the pork industry and to get people inspired by the way that they’ve been fighting it by the way that Waterkeeper Alliance and its river keepers and also many local advocates, environmental justice groups and just, your everyday people have been standing up to pollution from this industry for, as [00:29:00] 30 years now.

Thomas Hynes: Yeah. And, so what, what, what brought you to this issue? Like why? I mean, it’s, and I’m glad something did, but what brought you to this issue? 

Jamie Berger: So I was born and raised in North Carolina outside of Raleigh. So, about 40, 50 or so miles from where we’re kind of region where we’re focusing on here, Eastern North Carolina.

So I’m from more of the central part of the state. And, like , most North Carolinians, I grew up eating my bacon and my barbecue and not really thinking much about where that came from. And then in high school, I started to learn a little bit more about environmental issues. I took an environmental science class, and I think there was just one paragraph in my textbook about the impact of industrialized animal agriculture on the environment.

And that was enough to, to really kind of set me on a path. I wanted to learn a lot more about that. And I ended up kind of focusing my undergraduate studies at UNC Chapel Hill on the food system, and in particular [00:30:00] on how What we eat and how we grow our food, how we raise our food, how that impacts the environment.

And then, communities, people, public health. So that was my focus. And I did a senior honors thesis while there, and I wanted to focus on an issue that was, was local, was relevant to my home state. So, naturally, because North Carolina has been such a large pork producer at the time, at least, it was the second largest pork producing state in the country, that was kind of the natural, choice for me to, to select for, as a subject for my thesis.

So, I looked at the history of the pork industry looked at its kind of explosion, its growth in North Carolina really over the course of my own lifetime, looked at how it had influenced the, the government, how it had really kind of been able to sort of bend the laws in its favor as it was developing.

I also looked at the history of labor rights organizing in the pork [00:31:00] industry. So the, the kind of history of people in particularly the, the Smithfield processing plant, which is the world’s largest slaughter plant, how they kind of advocated for their rights as workers. And of course, I also looked at the impacts on the environment and public health and that was really where kind of the biggest chunk of my thesis, focused I was just so struck by these facts that we’ve been talking about in this conversation that Larry has described to you.

There are about as many pigs as there are people in North Carolina. But like Larry said, those animals are producing about ten times the amount of fecal waste as humans are. And all of that waste is Is held in these open air, earthen, unlined pits.

I just found that absolutely staggering. , I was so shocked that this was happening. Not that far away from where I grew [00:32:00] up, and I was, I was just appalled at the level of, of environmental destruction that these facilities were causing, understanding that this wastewater does not stay on the land, like Larry said, it runs out of Those lagoons, those cesspits, especially when there are heavy rains or hurricanes, which do happen frequently in North Carolina, I can attest to that, did a lot of hurricane drills growing up and it, it leaches into the groundwater, it, it runs into rivers and streams,

Thomas Hynes: so don’t even need a hurricane. You don’t even need a hurricane, you don’t need a hurricane. That’s what I was suspecting. 

Jamie Berger: Exactly. I think that’s, I think that’s an important point. To note that it’s not just when we have these kinds of extreme weather events that this pollution is a problem. It is an everyday issue because there is just so much.

So much waste. There’s no way, like Larry said, there is no way that it can just [00:33:00] stay on that property. We know from the sampling that you all do and the minimal sampling that the state has done, that this waste does leave these facilities, that it does run into the surface waters and of North Carolina. 

So again, I was, I was I was disturbed, to say the least, by what I learned about this. And I think perhaps the part of this story that struck me, that hit me the hardest, Was learning that the communities who are dealing with all of this who are burdened By this pollution are largely poor communities of color So if you look at the history of eastern north carolina and where black folks settled after slavery The black belt runs right through the eastern part of the state You know the black belt that that you could trace kind of throughout the south of the united states That runs right through eastern north carolina and Those communities are the ones, again, [00:34:00] who are bearing the burden of this overwhelmingly.

And one of the things I did while I was doing that undergraduate research is look at the studies on this. There actually were studies done that demonstrated that communities of color and poor communities were disproportionately harmed by this issue. I was fortunately able to interview the incredible late Dr.

Steve Wing, who is a, a researcher and public health expert , at UNC, who really kind of pioneered this research and was able to work with communities in a really incredible collaborative way to document the impacts that they were experiencing. And he and other researchers used this term. Environmental racism, environmental injustice, to describe what they were seeing.

They even took a map that we include in the film, and that I remember seeing for the first time when I was doing this research, where they overlaid the [00:35:00] historical enslaved population a map of the former slave populations of , North Carolina. They overlaid that with the, the modern day kind of distribution of, of hog capos, of hog factory farms in Eastern North Carolina.

And there’s just a perfect overlap. There’s just a perfect match right there. You can see just by looking at this map that there is a direct relationship between where these facilities are and where people settled after they were freed from slavery. Okay. And I remember learning at that time also about the story of Elsie Herring, who is the kind of primary character of our film, the main sort of subject of our film.

 She was born and raised in Duplin County. right in the heart of Eastern North Carolina.

Duplin County is the county with the largest number, the highest density and the largest number of pigs in Eastern North [00:36:00] Carolina. She was raised on that land that her grandfather had purchased after he was freed from slavery. So, her family history, you don’t have to go too far back to see that, she and her, her relatives were still kind of impacted by, by this legacy of, of, the worst, darkest part of American history.

And in the late 80s or so, she she came back to North Carolina after having lived in New York City for a while to take care of her aging mother. And at that time, she started to realize that the farm next door, the farmer next door, had stolen her family’s land, had actually manipulated documents and deeds to be able to take possession of that family land that had been in her family, that her grandfather had purchased, and not only steal the land, but build an industrial pork factory on that land.

And on top of all those insults, the injury [00:37:00] was that they were spraying waste onto Elsie’s mother’s home and her property.

 

Jamie Berger: So Elsie and her mother one day started to feel these droplets raining down on them, literally raining onto their actual bodies and onto, Elsie’s mother’s house, her elderly mother’s mother’s home. And they realized, of course, immediately that this was not actually rain because the stench of this liquid spread.

Was absolutely unbearable. I mean, it took their breaths away. They immediately just started coughing and choking and they realized this was animal waste. This was liquefied feces and urine that the farmer next door was spraying onto them and onto their home. And so, for Elsie, this injustice really started her on this path of Fighting for clean water and clean air and just the basic human right to live without the [00:38:00] stench of feces, the pollution , of animal waste overwhelming, , her and her family’s daily life.

And she became a really strong community organizer and activist and spent truly, the next 30 years or so fighting for her community. And I was just, when I first heard about Elsie’s story, I was so inspired by her. I could not imagine how difficult it must have been to stand up to such a powerful, such an extraordinarily powerful industry.

That, by the way, had actually physically harmed her mother. At one point, the farmer came over and physically assaulted Elsie’s mother because of the work that Elsie was doing to try to protect her community. And so I knew that she was up against this just massive industry , and really was kind of fighting the fight as the pork industry was exploding in North Carolina.

And I was so inspired , by her story, , as a young college student. [00:39:00] The other kind of person I, I encountered and whose story really inspired me as well, was that of Rick Dove, one of the kind of early pioneers , of this work that Waterkeeper Alliance has done to, to monitor water quality impacts of CAFOs and , to hold this industry accountable.

I actually , had the opportunity to interview Rick at that time as an undergrad. And the way that he spoke about this issue, the work that he had done just really opened my eyes. He became a hero of mine and remains so to this day. He, he’s, he’s such an amazing human being , Who, didn’t have to devote his life to this but he chose to do that.

And again, I was, I was just blown away by the level of passion and dedication that he brought to this. So , that’s the story of kind of how I came to this. And then, to fast forward several years about, let’s see, I don’t know how many years, many years later, after I graduated from [00:40:00] college, I, I started working in the non profit field, again, focusing on trying to fight factory farming and I had the opportunity to work on a feature documentary.

I I was doing video production. I was just kind of focusing on social media videos, short videos. And , had the chance to work on a feature length film. And this was the subject that I proposed for the movie. Again, based on that research that I had done as a college student, I wanted to go back to North Carolina.

I was living in DC by then. Wanted to go back to North Carolina. I wanted to reconnect with a lot of the people that I had met during that time, doing that research. And I wanted to, to help them tell their story and I wanted the world to know. I, I remember kind of. Thinking even at that time, I was like, I just want people in North Carolina to know that this is happening.

Like I said, I grew up having no idea that this was going on. And it boggled my mind that even people in Raleigh, even people in other parts of North Carolina [00:41:00] had no clue. That this injustice was happening down the road from them. So I started out thinking, I’m going to make this little movie.

I’m going to hopefully get some people to care about it, hopefully get some people in North Carolina to watch it and really just, wanted to give the community a platform, so. That was in 2018 that we started working on the project and it’s been a long and difficult, but really, really incredibly rewarding road since then.

Thomas Hynes: And so I was going to ask how you got involved with Rick and Larry but it sounds like you, you kind of found Rick previously working on this issue remind me? Cause I remember Rick and Larry being in the movie and I really just kind of remember Elsie, honestly, no offense, Larry, I love you.

But I really remember Elsie. So like what was Waterkeeper Alliances for those who haven’t seen the film? What was Waterkeeper Alliances role or contribution or however, you want to answer that to this film? Waterkeeper Alliances. 

Jamie Berger: I always say that [00:42:00] we definitely could not have made this movie without the Waterkeeper’s support.

Larry was, I think, our very first interview, or one of our very first interviews, and I remember turning to my co producer after we interviewed him and saying, okay, we’ve got a movie. This guy is enough. This guy is, 

this guy is gonna make this movie.

Because he was just so eloquent. 

He was so well versed in these issues.

He brought, again, so much heart to it, just seeing him, interacting with him, it was so clear how much he deeply, deeply cared about this. This was not at all just a job for him. And I was, again, I was ecstatic after we finished our interview with Larry because we were like, okay, we can actually make this thing.

Like, we can do this. 

 Yeah,

just to like to create something and to like do, to have that [00:43:00] feeling. 

I mean, 

Thomas Hynes: I love that you have that feeling about Larry, but I love, I love that feeling of being like, oh, this is it. I, like I I’m onto something. This, this is this validating, this is like, we got it.

Jamie Berger: yeah, and that was just the beginning, that was really just the beginning of a partnership that has lasted. Not only through our entire filming, but well beyond, Waterkeeper Alliance and Rick and Larry in particular have been Extraordinary partners to us throughout this entire time even even throughout the release of the film They’ve been incredible spokespeople for it and they did so much for us, you know throughout the process I want to throw out a just a kind of kudos to another river keeper, Kemp Burdett, who we also spend a lot of time with.

 He is the river keeper for the part of the world, we think, at least the part of the United States that has the highest concentration of these industrial animal facilities. And again,, he is the expert of experts. I [00:44:00] mean, he was so well informed. And , he Spent so much time with us, taking us around, showing us how he did water sampling.

We got to kind of be in the field with him while he was doing that. Larry did that as well. Rick took us out on his boat. The water keepers really gave us unprecedented access, I would say, to to this issue and to be able to really see it in such a tangible way. Sadly, we weren’t able to include Kemp himself in the movie, which is why I wanted to give him a special shout out because we were so grateful for his support.

But you know, obviously, Larry and Rick , are central characters in the film. And that just, I think it’s a testament to how supportive they were. And, one other thing I want to mention about, our reliance on Waterkeeper Alliance was that they helped us earn the trust of the communities in Eastern North Carolina, which.

is not an easy thing, I think, especially for filmmakers who, both of us, both myself and my co [00:45:00] producer are white. We are outsiders, in the sense that we’re not from those communities. I think being from North Carolina gave me a little bit of cred, but not that much being from Raleigh. And, they had experienced so much intimidation, so much harassment on the part of the industry.

People had no real reason to just offer up their stories to us, and they had every reason , to not trust us. And it was really, I think, Larry and Rick vouching for us and helping us kind of, access these people and, and gain their trust. Of course, over time, it was a slow process. I think that’s part of why the film The filming took about four and a half years again was that it actually took that long just to get people to feel comfortable enough to talk to us, but again, I just don’t know that we would have been able to do that if larry and rick and and kemp had not already put in decades of work In collaboration with these communities to show them that [00:46:00] Waterkeeper Alliance was working alongside them was supporting them with its own work, was really kind of standing in solidarity with them.

And we relied on that so heavily to be able , to build those kinds of relationships ourselves.

Thomas Hynes: Larry, I want to just bring you back for a second because I just want to ask you and I probably can guess the answer to this, but how has this film and Jamie said such such really nice things that I’m like having secondhand blushing, even though I wasn’t involved in the making of the film, like I’m secondhand blushing.

So I get the sense that Waterkeeper Alliance was very helpful. But how has this film helped your efforts and your campaign work? 

Larry Baldwin: Tom, the best way to put it is that the story that Jamie told in this film is one that we could not tell. We didn’t have the resources, I guess would be one way to put it.

And, and she was able in this film to really get [00:47:00] to your heart, A lot of what we at Waterkeeper deal with is the more, science, water quality, that type of stuff. But it became, in this film, it becomes a heart issue. Because if you can walk away from this film and not feel something, I tell people all the time, you need to check your pulse.

Because there’s something significantly wrong. So the way that Jamie crafted this documentary really, to me, it, it puts the heart it makes it real where one of the things that is a challenge for us is to get people who don’t live in North Carolina to understand that this is a problem, but you really, and, I’ve been able to join Jamie on a couple screenings throughout the country.

But even here in North Carolina, we had no idea it’s a common phrase. So it’s taking the work that Waterkeeper Alliance and these other organizations, and there are some amazing organizations [00:48:00] in North Carolina who are also fighting for this. To be able to give it a real tangible understanding, you may not know all the science or understand all the science.

Again, it put the heart into the issue so that it’s not just about water quality anymore. It’s about the impact to other human beings. What this has done for us, Tom, it has opened up a whole , new audience to the issues that Waterkeeper Alliance has been working on for decades. We’re light years ahead of probably where we could have done this on our own.

And if you, if you haven’t been able to, to pick up through this conversation with 

jamie, her heart is in this 

And she has become one of the biggest advocates that, that we could ever hope for.. 

So we have gained probably as much as she has out of this whole process because of being able to [00:49:00] highlight the issue in a way that people can understand whether they’re in North Carolina or Canada or wherever this film was going, Jamie.

So we could just not be more appreciative of, of the work that they did to put into it and how it came out. So. Yeah, it’s been a huge benefit for Waterkeeper Alliance. 

Thomas Hynes: Yeah, I mean, I would just agree. 

Jamie Berger: Kind of make me cry, Larry. 

Thomas Hynes: Listener, there’s a lot of blushing happening on this call. 

A lot of feelings.

Yeah. And I would just echo what you’re saying, Larry, because, for me. I think it’s easy when we’re doing our work to silos of funny works. We’re talking about like farming or so, but like, you kind of get like your blinders on, right. And you’re like, Oh, this is like, I’m working on this.

I’m working on this. And to have someone like Jamie kind of arrive at the same conclusion. I mean, you obviously. Did your own thing, but to like arrive at the same conclusions to identify the same problems and to sort of land at the same place outside of this organization. Like you don’t work here, we don’t work with, we’re not, we’re not colleagues, but we have common cause in this [00:50:00] issue.

And I think there’s something I don’t know. It feels nice to me just as an individual thinking about your efforts and your time that you’re spending and be like, yeah, like this is a real problem. And other people landed here, too. So it is really, I’d say encouraging is another word I would come back to.

Larry Baldwin: Tom, we talk about this being a documentary film. To me, that’s, not the correct way to put it. It’s a story. And I’m not trying to make you blush, , if a film producer out in Hollywood said, I want to make a movie and, this was not an issue, but this is something they conjured up, this, this is so much more than that.

I’m amazed at the heart. And I know I’ve used that word numerous times, Jamie was able to put into this Again, if you haven’t watched the film, you get a box of tissue cause you’re going to need it. There, there are parts that are going to, going to stagger you. There are parts that are going to make you mad.

There are parts that are going to, going to make you pretty sad as well, too. But I just, I just can’t praise it [00:51:00] enough. 

Thomas Hynes: So Jamie, tell our listeners where they can see this movie aside from visiting smellofmoney. com. That’s smellofmoneydoc.

com. Tell me where else folks can see this movie? 

Jamie Berger: Well, our website is a good place to start because we have links to all the different streaming platforms that you can watch it on there. You can find it on Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube. And we also actually have it on this incredible screening platform called Kinema, which offers , the option, a really kind of interesting and very kind of, interactive way of screening the film , to audiences, so you can either do virtual screenings through that platform, or you can do in-person screenings, you can just kind of fill out a very quick form, simple form, and the folks , will support you and work with you to, to design your screening.

So that’s a great way to bring the film [00:52:00] to your community. If you’re involved in a school where you wanna take it to your workplace or you have a. , a different kind of community group that you’re a part of. I always like to kind of flag that we offer the opportunity for anyone, anyone at all, to, to host screenings of the film.

And you can do those synchronously, so everyone kind of watching at the same time. Or asynchronously, where you can just have everyone have, a window of time to watch the film. And it also offers the option of doing virtual Q and A’s. So if you want me to come speak, I’m happy to do that. And to get to connect with your audience.

So yeah, I just, just want to plug that. But in general, if you Google it, if you Google watch smell of money, watch the smell of money, you’ll, you’ll be able to find it. And it’s, it’s just 4 to rent right now. So it’s pretty cheap. 

Thomas Hynes: Cheaper than bacon. And and then Smell of Money Doc I see also is on Instagram as well.

Well, Jamie Berger, Larry Baldwin, thank you both so much for being here today. I think this [00:53:00] has been a . Great conversation and a great lead in we’re gonna for our listeners out there, we’re gonna have a few more episodes on this topic. And I think this was the right place to start with the right people to really frame this issue.

So thank you both so much for being here today. 

Larry Baldwin: Well, thank you, Tom. For putting it together. And as you can tell, there’s, there’s this connection with Jamie that, I mean, if she would let me adopt her as a daughter, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Jamie Berger: Aw. . 

Larry Baldwin: But yeah, thank you Tom, for putting this together

I think you did a great job with it. 

Jamie Berger: Thank you so much. This is really fun. I really enjoyed this. And again, so appreciate the work you all do and excited to see where the podcast goes as well.

Thomas Hynes: Well, thank you.

And we obviously really greatly appreciate your work as well. That goes without saying, well, thank you so much for being here.