Factory Farms Make North And South Carolina Flood Waters A Toxic Soup

Brandon Turbeville

Natural Blaze 

October 22, 2016

In another example of the dangers posed by factory farms, the flood waters left by Hurricane Matthew all over North and South Carolina have brought with it the hundreds and hundreds of rotting hog and chicken carcasses leaving a toxic soup of contaminated flood water all across eastern North Carolina and eastern South Carolina.

Because North Carolina is one of the largest factory farm states in the entire country, rising water poses a special danger, especially in places like Tar Hill, a small North Carolina town that is actually home to the world’s largest pork production plant. Just in Duplin county alone, more than 2 million hogs are raised. Thus, when the flood waters rise, the factory farm animals simply meet a gruesome death sooner than otherwise planned.

After the waters reach a certain point, however, those carcasses rise to the surface, rot in the sun, decay, and marinate before spreading out amongst the water that has seeped into homes, drinking water systems and virtually everywhere. In Nichols, South Carolina, where hog carcasses had floated and peppered in between homes in the town, home owners who had evacuated returned to inspect the damage only to be greeted with a horrific smell, driving them back out of the town again.

Hog waste lagoons, an environmental catastrophe in their own right, also pose a threat because when the water reaches them, it also carries the waste with it. Hog waste and animal carcasses of course will mix with sewer overflows, oil tankers and other chemical production facilities to ensure an environmental catastrophe.

While the flood waters are not the fault of the farm itself, mass scale factory farming and centralized, industrial-scale farm units play a major role in making the flood waters even worse.

Sink or Swim, Preparation Is Key: Observations From the SC Flood

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
Natural Blaze
October 6, 2015

As the flood waters began to rise in South Carolina, so did the level of awareness that the vast majority of South Carolinians were wholly unprepared for such a disaster.

As the flood crisis got under way, South Carolina saw its major cities inundated with so much water that city centers were unnavigable without a boat, coastal areas saw houses collapse, and both city and rural areas saw roads wash out completely. With dams bursting and bridges washing away, local governments, citizens, and emergency management personnel clearly had their hands full. Most of them, to their credit, did their jobs well enough with the resources they had, despite the violation of rights by some local administrations.

Still, we can learn at least three lessons from the recent flooding in South Carolina.
A very small minority of people are equipped to deal with an emergency in a competent fashion.
A slightly larger number of people attempt to be prepared but fall short if the emergency persists.
The vast majority of people are wholly unprepared for even a slight disturbance in their usual routine or living conditions.

While this statement may come as basic common sense to the majority of my usual readers, such observations do bear repeating. Indeed, it is important to remind ourselves of just how unprepared we may be, even though we may be more prepared than most of the rest of the population.

Many of those who are aware of the possibility of an economic collapse, general war, electrical grid failure, or simple natural disasters are aware through available literature of how human behavior will adjust to the new circumstances if a crisis takes place. Although much of what “preppers” are confronted with in terms of information often borders on the state of panic and fear, it is true that what is at first a tranquil community of friends and neighbors can very quickly turn into a violent mob and dangerous enemies fighting over finite resources.