A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

'The Smell of Money' Film Is Bringing Together Environmental and Food Justice Advocates

From Jessica Scott-Reid, SentientMedia.org
February 2024

North Carolina is the second largest hog farming state in the U.S., where there are nearly as many pigs as people (8 million and 10 million, respectively). Yet there’s never been a film that puts this story front and center, until now.

See website, The Smell of Money for viewing details

The fight between residents of Eastern North Carolina and the hog industry has been going on for more than three decades. The residents who live in and around Duplin County, Sampson County and Bladen County — who are mainly Black and people of color — have protested the hog industry practice of storing manure and other hog waste in open-air lagoons, and then spraying that waste onto nearby land — their land. Now, a new feature-length documentary called “The Smell of Money” has documented the fight, and the noxious odors, air and water pollution and health problems that have long plagued community residents, whose families have been on that land since the time of slavery. And a growing number of people — from community organizers to celebrities Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara — are screening the movie for audiences in hopes of sparking change.

North Carolina is the second largest hog farming state in the U.S., where there are nearly as many pigs as people (8 million and 10 million, respectively). Yet there’s never been a film that puts this story front and center.

Completing “The Smell of Money” took filmmaker Jamie Berger and director Shawn Bannon over six years to complete. Berger, who is from North Carolina, had been researching the impacts of the hog industry since her days as a high school student.

“I started learning about [the] environmental issues,” she says, which prompted her to stop eating meat. Berger continued to study the food system as an undergraduate, she says, “in particular, animal agriculture: how it affects the environment, animals, people.” But it was her honors thesis on North Carolina’s pork industry that made the work personal.

“What was so gut wrenching and heart wrenching was learning about this element of environmental racism — that community members, not that far from where I grew up, were having animal waste sprayed on their homes, essentially imprisoning them in their houses.”

 

....

Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

---

Return to Meat and Dairy Articles
Read more at Environment Articles