Lax regulation made it cheaper for China to outsource pork production to the US
One of the things this article doesn&#x27;t touch on is the very deep roots of hog farming in rural NC and the general prevailing attitude of &quot;This is how we&#x27;ve always done it and I don&#x27;t want no gubment telling me what I can and can&#x27;t do with my land!&quot; There is a sense of pride in being a hog farmer like your daddy and your granpappy and your uncle and you hope to pass down those roots to your sons some day. As to why there&#x27;s a blind eye to the literal rivers of hog shit flowing into the creeks&#x2F;rivers every time it floods, that I have no idea- I don&#x27;t understand why people who live in that part of the state will cut their nose off to spite their face by accepting huge hog waste lagoons as a fact of life with hog farming. Being from NC I absolutely see Southern Stubbornness at work here.<p>Driving down the interstates in the eastern part of NC you see multiple billboards both pro- and anti-hog farming, with arguments ranging from &quot;Hog farming keeps my children fed!&quot; to &quot;Hog farming is destroying our environment!&quot; It reminds me of the pro- and anti-coal arguments currently underway in West Virginia.