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Murphy-Brown Faces New Legal Challenge after Ignoring Agreement to Clean Up Hog Farm Contamination

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Conservation groups, including Sound Rivers, filed a motion in federal court seeking to require Murphy-Brown to comply with a 2006 agreement to clean up groundwater contamination at hog facilities in eastern North Carolina.

Murphy-Brown, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, Inc, the largest pork producer in the world, had faced four different legal challenges relating to Clean Water Act violations from its massive industrial hog farms, before a 2006 agreement with Waterkeeper Alliance and the Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation (now Sound Rivers, Inc.) was reached. But a motion filed today by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Waterkeeper Alliance and Sound Rivers alleges that Murphy-Brown has failed to comply with a central component of the agreement—remedying demonstrated groundwater hazards at 11 of its hog facilities in North Carolina. Read more about this issue.