990520 NC Pork Council Comments on Public Health Survey

Raleigh, NC - The North Carolina Pork Council urges cautious and sensible review of the University of North Carolina (UNC) public health survey. Exaggeration of the implications of this survey will do a disservice to farm neighbors and farmers.

The North Carolina pork industry is extremely interested in learning, through reputable scientific study, whether hog farming presents public health impacts that must be addressed. However, a poll of hand-selected people living in rural eastern North Carolina can hardly be considered a scientific study. Researchers at UNC, whose anti-farm bias is well noted, have failed to make a direct scientific link between common health ailments and proximity to hog farms. Further, they freely admit that they did not consider the multitude of factors, such as age or medical history, which could result in respiratory or other illnesses.

North Carolina's hog farmers and their families are hopeful that the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services does not base public health policy on assumptions, polls and surveys. To suggest without scientific documentation that farmers are a threat to their neighbors is irresponsible and only serves to create further distrust and anxiety in rural communities.

The North Carolina Pork Council strongly urges the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to release whatever reputable scientific studies they have to substantiate their claims that hog farms are the direct cause of poor health among farm neighbors so that this issue can be fairly and appropriately addressed.

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