Murphy-Brown loses preliminary round in court

This Order issued by the District Court is indicative of what can happen to hog producers when the Right To Farm defense is destroyed. On Nov. 8, 2017, North Carolina U.S. District Judge Britt issued an order involving 26 cases regarding Murphy-Brown LLC., a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, Inc. North Carolina’s law reads as follows: “No agricultural or forestry operation or any of its appurtenances shall be or become a nuisance, private or public, by any changed conditions in or about the locality outside of the operation after the operation has been in operation for more than one year, when such operation was not a nuisance at the time the operation began.” Judge Britt concluded the plaintiffs lived on affected properties prior to Murphy-Brown’s beginning swine farm operations. The Court made it clear “This is not a case in which the non-agriculture use extended into an agricultural area.” The Court did not look at whether the land had always been in agriculture but declared “Their land use [housing] had been in existence well before the operations of the subject farms [Murphy-Brown] began. At bottom, plaintiffs’ nuisance claims have nothing to do with changed conditions in the area, and therefore, as a matter of law, the right-to-farm law does not bar those claims. Accordingly, plaintiffs are entitled to summary judgment on this defense.”