MUNCIE — Seven years of litigation over an influx of industrial swine farms in East Central Indiana has concluded with a victory for Maxwell Foods/Maxwell Farms, the nation's 11th largest pork producer.
Special Judge Marianne Vorhees ruled in Maxwell's favor without a trial in the last of five Randolph County lawsuits claiming the farms became a nuisance to neighbors and operated inhumanely and negligently. As she did in the four other lawsuits, Vorhees, judge of Delaware Circuit Court 1, entered a summary judgment in Maxwell's favor, citing Indiana's Right to Farm Act.
Neighbors complained of "foul" "noxious" and "invasive" odors coming from manure, urine and afterbirth remnants stored in pits beneath Maxwell's "swine factories." Application of millions of gallons of that waste to fertilize surrounding farm fields just spread the odor farther, the lawsuits alleged.
"There certainly is odor," Maxwell attorney Gary Baise, from Washington, D.C., told The Star Press. "But it's episodic … I call it hog BO … Yes, people do smell it on occasion, but to say it's ruining my life, that you can't have an outdoor wedding or picnic or family gathering because of it is probably stretching it a bit …Smell is a part of agricultural life in America. So as long as we want our ham and bacon and eggs, we're going to have to suffer in a minor way."
Non-farmers romanticize about the good old days when cows, sheep and pigs grazed and foraged in meadows, "not realizing that these animals excreted their manure and urine directly into the streams, rivers and land, when today, such practices are tightly controlled in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)," the defense reported in court documents.
Indianapolis attorney Rich Hailey, representing neighbors, calls CAFOs industrial facilities that emit particulate matter, nitrates and obnoxious odors and gases, including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. "Even CAFO proponents refer to them as production facilities, not farms," he said in court filings. In addition, thousands of animals are confined in one CAFO smaller than a football field, spending their entire "tortuous" lives living over their toilets in cramped quarters.