Researchers Complete Study of Five Waste Management Technologies

March 8, 2006 — 

Researchers at North Carolina State University have completed the evaluation of five alternative hog waste technologies. Dr. Mike Williams will present the results to the North Carolina Environmental Review Commission on March 8, 2006.

The research was conducted as the result of an agreement between Smithfield Foods and Premium Standard Farms and the NC Attorney General's office in 2000. The pork producers provided $17.3 million to fund the study which was designed to identify an alternative waste management technology to replace the current lagoon storage system in use on most of the state's hog farms. To be acceptable to producers, the alternative technology would have to be more environmentally friendly than existing systems and be economically feasible.

An advisory panel consisting of environmentalists, farmers, economists and businessmen was formed to determine what constituted "economic feasibility". The panel attempted to address such questions as could a technology be deemed economically feasible if additional implementation and/or operation costs could be minimized or offset by marketing additional byproducts? What if a technology resulted in a decline in the number of hogs produced in the state? It was determined that the challenge of economic feasibility could be met even if a technology was more expensive than the current system or if adoption of the technology resulted in as much as a 12% decline in hog production.

Dr. Williams' research team from the Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center at the university's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences evaluated 17 proposed technologies before settling on the five they determined met the criteria.

Source:
The Fayetteville (NC) Observer, March 8, 2006