Smithfield is America’s largest pork produce but while claiming that title, they left a path of destruction behind them. Jeff Tietz, a news reporter for the Rolling Stone, wrote Boss Hog: The Dark Side of America’s Top Pork Producer by Jeff Tietz, where he exposes Smithfield Food’s daily operations. Smithfield has been dominating the pork industry, which allows them to push smaller farmers out of the business altogether. But this productiveness doesn’t come without a cost, their success was “. . .unimagined only two decades ago, and the only way to do it is to raise pigs in astonishing, unprecedented concentrations” (Tietz). Tietz is explaining that Smithfield has become a large company, but in order to do so they had to give up some things, like the health of their hogs. He then illustrates the conditions the pigs are being put through, from the improper waste disposal, to the living …show more content…
Tietz further explains how Smithfield is changing the environment around their hog plantations According to the EPA, Smithfield “dumps more toxic waste into the nation's water each year than all but three other industrial facilities in America” (Tietz). Tietz is showing how not only is Smithfield’s waste enormous for the hog industry, it is significantly larger than Americas top industries. He explains how Smithfield’s waste disposal is technically correct, but has become ineffective with how much waste they are disposing of. They spray the waste into the air as a way to fertilize the farm land, which at the large amounts has started affecting people’s health and living conditions. They also use lagoons, as a way to store the waste, which becomes a dumping ground for all their waste but also a hazard to anyone who would come close to it. Tietz describes how workers have become overwhelmed by the lagoon’s smell, with some workers even dying from falling into the lagoons