Elsie Herring

Elsie Herring

“It’s just an ugly industry.”

In September 2018, the We Animals Media team travelled to North Carolina to document the aftermath of Hurricane Florence and its devastating impacts on the environment, animals, and local residents. During their time in Duplin County, filmmaker Kelly Guerin met Elsie Herring, the great-granddaughter of a freed slave who became an environmental activist after a hog CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) replaced the small family farm next door to her family’s property. The farm, like countless others around it, employed the standard industry practice of spraying manure on to fields as a waste disposal system. The spray drifted onto Elsie’s family home every day and soon, her family began experiencing serious health problems, such as respiratory and skin infections.

“As we sat on her front porch for our interview, the sprinklers kicked on and Elsie had to hold a paper towel over her mouth so she could continue to speak. We spoke at length about her experiences watching the farming in Duplin transform into the massive industry it is today and how it has impacted the lives of everyone around them. She spoke about the emerging understanding of environmental racism, that these colossal and toxic farms are often constructed strategically in poor communities of colour where residents have little political clout to raise in protest. And she emphasized, hauntingly, that the issues we were seeing post-Florence, in reality had little to do with hurricanes; for residents of Duplin county, this was life.”

Filming by Kelly Guerin / Editing by Nardine Groch