Executive Summary

The need for developing sustainable solutions for managing the animal waste problem is vital for shaping the future of North Carolina. As part of that process, the North Carolina Attorney General has concluded that the public interest will be served by the development and implementation of environmentally superior swine waste management technologies appropriate to each category of hog farms in North Carolina. To facilitate in the development, testing, and evaluation of potential technologies it is necessary that all aspects of environmental issues (air, water, soil, odor and odorants, and disease-transmitting vectors and airborne pathogens) be addressed as part of a comprehensive strategy.

A research program involving a collaboration of scientist and engineers from three (3) universities (North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Duke University),one (1) national laboratory (National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), one (1) state of North Carolina Department (Division of Air Quality, and Division of Water Quality, NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources),and one (1) private research organization (MCNC-North Carolina Supercomputing Center) was proposed to facilitate the development , testing, and evaluation of potential Environmentally Superior Technologies for the management of swine waste on farms owned by Smithfield Foods, Inc. and subsidiaries, as part of the environmental performance verification process. The objective of this proposal was to provide state-of-the-art methodologies and services for measuring, modeling, and evaluating atmospheric emissions of ammonia, odor and odorant emissions, and disease-transmitting vectors and airborne pathogens.

The program was structured as a science team with a Program Scientist, responsible for the overall coordination of all program activities, and Principal Investigators and Co- Investigators responsible for specific technical and organizational aspects of each individual program element. Dr. Viney P. Aneja, who has had extensive experience in the area of measuring and modeling atmospheric ammonia (NH3) emissions, and process technology development, served as Program Scientist as well as a Principal Investigator. Dr. Aneja was recently selected by the Secretary, United States Department of Agriculture, to serve on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Task Force on Agriculture Air Quality.

9The team assembled in this proposal includes recognized leaders in their respective fields, many of which have spent considerable time examining issues related to swine waste treatment in North Carolina. By working in a coordinated fashion, the team will be able to take advantage of numerous overlapping aspects of the variables under examination (e.g. ammonia emissions, dust, odors, pathogen transport, etc). Furthermore, the collaborative efforts undertaken promises to be especially fruitful, perhaps uncovering previously unrecognized interactions among the variables under consideration.