Few people know the pig business like North Carolina’s Don Webb.

Webb raised pigs in Wilson County, North Carolina, until, in the late 70s, residents told him the smell near his farms was unbearable. He tried some solutions. They didn’t work.

“I was riding down the road and got to thinking of my own mother and father and what would I do if one of these was their homes [near the pig farms],” Webb said in his heavy Southern drawl. “So I got out of the business.”

Webb, 74, soon went from pig farmer to vocal critic. Over the past few decades he’s frequently done battle with the large pig farms in North Carolina over their waste management. He once took former state Sen. Wendell Murphy, owner of Murphy Farms and notorious for pushing industry-friendly laws, for a ride in his pickup truck to show him his farm's impacts.

He brought the senator to a home where a woman lived with her husband, stricken with tuberculosis. Their home was a trailer. The couch had springs sticking out, Webb recalled.

The stench was noxious.

“She told Murphy ‘if you could please do anything to help us, I can’t put my clothes out sometimes and my grandchildren won’t visit me,’” Webb said.

Other neighbors Murphy visited had similar pleas.

Things haven’t changed much since that tour two decades ago. The battle in eastern North Carolina persists as health and environmental groups continue to pressure the state, the second leading pork producing state behind Iowa, to more strictly regulate large pig farms.

Meanwhile evidence continues to mount of the industry's impact in the region: A study published in January concluded that streams near large industrial farms in eastern North Carolina are full of pig poop bacteria.