‘Big Poultry’ series aims to take readers behind the canopy of a secretive NC industry

North Carolina is distinct from other states in its public-policy discussions about urban tree canopies.

Let’s pretend we’re birds cruising above the interstates, beltways and roads connected to downtown. Our aerial view of leaves, branches and other woody vegetation make up the city’s tree canopy. As we learned from science classes, trees are important because they produce oxygen and filter the air.

I’m no Bill Nye the science dude, but so goes this logic: The larger our tree canopy, the better our air quality — and health.

Raleigh loves its tree canopy so much that taxpayer dollars stamp acorns and imprint oak trees on light poles, sewer covers and police badges. When you’re known as the City of Oaks, your brand is instant recognition for marathons and funeral homes.

We live in a picturesque state. Visitors immediately notice our trees. (When we moved here, we needed GPS to find Target because it was hidden behind trees.) Trees define Amtrak’s Piedmont line and most backroads.

The irony is tree canopies also hide what we can’t see. Anyone who has driven from the Triangle to Carolina Beach on a summer day knows that your nostrils likely will get filled with the distinct stench of hidden farm life.

Pork and poultry

This isn’t an indictment of North Carolina’s agribusiness heritage.

Meet someone wearing a gray T-shirt with a hog silhouette and an NC reference, and you smile with a nod. Pork is our heritage. Biscuits go better with ham. Our barbecue reputation is all about the pig.

But pigs poop with greater frequency than humans, and the mayhem of multiplying manure goes beyond wafts of putridity. A 1995 investigation by The News & Observer showed how pork waste management systems — aka hog lagoons — created environmental and health risks for the public.

People respond to visual cues. A forest can’t hide lagoons that cover several acres. The N&O’s exemplary investigative report, notably its aerial and on-site photos, helped change the public-policy discussion on hog waste.

That takes us to the waffle and chicken at Beasley’s in downtown Raleigh. Or North Carolina’s romance with Bojangles, which is as much about the chicken as its biscuits. We love our chicken — maybe as much as our ham — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Poultry is big in North Carolina. Bigger than the pork industry. But what we seem to know about pork, we only postulate when it comes to poultry. Lawmakers arguably have built their own canopy to hide an industry with similar environmental and health concerns.

“Big Poultry,” an expansive investigative report from The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, focuses on the secrecies that block you and other North Carolinians from knowing where poultry farms are located or how chicken waste could affect your health.

Trying to understand secrecy

Our journalists spent more than a year, from concept to publication, trying to understand the level of secrecy and why.

We had a cast of many who worked on “Big Poultry.” Cathy Clabby, our investigations editor, brought it together as lead project editor, The Charlotte Observer’s Gavin Off and Ames Alexander and N&O environmental reporter Adam Wagner were lead reporters, with data analysis support coming from N&O investigative reporters David Raynor and Tyler Dukes.

North Carolinians have so many reasons to be proud of our state. Tree canopies show the lushness of our landscape. Hogs and chickens, along with tobacco and sweet potatoes, reflect the versatility and richness of our land.

We hope you spend time with our report for this reason: If it’s good for North Carolina, why does it need to be a secret?

Bill Church is executive editor of The News & Observer.