"The Price Of Pork: Cheap Meat Comes At High Cost In Illinois"

"When the sickening odor swept across Matt Heissinger's farmstead, his daughter would sprint from their home to the car. Clinging to the girl's clothes and hair, the smell drove her to tears as she feared becoming a high school outcast.

Heissinger's wife often was forced to stay indoors, suffering from headaches and congestion, while the soft-spoken farmer worked his cows and crops with smarting eyes and a raspy throat.

On the field next door, pork producers had erected a 3,600-hog confinement facility, where hundreds of thousands of gallons of manure emit gases that have ruined the Heissingers' quality of life. The assessed value of their farm was cut in half because "breezes from the hog confinement across their property are awful," the state tax board concluded."

David Jackson reports for the Chicago Tribune August 3, 2016.