If, like me, you watch the Discovery Channel’s and TLC’s medical shows, then the phrase “orphan drug” likely is familiar to you. A lot of the episodes, whether filmed in the States or elsewhere, focus on rare, often bizarre, diseases, and often the narrative ends up noting that effective treatments for these conditions aren’t available. They are “orphan diseases” without enough afflicted patients to constitute a commercial market and make developing a pharmaceutical treatment profitable for the pharma companies.

The “orphan drugs” that could address these conditions are un- or underdeveloped because there isn’t enough demand in absolute numbers. Developing new drugs is simply too expensive a process to undertake if there is no promise of substantial sales at the other end.

Federal laws passed since the 1980s offering tax incentives and other financial bonuses have eased the financial challenges of developing orphan drugs to a certain extent. Still, the need remains.

The meat industry has its orphans, too; issues (not diseases, necessarily) that ought to be addressed but the cost of doing so is quite dear and there is no mandate. One of the most consistent PR thorns in the meat industry’s side is center stage beginning this week, as a series of lawsuits filed against Smithfield Foods unit Murphy-Brown over its handling of odors and manure management at its massive hog production facilities in North Carolina goes to trial.

Hogs are a special olfactory challenge, but cattle feedlots and chicken barns have their own issues.

I grew up in a rural area and am on the side that says, “deal with it.” However, the farms around my hometown were small. The way these mega-facilities affect the surrounding communities is at a different level.

The courts will decide the veracity of the plaintiffs’ claims in the Murphy-Brown suit, but the spectacle alone reflects poorly on the entire business of raising and slaughtering animals for food.

But odor created by the emissions of a live animal is unrelated to the value of the finished product. Cutting-edge odor mitigating technologies have been shown to be remarkably effective; instead of spraying hog manure onto cropland as a fertilizer, for example, it can be injected into the soil directly. Not only is the manure not exposed to the air, but it can’t be picked up by the wind and dropped on surrounding residences.

But these systems are expensive and the investment cannot be automatically recovered in the price of the final product. And so, odor is an ever-present but orphaned issue for most of the industry.

In most cases, companies have opted to risk alienating neighbors and possibly fight the issue out in court, rather than spend more money on odor mitigation than they have to. They’re making substantial investments in manure management, but not as spending as much as they could to get the best results possible. From a business standpoint, this makes sense. From a reputation standpoint, it stinks.

What would have to happen to give this issue some guardians? Is there a company that would be willing to step out in front of the pack and reap the rewards of plenty of feel-good publicity? Is it a matter of legislation or regulation — financial incentives, tax breaks, zoning or transportation changes that would bring a return on investment closer to reality?

Who will take in the orphans?

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