"On a snowy night in February, about 1,500 people packed a school gymnasium in northern Missouri to sound off about the owner of factory hog farms.

Their message was clear:

Leave Premium Standard Farms alone.

That's a very different message from the one a jury delivered Thursday when it awarded $11 million to some farmers in the same area who complained of odors from a Premium Standard hog operation.

In northern Missouri, you are for Premium Standard or against it."

Karen Dillon and Matt Campbell report for the Kansas City Star March 8, 2010. [2]