In Raleigh this week, the fourth trial involving Smithfield Foods and hog farms with which it contracts got underway.

We’ve had a couple of months since the third one ended. Since then, there have been changes on the periphery; now we just need to see changes in the outcome.

Plaintiffs won them all. Texas lawyer Michael Kaeske has been masterful in strategy, and Judge Earl Britt’s rulings throughout the three cases has drawn criticism from the defendants. For example, the jurors from Wake County — a sprawling metropolis for the most part with more than 1 million residents and dwindling countryside — were not allowed to visit the farms in counties were big towns equate to more than 10,000 residents.

The judgments total $549.25 million in damages. That’s an amount capped by state law on punitive damages at $97.88 million. All three cases went to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.

So far, we know Britt’s far-reaching gag order was deemed too far a reach.

And he’s among the changes surrounding the case. First thought to preside over all 26, he’s not on the bench for this trial involving Sholar Farms of Sampson County, and he won’t be for the sixth trial.

We wish he had not for the sake of Kinlaw Farms in our White Oak community, the Joey Carter Farm in Beaulaville and Pender County farms involving Elizabethtown-based HD3 Farms of the Carolinas’ subsidiary Greenwood Livestock LLC. It might not have made a difference, but hindsight is clear with regard to Britt’s rulings — Murphy-Brown, a subsidiary of Smithfield and its Chinese conglomerate parent WH Group, never caught a break.

Another change is Smithfield Foods’ late October announcement to begin covering pig waste lagoons at farms in North Carolina, Utah and Missouri. Covering the waste-treatment pits will capture the methane gas and keep out rainwater; the gas will then be channeled to processing centers and converted into natural gas.

Settlement talks have taken place since the end of the last trial, and its unknown if the coverings are part of that conversation.

These results could reshape our state’s agriculture. Hog farming gives us 46,000 jobs and an $11 billion industry. Eastern North Carolina, where hog farming is plentiful, doesn’t need a Texas lawyer crushing its economy. Urban areas are growing rapidly as it is; we need our rural areas strong.

Robert Thackston, for the defense, told those urban jurors the truth in his opening. In some cases, the hog farms were there before others moved near them; and in some cases, neighbors had been near the farms for decades without so much as a complaint.

“That area is going to smell like the country,” he said.

To say that it can’t or shouldn’t is to wipe out a way of life for thousands.

Jurors should not let that happen.