Finger-Lickin' Bad How poultry producers are ravaging the rural South

[Guest guest]

Finger-Lickin' Bad

How poultry producers are ravaging the rural South

By Suzi Parker

21 Feb 2006

A person driving through the South might notice the chicken houses

dotting the hills and flatlands. He might marvel at the larger ones, as

long as a football field. He might react to their gagging stench for a

moment, and then forget as he travels on. But those who live near the

structures -- stuffed with as many as 25,000 chickens each -- combat

the odor and health hazards daily.

 

 

Not yer pappy's chicken coop.

Photo: USDA. " There's a horrible odor, a stench, and I have flies and

rodents digging in, trying to get into my house, " says Bernadine

Edwards, whose 39-acre farm near Owensboro, Ky., is surrounded by 108

chicken houses within a two-mile radius. " It is unbelievable. "

 

The 65-year-old school bus driver, who recently bought a purifier to

help her breathe easier in her home, says the value of her property has

plummeted since the chicken houses arrived in the early 1990s. " I'm too

old to start over, " she says. " I can't afford to. My house is paid

for. "

 

Edwards is not alone. Over the last 15 years, the country has seen a

boom in chicken farming. Today, the industry is serving a cocktail of

injustice and pollution to rural residents, and most of them aren't in

a position to fight back.

 

 

Growing Pains

 

Since the early 1990s, observers say, thousands of chicken houses have

cropped up across the South as consumer demand for poultry has grown.

Today, the U.S. is the world's poultry leader, with production of

broilers, turkeys, and eggs valued at $29 billion in 2004, according to

the National Chicken Council. Broilers -- chickens raised for meat --

generated $22 billion of that. The leading broiler production states in

2004 were Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, which is home to the world's

largest poultry producer, Tyson Foods.

 

Like chemical companies and industrial hog farmers, poultry producers

don't tend to place these concentrated animal-feeding operations, or

CAFOs, in ritzy neighborhoods beside multimillion dollar McMansions.

Instead, chicken houses commandeer spacious rural areas, where local

residents need the income and their neighbors won't speak out against

them -- or are unaware of the factories' environmental and health

consequences.

 

 

Introduction to the series.

A virtual walking tour of polluted Columbia, Miss.

A portrait of Appalachia scarred by coal mining.

An investigation into why unhealthy food is cheap.

A look at the poultry farms ravaging the South.

Facts and figures on poverty in the U.S.

More stories on poverty & the environment.

Join the discussion " These companies seek rural areas where

unemployment, or underemployment, is high and people are desperate for

ways to stay on the farm, " says Aloma Dew, a Sierra Club organizer in

Kentucky. " They assume that poor, country people will not organize or

speak up, and that they will be ignorant of the impacts on their health

and quality of life. "

 

The companies provide local growers, who work under contract, with

chicks, feed, medicine, and transportation. Growers take care of the

rest, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction,

maintenance, and labor costs. When the company requires upgrades, the

costs fall to the growers. The massive amounts of manure, too, are

their responsibility. (In Arkansas alone, chicken farms produce an

amount of waste each day equal to that produced by 8 million people.)

Payment is results-oriented, based on measures like total weight gain

of the flock. It's a system, says the United Food and Commercial

Workers, that leaves 71 percent of growers earning below poverty-level

wages.

 

 

A far cry from free range.

Photo: USDA.If growers protest, companies can cancel their contracts,

leaving farmers responsible for incurred debt, says Laura Klauke,

director of contract agriculture reform at the North Carolina-based

Rural Advancement Foundation International. And that debt can be

substantial: since banks in the region will more readily loan money for

poultry houses than other types of agriculture, Klauke says, some

farmers put everything on the line, mortgaging their property to make a

living this way.

 

" If those contracts are canceled -- and they can be if the farmer

doesn't do what the industry wants -- then that farmer could literally

be homeless, " said Klauke. " I know farmers who have been in that

situation. " (Industry representatives did not respond to requests for

comments on this or any of the concerns expressed in this story.)

 

 

Pecks and Effects

 

More frightening than the economic balancing act may be the health and

environmental hazards posed by chicken farms, from the arsenic,

ammonia, and other chemicals found in feed and manure to threats from

diseased animals. While traditional farming can carry similar risks,

CAFOs are especially hazardous because of the tight confinement that

defines them. " The fact is, you put hundreds of animals in a very small

area, that creates problems that would not exist if these animals were

distributed across the countryside, " says Barclay Rogers, who

successfully litigated a pollution case against Tyson in Kentucky in

2003.

 

In The Same Vein

Fine and Randy

Bush admin deal exempts thousands of farms from pollution finesRogers

says the industry grew rapidly with little regulatory constraint, and

has been " riding roughshod " over land and people. While CAFOs must

follow federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and Clean

Air Act, he says, many growers try to " duck and weave " regulations.

" The industry may stand up and say we are over-regulating, and that we

have all of these permits, but the practical aspect is that they have

devised many ways to avert pollution controls, " said Rogers. " That's

why we are seeing the fouling of water and air. We just now are coming

to grips with these consequences, as people are catching up and

realizing what has happened to them. "

 

Last year, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson (D) filed suit

against Tyson, Cargill, and several other poultry companies, seeking to

stop water pollution caused in his state by soiled chicken litter

dumped in Arkansas. Polluted runoff, also known as non-point source

pollution, is the biggest remaining water pollution problem in the

U.S., according to the EPA, which cites agriculture as the largest

source of such pollution. Edmondson described the problem as " an

economic development issue, an agricultural issue, and a

quality-of-life issue. " Not to be outdone, Arkansas Attorney General

Mike Beebe (D) -- who is running for governor -- countered in November

by suing the state of Oklahoma directly, asking the U.S. Supreme Court

to prohibit Oklahoma from forcing his state's poultry farmers to adhere

to the stricter standards. Both cases are still pending.

 

Spend your $.02

Discuss this story.This messy interstate situation is just one

indication of the many unknowns at stake. " Some of the [environmental]

consequences of these CAFOs are just not clear, " said Van Brahana, a

geologist at the University of Arkansas who studies groundwater. " What

we do know is when you have a lot of organisms living in close

conditions and you have a buildup of chemicals, you might get a

cause-and-effect relationship. The scary thing is we just don't know

right now. "

 

The effects on those who work directly with the animals are clearer.

" In rural America, the poultry companies can get workers for a song,

and the workers are so grateful to get the jobs, " says Jackie Nowell of

the United Food and Commercial Workers. These workers -- usually poor,

and often African American or Hispanic -- " are exposed to feces [and]

any disease the chicken has, " Nowell says. " There are also horrible

levels of dust and dander inside these houses. "

 

Nowell adds that researchers in the region are currently exploring the

possible crossover of various viruses from poultry to humans, like

avian flu. " That's a real concern. These workers and people who live

near these houses will be on ground zero of an outbreak. "

 

 

Flies cluster around a pile of carcasses in Missouri.

Photo: USDA.Workers in poultry processing plants also face serious

dangers from machinery, carpal tunnel syndrome, and health hazards such

as contaminated microorganisms and dust. " There are huge health and

safety violations in every plant, " says Jennifer Rosenbaum, a lawyer

with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. In 2004, for

example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued

citations to Tyson for alleged violations after an employee was

asphyxiated when he inhaled hydrogen sulfide, a gas created by decaying

organic matter. OSHA fined the company $436,000.

 

Poultry companies " hire relatively low-income people, immigrants who

have less of an understanding of rights and health issues, " Rosenbaum

says. Simply put, she says, the companies are hurting the South's small

towns while they fatten their own wallets.

 

 

Chicken Fight

 

Katie Tillinghast lives in rural northwest Arkansas. In early January,

she received a call from a neighbor who told her he planned to put

three large turkey houses on his property, 200 yards away. Tillinghast

wants to stop the project, but the only plausible choice would be to

buy her neighbor out at $3,000 an acre -- and he owns 73 acres. She

can't afford that, and knows it's highly unlikely that a rich buyer

will step in to help.

 

 

You'll never look at chicken nuggets the same way again.

Photo: USDA.Like other states, Arkansas does not yet have a law to

protect residents from these operations, though several states have

considered such legislation. So Tillinghast can't do much but worry --

about her drinking water, about avian flu, about noise and light

pollution, about air quality. " I agree someone should be able to do

what they want to do on their land, " Tillinghast says. " But I don't

think you should be able to do something that hurts your neighbors. "

 

Many others agree with her, but local dynamics can make it hard for

activists to issue a battle cry. " Often these plants are the only major

industry in town, " says SPLC's Rosenbaum. " Everyone goes to church

together or went to high school together. Everyone knows everyone, and

it's hard to fight that. "

 

Groups like the Sierra Club have fought the poultry industry for many

years, but only recently have they begun to collaborate with people on

the ground. In 2004, a group of growers, workers, and environmental,

public-health, religious, and social-justice organizations created the

National Poultry Justice Alliance.

 

Do Good

Learn more from the Sierra Club and help stop factory-farm

pollution.The idea came from the Glenmary Commission on Justice in

Ohio, a group of Catholic brothers and priests who have worked in the

South since 1939. Marcus Keyes, the commission's director, says he was

inspired by a statement from the Catholic Bishops of the South in 2000

about workers' rights. " These are moral issues -- the rights of

workers, conditions of workers, pay and benefits, " said Keyes. " These

are human rights issues, and environmental [issues, but] in the end

they are all moral issues. " The group's members are working to

strengthen the alliance before launching a major campaign.

 

Meanwhile, a lawsuit may come to trial in early April that could up the

ante. While previous suits have dealt with pollution and workers'

rights, this one tackles the issue of health effects on residents. In

2003, a group of citizens from Prairie Grove, Ark., a town of 2,500,

filed a lawsuit against several poultry producers. Citing a connection

between the community's high cancer rates and arsenic contamination

from chicken litter spread as fertilizer, they are seeking damages from

the companies that own the birds (not, it should be noted, from the

local growers). Their lawyers say cancer rates in the small town are 50

times higher than the national average.

 

The Prairie Grove effort has grown to include about 100 plaintiffs in

multiple suits, each of which will be tried separately. Supporters say

that legal action may be the only way to bring these issues to light

and hold the industry to higher standards. If the court rules in

Prairie Grove's favor, the decision could provide ground for others to

stand on. Until then, the only ones winning in this despair-filled

industry are the mammoth corporations.

 

 

- - - - - - - - - -

 

Suzi Parker is a freelance journalist whose work focuses on politics

and Southern culture. She lives in Little Rock, Ark., and is the author

of Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt.

 

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/21/parker/index.html?source=daily

 

 

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