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The poultry industry, just one small part of our factory farm nation, has a massive waste problem. National consumer group Food & Water Watch criticized the plans of poultry processing giant Perdue Agribusiness and Fibrowatt LLC to build a power plant on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that generates electricity from chicken manure.

“Perdue and Fibrowatt are billing poultry litter incineration as a way to solve the problem of managing excessive amounts of animal waste, but it’s no solution at all,” said Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter. “Taxpayers are about to subsidize an industry that has choked the bay with its wastes and now literally will choke our communities’ air.”

Food & Water Watch’s Poultry Incineration: An Unsustainable Solution, a detailed fact sheet, describes the many problems that make this project a bad decision for lawmakers to support, and reveals that poultry litter incineration might produce as much or more toxic air emissions than coal plants.