Finger-Lickin' Bad: How Poultry Producers Are Ravaging the Rural South

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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.

"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.

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"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.

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Rogers 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.