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

[Clara T]

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. 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.

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/21/parker/


A far cry from free range.
Photo: USDA.

[smtpgirl]

1. So I guess that you have never visited the eastern shore

DelMArVa peninsula

All through there are chicken houses like that. Salisbury, MD home of Perdue, on Rt. 50 on the way to Ocean City, MD

[Clara T]

3. What makes you guess that?

Your guess is inaccurate and a non-sequitir.

[smtpgirl]

6. I live in MD

So I would know that I have seen and smelled those chicken houses, that is why!!!!

[Clara T]

8. Yes but that doesn't mean I haven't been there

Just kind of funny that you would suggest because you live there and whiff the stench I haven't visited there and caught a whiff.

No big deal.

Bad chicken houses are stench laden and toxic wherever they may be.

[smtpgirl]

9. Perdue

is one of the biggest chicken producers in the east, those chicken houses go on for miles.

Remember Frank Perdue, it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken

oven-stuffer roaster (the one with the pop-up thermometer)?

[smtpgirl]

7. The "ravaging" of chicken houses in the South is not new

That is why I stated that

[smtpgirl]

10. Tyson, Holly Farms, Shady Brook Farms

are all based in the South, this is not new

[acmejack]

4. Oh, indeed it is.

[smtpgirl]

2. it is always a "fragrant" experience driving there

on your way to the beach in the summer

[Mend]

5. I feel sorrier for the chickens than the people....eom

[CrazyOrangeCat]

11. This thread makes my brain hurt . . .

. . . or, maybe it was that trip to Popeye's . . .

[smtpgirl]

12. i know

a statement was made that my comment was based on fallacy not fact