A Newsweek article published April 28 about a current dearth of commercial chicken “wings” concludes the marketing account with the perspective of UPC’s President, Karen Davis in the following three paragraphs:
The demand for U.S. chicken abroad increases production at home, production which Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns, said devastates its surrounding environment. In the United States, 8 billion chickens are consumed each year, and American chickens produce nearly 86 million tons of manure a year.
Davis says this manure does not just create toxic environments for the chickens, but it also presents major disposal problems. While some can be used for fertilizer, much ends up in runoff. According to a report by Environmental Integrity Project, the chicken industry contributes about 12 million pounds of nitrogen to the Chesapeake Bay each year. Today, 82% of the bay is partially or fully impaired by toxic contaminants, the Chesapeake Bay Program found.
“The environmental issue is very important, because the plight of the chickens again spills out into the larger environment,” Davis told Newsweek. “One of the effects of the chicken industry is the destruction of wildlife and wildlife habitat. It just ruins every place it opens for business.”
Learn more:
Environment Impact of the Poultry Industry
About the Author
It is gratifying to see the topic of widespread damage on several fronts that has resulted from the expansion of the industrial poultry business in Accomack County. Four years ago, in 2017, this subject was a hot topic in the Mirror. Everything I have to say has already been said in the Mirror and elsewhere, except that the problems have not gone away.
Five years ago the Accomack County Board of Supervisors under the leadership of Robert Crockett presented the expansion of large chicken houses as something needed to foster Accomack’s prosperity. In 2021, I wonder whether he can credibly claim that such prosperity has actually occurred. I believe it hasn’t. While a some poultry growers have greatly increased the numbers and sizes of their chicken houses, small businesses in general have not proliferated or prospered. The percentage of skilled, independent workers in relation to the unskilled, who are often dependent on permanent local government assistance, has not increased. Accomack is not more prosperous than it was five years ago, because it still lacks the dynamism engendered by innovative small businesses, which are actually damaged by the County’s reputation as a toilet for industrial poultry residue.
I quote a paragraph from a January 2020 online article by Food and Water Watch.Org, whose subject is the state of the poultry business and of the environment on the Lower Shore of Maryland: “The chicken industry continues to expand on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. More chickens may mean more profits for companies like Perdue and Mountaire Farms, but for residents it spells more manure waste, polluted air, … and degradation of the Chesapeake Bay. Weak State and federal regulations allow these corporations to pawn off the enormous burden of waste disposal to their contract growers–and ultimately to Maryland taxpayers, who help foot the bill to transport hundreds of thousands of tons of poultry and other livestock waste each year.” This article lasted only a few days on the internet before being removed. The industrial poultry lobby is quite powerful. I grew up in Somerset County, and my relatives still raise chickens big-time at the family farm, so I consider myself familiar with the business. Somerset is the poorest county in Maryland, and brackish water from the Bay’s tributaries remove more arable land from farms each year. The rising water table and land sinkage make the lower Shore a very poor choice for the proliferation of the industrial poultry business.
don green says ‘The rising water table and land sinkage make the lower Shore a very poor choice for the proliferation of the industrial poultry business.’
I say “Who’s backyard did you want the chicken that the people on The Shore eat, daily, grown in?
Mr. Richardson, I believe the pronoun you used is properly spelled “Whose”. On a more serious note, it’s obvious that millions of acres exist all over the US that are suitable for the introduction of chicken houses and chicken processors. There’s only one precious Chesapeake Bay, whose tributaries are still being befouled by pollutant-rich poultry waste runoff. For decades, local governments on the Eastern Shore have allowed the misuse of the Bay, to the detriment of the entire area. Tyson and Perdue may prosper, but Accomack’s taxpayers are the losers. Its Board of Supervisors is completely clueless: you don’t engender a prosperous economy by paying the educational, medical, and social welfare costs of a bunch of unskilled, low-income workers, some of whom will never even learn proper English.
Northampton and Accomac County Citizen’s #1 source of protein. Period.