MARY MILLER: Please keep Industrial Chicken Farms up there

Editor’s Note: Mary Miller’s letter is in response to an ES News editorial supporting the spread of industrial farming.

Your editorial about the poultry industry seems to leave out one part of Delmarva—Northampton County, Va. Poultry farms, industrial chicken houses, processing plants?? They’re NOT this county’s industry. We have aquaculture—record breaking production, world class hatcheries, and bottom leases dependent on clean, non-manure polluted water. We have tourism—fastest growing numbers in the state some years. We have food crop agriculture, field crops, organic farms and vineyards, and a growing horticulture industry. We try to protect the industries we have—and we’re asking our Supervisors to continue that protection. We don’t do industrial poultry.

So don’t look down this way for us to “nurture” your industry up there—by cleaning up your waste and manure—by industrializing our farm land with factory chicken houses—by driving away our tourists and vacation homeowners, and lowering our property values, with chicken houses and manure odors fouling their neighborhoods—by spreading so much manure you pollute our clean clam and oyster growing waters.
Nurture your own industry up there if you want, but clean up your own backyard yourselves.