Poultry Industry

In an unusual about-face, Maryland House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. has rescinded a letter he sent last month asking Gov. Parris N. Glendening to study the economic conditions of contract poultry farmers, and apologized to the state's poultry industry for his "misdirected" message.Taylor wrote in a second letter to the governor that he didn't mean to ask for an assessment of the economic conditions for contract poultry farmers at all -- just one for hog farmers in Western Maryland.He also told Glendening that regulations proposed by the Maryland Department of the Environment on poultry processors -- making them responsible for the litter generated by their contract growers -- "may not be a sound public policy."

A series of emails between Gov. Martin O'Malley and Perdue's corporate lawyer shows what an environmental group calls a "cozy relationship" between the two law school classmates as Maryland's chief executive weighs farm pollution regulations of concern to the Salisbury-based poultry producer. Food & Water Watch , a Washington-based environmental group, obtained 70 pages of emails through Maryland's public information act between O'Malley and Herbert D. Frerichs Jr ., a partner with the Venable law firm in Baltimore who is also general counsel for the Perdue family holding company that owns and operates Perdue Food Products, Perdue AgriBusinessand other entities.

A coalition of 10 Maryland environmental organizations urged Gov. Parris N. Glendening yesterday to propose a tax of at least a penny a pound on chicken to pay for measures to protect the Chesapeake Bay from pollution.The proposed tax, which the coalition described as a "manure disposal surcharge," was part of a 10-point plan prepared by the organizations to address the problem of toxic Pfiesteria outbreaks, which resulted in the closing of three waterways leading to the Chesapeake Bay during the summer.

Maryland farmers produce no crop more valuable than chickens. The state ranks eighth nationally, and the 1.4 billion pounds of broilers grown each year are valued at more than $600 million, or roughly 40 percent of all the state's crops added together. Yet the industry is in danger of harming itself - and others - with its continued opposition to a proposed ban on arsenic in chicken feed. How can poultry producers possibly oppose taking a known carcinogen out of the food chain?

OCEAN CITY -- Even a slight reduction in the state's poultry industry would have a devastating impact on the Eastern Shore's economy, an industry official said during the opening session of the Maryland Farm Bureau's annual meeting here yesterday.A 4 percent decline in chicken production would would cost the region $74 million in economic output, Kay Richardson, president of the Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., told the state's largest farm organization with 14,800 members.DPI, as it is frequently referred to, is the trade association of an industry that produces more than 600 million chickens annually.

Farming advocates are pressing Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski to reverse a little-noticed measure approved by Congress last month that rescinded tough new rules on the poultry industry - a move that has strained the already rocky relationship between mom-and-pop chicken farmers on the Eastern Shore and Salisbury-based Perdue. Under lobbying from the poultry industry, Congress quietly rolled back U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations that required chicken companies to give contract farmers 90 days' notice before yanking their business, mandated independent testing of scales used to weigh certain birds, and prohibited unfair or discriminatory business practices.

Lawyers squared off one last time Friday in a packed Baltimore courtroom to wrap up the long-running trial of a bitterly contested pollution lawsuit with ramifications for water cleanup efforts and the poultry industry in Maryland and nationwide. Jane Barrett, the lawyer for the Waterkeeper Alliance, told U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson that the New York-based environmental group had amassed overwhelming evidence during more than two weeks of testimony in October that chicken manure from Alan and Kristin Hudson's farm near Berlin had washed into a drainage ditch that ultimately empties into the Pocomoke River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. But lawyers for the Hudsons and for Perdue countered that the environmental group had failed to make the case that the high levels of disease-causing bacteria found in the ditch came from chicken manure.

GEORGETOWN, Del. -- A government experiment will expand to include the poultry industry on the Delmarva Peninsula, part of the federal government's continuing battle against illegal alien workers.The pilot program is designed to verify noncitizen workers' credentials by quickly using an Immigration and Naturalization Service database. It will begin in the Delmarva poultry industry sometime this summer, said Kathleen "Cassie" Boothe, a program specialist with INS in Washington.Boothe and three other INS officials journeyed to Delaware to recruit volunteers for the INS experiment.

Immigration officials yesterday said they had identified companies they believe were planning to hire the 40 suspected illegal aliens discovered crammed into a rental truck Wednesday night after an accident at the Bay Bridge.No federal charges have been filed in the case, and officials would not identify the suspect companies or the type of businesses, saying only that they were on the Maryland or Delaware Eastern shores."It's an organized smuggling ring that's involved," said Ben Ferro, district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

It appears that Luis A. Luna's letter ("Perdue: Chicken waste handled in environmentally responsible manner," April 7) is a continuation of the poultry industry's tendency to speak out of both sides of its mouth regarding environmental impacts from its poultry operations. To clarify, we fully recognize the value of manure and nutrient management in agriculture. What Mr. Luna fails to acknowledge is that the enormous quantity of manure generated by the industrial production of chicken contains a range of other contaminants of environmental health concern which make it more properly referred to as waste.