Poultry Industry

Bishopville -- When Jean Bunting was a little girl, helping her mother feed the chickens, it seemed the sky was the limit for the poultry business.After all, her late mother, Cecile Steele, started this country's chicken-for-meat business in 1927 when she turned a mistaken order for 500 egg layers into a then- spectacular profit of $1,000 by trucking the birds to a New York butcher.During the 1930s and 1940s, the money from ensuing flocks kept rolling in, buying new barns and paying for college educations for all the Steele children.

State senators are scheduled to take a final vote today on whether to ban the use of arsenic in poultry feed, with proponents arguing it's needed to protect Marylanders and the Chesapeake Bay while Eastern Shore lawmakers contend it's unwarranted meddling with the state's poultry industry. Chicken and turkey producers have long used roxarsone, a veterinary drug containing arsenic, to treat common avian diseases and to plump up their birds. But the practice has raised concerns for human health and the environment.

The wrong way to handle waste of chicken farms It's hard to believe that the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) continues to waste taxpayers' money by pushing for an ill-conceived co-permitting scheme for the chicken industry ("State is challenging ruling on chicken growers' waste," Sept. 21). With the state facing a $1.7 billion deficit, its efforts should be directed at saving money, not continuing to waste it on a scheme that will do nothing to improve water quality. In compelling language, an administrative law judge in August determined that the state had no statutory authority to impose co-permitting upon the poultry companies.

The Obama administration is to unveil today its plan for taking control of the lagging Chesapeake Bay cleanup, amid growing grumbling from developers, farmers and even state officials that Washington is overreaching in what has until recently been a largely cooperative effort among the bay states. Though officials weren't saying much prior to the release of the draft strategy, it's expected to call for expanded federal regulation of large poultry and livestock farms, as well as tighter controls on pollution washing off urban and suburban development.

GEORGETOWN, Del. -- Having changed the face of Delmarva agriculture during the past 75 years, the poultry industry now is changing the face of its culture, adding new hues, accents and languages to an ethnic landscape once rendered mostly in black and white.The impetus is the industry's growing appetite for Latin American workers, which has transformed the Eastern Shore's seasonal wave of migrant harvesters and crab pickers into a more rooted scattering of enclaves in rural towns, trailer parks, apartment houses and labor camps.

One thing is sure: Hank Thornes is high on Perdue. Fresh from one of the best years he's had, the 66-year-old Stockton farmer sounds like he did a decade ago, when he and his wife, Faye, were named the Salisbury company's top growers on the Delmarva Peninsula. That's when a smiling Hank Thornes appeared in ads in such publications as the Salisbury Daily Times, under the headline: "This Is Where the Real Good Money Is. " Eleven years later, the Thorneses believe it still is -- even though the newest of their five chicken houses is 20 years old. They are happy with their company, happy with chickens.

SPOILER ALERT: This story reveals features of the plot. Baltimore-born film director Barry Levinson has said his new eco-horror movie, "The Bay," about a Chesapeake Bay turned deadly by environmental abuse, is "80 percent factual. " Bay scientists and one activist who've seen it say the film, which opened Friday, does touch on some very real issues affecting the bay. But they say the artistic license taken with the facts and the gore that makes it a horror movie may overwhelm any back story about what's wrong with the Chesapeake.

WESTOVER -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that the poultry industry should add half a cent per pound to the price of chicken to help pay for the costs of controlling pollution.The proposal received mixed reactions.The recommendation was made by Hank Zygmunt, an official with EPA's regional office in Philadelphia, during a visit to a poultry farm not far from the first Pfiesteria outbreak last summer on the Pocomoke River.Zygmunt said the poultry industry has a responsibility to help pay for pollution problems associated with the use of chicken manure as fertilizer on grain fields.

In a bid to help Maryland's poultry industry, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration said yesterday it will try to preserve land for agricultural uses and study alternative ways to dispose of chicken manure that pollutes the Chesapeake Bay. The announcement came as the governor endorsed many recommendations from a task force that spent six months looking for ways to ensure the economic stability of the Eastern Shore chicken business. "The governor believes this is an industry that has been shut out for several years, and this is part of his effort to bring them back to the table," said Henry P. Fawell, a spokesman for the governor.

Incidences of avian flu in far-flung parts of the world have taken a large bite out of Maryland's biggest farm business, poultry production. An Asian strain of the flu, which has never been detected in the United States, has been blamed for at least 140 deaths in other parts of the world and has led to the destruction of millions of chickens overseas. One repercussion was a significant decline in chicken exports last year, said Bill Satterfield, executive director of Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. "Many ill-informed foreign consumers thought they needed to stop buying chicken in order to protect themselves and their families," Satterfield said at a recent meeting of Wicomico County economic development officials.