Poultry

Natalina J. Mozingo, a former farmer and world traveler, died Friday from complications of dementia at her daughter's Dover, Del., home. She was 88. The former Natalina Josephine Tringali was born and raised in Northwest Baltimore. After she graduated from Forest Park High School, she worked as a secretary for the Baltimore Paint Co. In 1942, she married Harry L. Mozingo, a machinist. The couple later purchased Green Ridge Farm in Emmitsburg, which they turned into a poultry farm raising laying hens and thoroughbred horses.

100 Years Ago Hail to red hats In the Times news briefs: "Hail 16 inches deep is reported in Frederick, upper Howard and Carroll counties last Wednesday night. "The hail storm Wednesday night killed 500 English sparrows in part of Baltimore county. Let's have another hail storm. " This sounds harsh, but it would be many decades until PC - political correctness - was invented. And, since at that time people were slaughtering beautiful, exotic birds at an alarming rate, the sequitur is that little brown sparrows would rate little compassion.

According to Wicomico County Executive Richard M. Pollitt Jr. ("So what if O'Malley emails with Perdue lawyer," May 13), "[n]ot only is our entire region and state helped by the economics of the chicken industry, but so is our environment. " How could he possibly arrive at that conclusion? The data tells quite a different story. Maryland crop and livestock production combined has constituted about 0.35 percent of the state's Gross Domestic Product for the past decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis at the Commerce Department.

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, used Maryland's Public Information Act to obtain 70 pages of emails between O'Malley and Herbert D. Frerichs Jr., a partner with the Venable law firm in Baltimore who is general counsel for the Perdue family holding company that owns and operates Perdue Food Products, Perdue AgriBusiness and other entities.

Maryland's General Assembly adopted today a ban on arsenic additives in chicken feed, which if signed into law would make the state the first in the nation to take such a step to keep the toxic chemical out of food and the environment. By a vote of 101-31, the House of Delegates gave final approval to the bill , ending a lengthy debate over the issue that had pitted environmentalists and food safety advocates against the state's major poultry industry.  Similar measures had failed to pass since 2009.

Researchers who examined feather remnants of slaughtered chickens have found that antibiotics banned by federal regulators may still be used in poultry production. The researchers from  the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University looked for drug and other residue in the feather meal. The findings included amounts of fluoroquinolones, a spectrum of antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in people, including infections that have become resistant to older antibiotic classes.

Researchers report that they have found evidence of banned antibiotics in poultry byproducts, suggesting that growers are evading a 2005 prohibition on their use in treating chickens and turkeys. Scientists at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and at Arizona State University detected fluoroquinolones, broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections in people, as well as otherover-the-counter drugs and residues in feather meal, a common additive to chicken, swine, cattle and fish feed.  The Food and Drug Administration banned the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry production in 2005 amid concern about the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  But in a study published in Environmental Science & Technology , the two schools' researchers report they found the banned drugs in 8 of 12 samples of feather meal collected from six states and China.

I'm back from nine days in Florida (more on that later) -- just in time for the final week of the General Assembly, with most environmental legislation still hanging in the balance. In a dispute pitting environmentalists against the poultry industry (and maybe even a major drug manufacturer), the Senate is set to take up today (4/4) a bill ( SB207/HB167 ) that would ban the use of arsenic in chicken and turkey feed.  Poultry producers have long fed their birds roxarsone to control parasites, but concerns have been raised about the health and environmental consequences.  The maker of the drug pulled it from the market last year after a study by the US Food and Drug Administration found low levels of inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen, in the livers of chickens treated with roxarsone, or 3-Nitro.

With a catch in her throat, Kristin Hudson talks in a video posted online about her young daughter asking if "they" will take away her daddy's farm. The video, featured on SaveFarmFamilies.org rallied farmers and others across the country to the side of an Eastern Shore farm couple fighting an environmental group's lawsuit alleging that the farm polluted a Chesapeake Bay tributary. The Web-based organization has raised more than $200,000 to date from Perdue Farms, agricultural groups and other farmers to help Alan and Kristin Hudson pay legal bills in the 2-year-old case, according to one of the group's leaders.