MODERN-DAY SERFS - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 126

Edwards has used the Clean Water Act, passed under the Nixon administration, to rein in factory farm-
ing. He explains that this sweeping set of comprehensive environmental laws was designed to bring some
degree of corporate responsibility to industrial polluters by holding them accountable for their waste dis-
charges through a transparent permitting and monitoring system. Agricultural waste is known as nonpoint
source pollution, a technical term for pollution that does not originate from one place, like an industrial
facility or manufacturing plant.
Edwards comments on Perdue: “They've managed to stick all responsibility for their billions of pounds
of waste on someone else: local chicken growers, 'chickensitters,' who have neither the means nor re-
sources to properly dispose of even a fraction of the manure produced by Perdue's birds. Perdue owns the
chickens. It owns the feed given and the drugs administered to them.”
He goes on to explain: “It's all orchestrated through unconscionable adhesion contracts that leave their
growers burdened, broke, and in violation of the law. No other industry in the country has managed to
game the system in quite the same way.”
Although the poultry companies own the chickens and the feed that goes into them, the farmers are re-
sponsible for the management of the manure. Poultry litter—chicken manure and manure-laden bedding
(usually rice hulls or straw)—is stored on farms, where it is applied to farmland as fertilizer. In many dense
poultry-production areas, the volume of poultry litter greatly exceeds the fertilizer need and capacity of
nearby farmland. With so many birds and so much manure, the accumulated litter can pose a significant
environmental risk.
Unfortunately, although factory farm activists were hopeful that the Obama administration's EPA would
take action to address the problems caused by the waste from industrialized animal facilities, the agency
has caved in to industry pressure. In 2010, as a result of a lawsuit brought by several environmental groups,
the EPA agreed to conduct an inventory of the largest factory farms that would include the location of fa-
cilities, the quantity of manure produced, and its use. The agency had never previously tracked the data
that would provide it with the information to assess the full scope of the waste problem. But the agency
capitulated to the industry. It has announced that no new information will be sought from industrialized
animal facilities.
Unfortunately, the failure of the Obama administration to take action against the poultry industry to
protect the environment or to strengthen GIPSA regulations to curtail contract abuses suffered by growers
must be seen as part of a long-standing policy of both political parties. The environmental degradation and
unfair treatment of growers and workers in the poultry industry have been well documented over the past
several decades. The abusive behavior of the industry had so intensified by the mid-1990s that each year,
during the appropriations process, USDA officials would ask for new GIPSA authority and more funding
to improve investigations and regulation of the poultry industry.
For Every KFC 12-Piece Chicken Bucket
($19.09 in Manhattan)