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The Chicken War: Greens vs. Perdue
August 23, 2010
Perdue says a lawsuit against big chicken threatens the family farm. Environmentalists claim the legal action will save it. Who’s right?
Kathy Phillips pulls her skiff close to the shores of South Point Spoils, a tree-covered island in Sinepuxent Bay. The sun has just begun peeking through the canopy of clouds. Egrets glide across the sky, searching for breakfast. As she sits back and watches waves lap, Phillips could be mistaken for a conventioneer from nearby Ocean City out for a day cruise, or a youngish retiree.
But she’s not. Kathy Phillips is the little lady who started the Big Chicken War.
In March, Phillips and her organization, the Assateague Coastal Trust, filed a federal lawsuit against Perdue Farms Inc. and one of the company’s growers, Alan and Kristin Hudson, who have an 80,000-bird poultry farm just outside Berlin, Md. They accuse the farm of violating the Clean Water Act by illegally discharging pollutants into state waters - in this case, a branch of the Pocomoke River. Joining Phillips in the lawsuit are the Waterkeeper Alliance, which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. founded a decade ago. The University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic also assisted in the case and will serve as co-counsel. As of press time, a court date had not yet been set.
Lawsuits over pollution are not new. Nor is it a revelation that poultry manure is a significant problem in the Chesapeake Bay’s waterways. Manure is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, the bay’s two biggest pollutants, and chickens are mostly raised on the Delmarva Peninsula. Yet, the chicken lawsuit has rocked both the genial Eastern Shore and the sharper-elbow world of Annapolis politics.
Read the full article in Chesapeake Life by Rona Kobell
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