Environment group and US poultry clash

The Pew Environment Group has hit out against large-scale poultry production in the USA, calling for limits on the number of birds until the waste outputs of farms is addressed.

In its report Big Chicken: Pollution and Industrial Poultry Production in America the organisation laments the conglomeration of the US poultry industry into a handful of states producing millions of birds.

“In just over 50 years, the broiler industry has been transformed from more than one million small farms spread across the country to a limited number of massive factory-style operations concentrated in 15 states,” said Karen Steuer, deputy director of government relations at Pew.

“This growth has harmed the environment, particularly water, because management programmes for chicken waste have not kept pace with output.”

But the US poultry industry has hit back at the criticism, with the US Poultry and Egg Association(USPoultry) and the National Chicken Council (NCC) saying Pew had a “well-known antipathy” towards the poultry industry and the report was a “cheap shot” at farmers.

“The report’s critique is terribly misplaced, and once again demonstrates Pew’s bias against modern farming practices. The poultry community has already taken meaningful steps to further reduce nutrient impacts on the environment,” said the statement.

“Poultry farmers have been advancing effective control of nutrients for more than a decade, assisted by credible USDA and EPA-recognised best industry practices. Formal “nutrient management plans” for farmers are also required by state and federal environmental regulations.”

Pollution from agriculture affecting Chesapeake Bay was highlighted in the report with Pew claiming industry was avoiding work to clean up the bay which has been affected by nutrient run-off from farms.

“The environmental consequences of the broiler business’s explosive growth are especially profound in the Chesapeake Bay, one of the nation’s most important, scenic and threatened bodies of water,” said Robert Martin, expert on industrial animal agriculture reform at Pew.

Again USPoultry and the NCC disputed this saying the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had recently highlighted agriculture’s decreasing contribution to nutrient inflows.

“According to the Chesapeake Bay Commission, roughly 14% of the nitrogen and 8% of the phosphorus pollution to the Chesapeake Bay can be traced back to urban and suburban nonpoint sources,” said the statement.

In comparison, the December 2010 Watershed Implementation Plan generated by Maryland indicated, chicken manure is responsible for just 6% of Maryland’s total nitrogen contribution to the Bay.