Poultry / eggs

:{:{primary 420 on avian source of pandemics eg china wet mkt

see bird flu

includes eggs (eg}:

slapp, animal cruelty) CA}:

(how did ca prop pass?) undermined?

see tyson

see slaughter

see agribiz

see usda

note investigations vs ag-gag

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trump dtr said price down, false?

cost of eggs big deal in 2024? actual cause of price hikes?

--=

an 6 25

If you think viruses are fake, chemtrails are real and public health is a conspiracy, you’re probably up in arms about four hundred potentially diseased Canadian ostriches.

Federal inspectors are poised to euthanize the flock to contain a novel strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that killed 69 ostriches on a remote farm in Edgewood, British Columbia.

After losing their court case to save the flock, the owners of Universal Ostrich Farms invited the dregs of the antigovernment antivax trucker convoy that paralyzed Ottawa to surround the premises to stop the cull.

The fate of the ostriches has become a cause célèbre in rightwing media. We didn’t hear a peep out of maga when Trump declared open season on migratory birds, but every self-respecting antivaxer is an ostrich fancier now. In keeping with their philosophy of governance by trolling, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and his wingman Dr. Mehmet Oz are stirring the pot.

Oz offered to adopt the enormous flightless birds and bring them to live on his 900-acre Florida estate because, apparently, we don’t have enough bird flu at home. “The Canadians should stop putting their heads in the sand,” he said, indulging in a little light colonialism. “We just have to get [the ostriches] out of Canada.”

IFrame Content

After initially rejecting the offer, a spokesperson said the farmers would consider it as a last resort. Oz’s grandiose gesture coincided with HHS’s abrupt cancellation of a $766 million contract with Moderna to finish testing a promising mRNA bird flu vaccine.

“I think this is an incredibly stupid idea,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. Oz is pitching the move as an opportunity to study the effects of bird flu in ostriches, but Rasmussen sees zero scientific value in his plan because “[t]here are no controls, no baseline immunological data, no testing, and no clear experimental objective.”

The birds wouldn’t pose an imminent threat to the health of Americans, Rasmussen says, but they would pose a risk to Oz’s employees and the birds could also spread the virus to wild birds and animals in Florida.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza can be lethal to people. Currently, the virus does not spread readily between humans, but if it mutated, experts say, it could cause a pandemic several times deadlier than covid.

The farm’s owners insist that their birds are healthy, but they actually have no way of knowing. Ostriches can be asymptomatic carriers of the virus, Rasmussen warns. The birds could be passing the bug around like the world’s tallest kindergarten class.

The longer the virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to mutate into something more dangerous. Experts fear that someday, somewhere in some innocent-looking duck or chicken or ostrich, the virus will mutate into a human-to-human transmissible variant. It’s a numbers game. That’s one reason why the Canadian authorities stamp out HPAI wherever they find it. Nobody wants to be responsible for Ostrich Zero. Another reason is that Canada is bound by trade agreements to stamp out HPAI and British Columbia poultry farmers are locked out of key export markets until the flock is culled. Finally, stamp-out is the law in Canada and the courts have found no basis to overrule CFIA.

Showing no awareness that Canada is a sovereign nation with laws, treaty obligations, and a justice system, Kennedy tried to browbeat the head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) into sparing the birds. Because “my fans love ostriches and hate the government” isn’t a persuasive argument, Kennedy insinuated that Universal Ostrich is actually an elite biomedical research outfit probing the mysteries of bird flu. The birds should be spared, he argued, because the flock is in a controlled environment where it can be studied.

However, court records paint a picture of a decidedly uncontrolled environment on an ordinary farm with lax biosecurity. The owners have produced no evidence to CFIA that any research is taking place on the premises and in the agency’s opinion, “the current physical facilities at their location are not suitable for controlled research activities or trials.” The farm has also been fined $20,000 by CFIA for failing to report the outbreak and failing to follow quarantine procedures. This lackadaisical attitude is particularly alarming because the farm is on the great Pacific Flyway, a river of migratory birds that runs from Patagonia to Alaska and is a major conduit for novel strains of bird flu. The ostriches live in giant outdoor pens that bring them into direct contact with wild birds.

To add insult to injury, the owners have invited strangers from all across the country to commune with the birds, creating even more opportunities to spread the virus. Rasmussen notes that “the avian freedom fighters of the True North are not abiding by quarantine protocols and are in the pens with the ostriches.”

Luckily, the Canadians don’t take our overexcitable Secretary of Health and Human Services any more seriously than we do. Asked about Kennedy’s pressure campaign, Canadian Minister of Agriculture Heath MacDonald said he didn’t think it was appropriate for Canadians to make major decisions based on social media. CFIA says it is still planning to euthanize the birds.

A normal HHS secretary might have qualms about egging on antigovernment protesters on friendly foreign soil, but not Kennedy. Dozens of protesters have been gathered at the farm for weeks and additional reinforcements rolled in recently. The atmosphere is festive with merch, live music and plenty of drumming for the ostriches.

However, if protesters tried to resist federal agents, the situation could devolve into another standoff like we saw at the Bundy ranch, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the siege of Ottawa. In the winter of 2022, a convoy of antivax truckers laid siege to Canada’s capital city for three weeks. As a private citizen, Kennedy supported the convoy financially and assailed the Canadian government as “a monster” for freezing the occupiers’ bank accounts.

The Universal Ostrich conflict is unique because instead of protesting the containment of an existing pandemic, these extremists might be causing the next one. By offering to import the birds and killing the most promising bird flu vaccine, Kennedy and Oz are only too eager to help.

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an 3 25

New research suggests corporations are using bird flu as an excuse to jack up prices — and their profits rose before the disease even reached their flocks, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

The cost of a dozen large eggs reached a record high of almost $5 in January. Bird flu has certainly contributed to rising prices; about 12.7 million birds are affected by the disease, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 166 million poultry have been culled since 2022. But bird flu is not the only reason for skyrocketing prices.

“Bird flu does not fully explain the sticker shock consumers experience in the egg aisle … corporate consolidation is a key culprit behind egg price spikes,” Amanda Starbuck told the Guardian. She is the lead author on a new report from Food and Water Watch.

“Powerful corporations that control every step of the supply chain – from breeding hens to hatching eggs to processing and distributing eggs – are making windfall profits off this crisis, raising their prices above and beyond what is necessary to cover any rising costs,” she added.

“The egg production industry – like the retailer sector that producers mostly sell to – is highly concentrated," writes the Guardian’s Nina Lakhani. "This gives a handful of big corporations the opportunity to influence prices outside the impact of shocks like avian flu and the Covid 19 pandemic on supply and demand."

Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the U.S., saw gross profits increase by 7 between 2021 and 2023, shooting up to 1.2 billion. During this time, their flocks had not been hit by bird flu and their sales only increased by a small amount. They “issued shareholder dividends totaling $250m in fiscal year 2023 — 40 times more than the previous fiscal year. The Mississippi-based company sold 7% more eggs in 2024 compared to 2021 and tripled its profits over the same period, according to company filings,” Lakhani writes.

In some geographic areas, prices went up before bird flu reached them as well. For example, in the South, prices followed national increases, even though egg production rose and bird flu didn’t reach flocks until January.

There were more eggs, but higher prices, in 2023. “Between April and December 2023, national retail inventories of eggs each month exceeded the five-year average by as much as almost 13%. Yet the average egg price for consumers was higher than the five-year average each month,” Lakhani writes.

According to a study from the University of Arkansas, bird flu accounts for a 12-24 percent increase in prices.

Angela Huffman, co-founder of the nonpartisan group Farm Action, thinks the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice should investigate egg prices. “Based on publicly available data, we’ve observed that egg price increases far exceed what would be expected based on hen losses and the industry has not increased the number of laying hens as expected during a period of high prices. This strongly suggests potential antitrust violations,” she said. “The FTC and DOJ have the authority to investigate beyond what is publicly available… we urge them to exercise this authority.”

“The working class is struggling to afford groceries while companies like Cal-Maine are raking in huge profits and rewarding their shareholders,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told the Guardian. “The Trump administration has the power to lower grocery bills, but instead they are imposing blanket tariffs on allies, firing federal workers who are trying to prevent the bird flu, and putting billionaires over ordinary Americans.”

Meanwhile, the conditions at factory farms are ideal for the flu to spread. “These same companies exacerbate the bird flu outbreak by raising their birds on factory farms, crammed together in hundreds of thousands or millions, creating the perfect breeding ground for disease,” Starbuck said.

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an 12 24

1 kia 2 25?

Highly pathogenic avian influenza detected in Michigan

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Young people, too, would acquire more “independence” thanks to Project 2025 — at least if what they want to do is work in more dangerous jobs where they are presently banned. As Berry explains:

“Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people, even if their family is running the business, from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.”

The operative word here is “adults.” In fact, no laws presently exclude adults from hazardous work based on age. What Berry is talking about is allowing adolescents to perform such labor. Duvan Tomás Pérez, for instance, was a 16-year-old who showed just such an “interest” in an inherently dangerous job: working at a poultry plant in Mississippi, where he died in an industrial accident. The middle schooler, a Guatemalan immigrant who had lived in the United States for six years, was employed illegally by the Mar-Jac Poultry company. If there are “worker shortages in dangerous fields,” it’s because adults don’t want to take the risks. The solution is to make the work less dangerous for everyone, not to hire children to do it.

We’re Gonna Roll the Union Over

https://www.alternet.org/**2022/05**/trump-administration-meat-industry-covid/

former President Donald Trump's administration colluded with top-level meatpacking industry executives to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in order to drive up prices and downplay the severity of the emergency, according to an exhaustive investigation released on Thursday by the United States House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Representative Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina), the House Majority Whip and chairman of the Subcommittee, said in a statement that "the shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated."

The probe began last year and uncovered a spider web of corruption and flagrant disregard for human life involving American corporate titans and individuals in the highest ranks of the federal government.

Officials at the Department of Agriculture – including Secretary Sonny Purdue and Under Secretary for Food Safety Mindy Brashears – "collaborated" with corporate bigwigs to prioritize profits and production over the safety of employees and the public despite being fully aware of the hazards.

"Infections and deaths among workers for five of the largest meatpacking companies—Tyson Foods, Inc. (Tyson), JBS USA Holdings, Inc. (JBS), Smithfield Foods (Smithfield), Cargill, Inc. (Cargill), and National Beef Packing Company LLC (National Beef)—were significantly higher than previously estimated, with over 59,000 workers for these companies being infected with the coronavirus andat least 269 dying," the report states.

The powerful cadre also "engaged in a concerted effort with Trump Administration political officials to insulate themselves from coronavirus-related oversight," it explains.

In one instance, the chief executive officers of the conglomerates told Purdue on a phone call that their workers “should not be entitled to unemployment benefitsif they are otherwise able to work through the pandemic” and cautioned against “creat[ing] an incentive, much less a path, for food industry workers to choose unemployment overproducing food.”

In that same conversation, they "implicitly acknowledged how dangerous plants were, asking for liability protection against lawsuits if workers were infected on the job."

There was also an aggressive campaign to skirt "pesky" local, state, and federal regulations that would have kept workers and their products safe and healthy.

"Companies lobbied the White House to make clear that—despite concerns by state and local health departments—meatpacking companies should not have to address coronavirus risks if it would impact productivity," the investigation revealed.

Alarmingly, the CEOs managed to successfully lobby Trump to draft and sign an executive order in April of 2020 that "would insulate meatpacking companies from oversight by state and local health departments and provide legal protection against lawsuits for worker illnesses and deaths."

The edict led to Trump "invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure meatpacking plants 'continue operations.'"

Shortly thereafter, records handed over to the Subcommittee show that "meatpacking industry representatives and companies—Smithfield and Tyson in particular—engaged in constant communications with Trump appointees at USDA, the National Economic Council, and the White House, including calls between Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; a joint call with Sullivan, Meadows, and Tyson CEO Noel White;a call between White and Vice President Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short; and a call from Meadows to White asking if White would be willing to meet with President Trump."

Trump subsequently "held a call with officers of the meatpacking companies who had lobbied for it on the morning the order was issued."

After Trump granted their wish, an effort was undertaken between the administration and the industry to "coordinate closely on messaging concerning the order and its effects, apparently hoping to generate positive press coverage" for the ex-commander in chief.

Worker fatalities, meanwhile, were swept under the rug.

In a particularly egregious example, an outbreak at Foster Farms in Livingston,California that infected "at least" 392 workers and killed eight in August of 2020 prompted the company to "intimidate" the Merced County Department of Public Health from shutting down the plant.

"Foster Farms attempts to obfuscate the death count by labeling fatalities as 'resolutions,'" investigators learned. "MCPH officials told the Select Subcommittee that an unidentified person on the call from either Foster Farms or USDA said these cases could be considered 'toe tag resolutions,' referring to the toe tag that is often put on a corpse at the morgue. MCPH said that Brashears asked this individual to 'stop' and said they would 'talk about this separately.'"

Operations at Foster Farms in Livingston were eventually temporarily suspended on August 31st.

Read the full report here.

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koch Group Pushing for Employer Immunity Takes $3.5M From Company with COVID-19 Outbreaks

By David Armiak | July 27th, 2020 at 11:55 AM (CDT)

Owner of Mountaire Farms, one of the nation’s largest poultry processors with multiple COVID-19 outbreaks, gives millions to American for Prosperity’s PAC, which is advocating for state and federal legislation to protect employers with workplace coronavirus cases

here is the broken and disturbing reality of modern chicken production — but there's a way out Lauri Torgerson-White / Independent Media Institute

someone pointed out pandemics come out of ~ ecology, logging etc

https://theconversation.com/the-new-coronavirus-emerged-from-the-global-wildlife-trade-and-may-be-devastating-enough-to-end-it-133333

OVID-19 is one of countless emerging infectious diseases that are zoonotic, meaning they originate in animals. About 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, accounting for billions of illnesses and millions of deaths annually across the globe.

When these diseases spill over to humans, the cause frequently is human behaviors, including habitat destruction and the multibillion-dollar international wildlife trade – the latter being the suspected source of the novel coronavirus.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments to impose severe restrictions, such as social distancing, that will have massive economic costs. But there has been less discussion about identifying and changing behaviors that contribute to the emergence of zoonotic diseases. As a conservation biologist, I believe this outbreak demonstrates the urgent need to end the global wildlife trade.

Markets for disease

As many Americans now know, the COVID-19 coronavirus is one of a family of coronaviruses commonly found in bats. It is suspected to have passed through a mammal, perhaps pangolins – the most-trafficked animal on the planet – before jumping to humans.

The virus’s spillover to humans is believed to have occurred in a so-called wet market in China. At these markets, live, wild-caught animals, farm-raised wild species and livestock frequently intermingle in conditions that are unsanitary and highly stressful for the animals. These circumstances are ripe for infection and spillover.

The current outbreak is just the latest example of viruses jumping from animals to humans. HIV is perhaps the most infamous example: It originated from chimps in central Africa and still kills hundreds of thousands of people annually. It likely jumped to humans through consumption of bushmeat, or meat from wildlife, which is also the likely origin of several Ebola oubreaks. PREDICT, a U.S.-funded nonprofit, suggests there are thousands of viral species circulating in birds and mammals that pose a direct risk to humans.

Decimating wildlife and humans...

michaels sci bk

slaugherhouse crazy # cuts/minute 140--> 170 min

dupont texas pesticide 4 kia osha fine 90K --> 230K$ (dupont sells uits safety services?!)

$ to visit 1x 165 years; fines raised in 2015 to 12K$ (walmart sec guard crushed to death, fined 7K spent millions on liars, got nearly to scotus]

https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-march-2-2020/

bill 1970 unions had in-house saFETY, NOW mostly gone; burton sp CA huge, not even on committee; nader big

ICE raid 600 agents wolff 919

koch Foods

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/how-a-top-chicken-company-cut-off-black-farmers-%E2%81%A0-one-by-one/

no lnx

How a top chicken company cut off black farmers ?— one by one

written by Isaac Arnsdorf / ProPublica June 26, 2019

After years of working as a sheriff’s deputy and a car dealership manager, John Ingrum used his savings to buy a farm some 50 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi. He planned to raise horses on the land and leave the property to his son.

The farm, named Lovin’ Acres, came with a few chicken houses, which didn’t really interest Ingrum. But then a man showed up from Koch Foods, the country’s fifth-largest poultry processor and one of the main chicken companies in Mississippi. Koch Foods would deliver flocks and feed — all Ingrum would have to do is house the chicks for a few weeks while they grew big enough to slaughter. The company representative wowed Ingrum with projections for the stream of income he could earn, Ingrum recalled in an interview.

What Ingrum didn’t know was that those financial projections overlooked many realities of modern farming in the U.S., where much of the country’s agricultural output is controlled by a handful of giant companies. The numbers didn’t reflect the debt he might have to incur to configure his chicken houses to the company’s specifications. Nor did they reflect the risk that the chicks could show up sick or dead, or that the company could simply stop delivering flocks.

And that growing concentration of corporate power in agriculture would only add to the long odds Ingrum, as a black farmer, faced in the United States, where just 1.3% of the country’s farmers are black.

The shadow of slavery, sharecropping and Jim Crow has left black farmers in an especially precarious position. Their farms tend to be smaller and their sales lower than the national average, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While white farmers benefited from government assistance such as the Homestead Act and land-grant universities, black farmers were largely excluded from owning land and accumulating wealth. In recent decades, black farmers accused the USDA of discriminating against them by denying them loans or forcing them to wait longer, resulting in a class-action lawsuit that settled for more than $1 billion.

Along with these historical disadvantages, black farmers say they have also encountered bias in dealing with some of the corporate giants that control their livelihood. In complaints filed with the USDA between 2010 and 2015, Ingrum and another black farmer in Mississippi said Koch Foods discriminated against them and used its market control to drive them out of business.

After the complaints by the farmers, an investigator for the USDA, which is responsible for regulating the industry, looked into Koch Foods’ dealings with those farmers and found “evidence of unjust discrimination,” according to a 700-page case file obtained by ProPublica. The investigator concluded that Koch Foods violated a law governing meat companies’ business practices.

The Trump administration has cut back on enforcing this law, with the USDA now conducting fewer investigations and imposing fewer fines, as ProPublica has reported. Koch Foods hasn’t faced any penalty.

Koch Foods declined to provide an interview with any of its executives or to answer detailed questions about its dealings with black farmers in Mississippi. A lawyer for the company said it denies wrongdoing.

The five largest chicken companies now make up 61% of the market, compared with 34% in the hands of the top four firms in 1986. As the biggest companies expanded their control, they raised farmers’ average pay by a mere 2.5 cents a pound from 1988 to 2016, while the wholesale price of chicken rose by 17.4 cents a pound, according to data from the USDA and the National Chicken Council.

Mississippi is the fifth-largest poultry-producing state, with more than 1,300 chicken farms. In a state where the population is 38% black, only 96 of those farms were operated by African Americans in 2012, the most recent USDA data available. From 2009 to 2017, Koch Foods went from having contracts with four black farmers in Mississippi to zero.

Koch (pronounced “cook”) Foods is based outside Chicago and supplies chicken, often sold under other brands, to major restaurants and retailers such as Burger King, Kroger and Walmart. The company, which is privately held, is not part of the business empire of the conservative billionaires Charles Koch and David Koch. The owner of Koch Foods, Joseph Grendys, has a fortune that Forbes estimates at $3.1 billion.

After Ingrum signed his contract to grow chickens for Koch Foods, in 2002, different company representatives kept coming with lists of expensive modifications they wanted Ingrum to make, according to an affidavit he provided to the USDA investigator. After Ingrum met all the specifications, the next representative went back on what the previous one said and wanted things done a different way, Ingrum said in the affidavit.

Chicken companies usually say they update their specifications to improve animal welfare or respond to consumer preferences like avoiding antibiotics. But Ingrum couldn’t find much logic in the changes Koch Foods wanted him to make. One service technician directed Ingrum to install lights in one place, the next one someplace else. Another time, the company wanted Ingrum to move a power line, even though it was out of the way of the feed trucks and bins. That cost him $6,000.

According to Ingrum’s affidavit, when he met with a manager about the shifting demands, the manager said, derisively, “I had a couple of y’all when I was at Sanderson,” another big chicken company. Ingrum asked the manager, who was white, what he meant by that. The manager didn’t answer Ingrum. Reached by ProPublica on his cellphone, the manager hung up.

Ingrum suspected that the truck drivers who delivered feed were shortchanging him, so he installed sensors to alert him when the drivers arrived. In 2007, according to his affidavit, Ingrum caught a driver failing to fill a whole feed bin. The company brushed it off as an honest mistake. But Ingrum had heard of drivers asking farmers for payoffs to get more feed, according to the affidavit.

In 2009, Ingrum spent $50,000 on renovations that Koch wanted. Then the company wanted Ingrum to rebuild his compost shed. That was another $5,000. Then Koch Foods said the shed had to be certified by a government inspector. Ingrum called the agency, which said the shed didn’t require approval and they only sent an inspector out once a year.

With Koch Foods delivering flocks to Ingrum’s farm less frequently than expected, he was making less money and falling behind on his loan payments. He looked into selling his farm. When a prospective buyer from Florida called Koch to inquire about a contract with them, a Koch employee scared him off by saying Ingrum’s farm needed $100,000 in repairs, according to Ingrum’s affidavit. The employee also swore at Ingrum’s real estate agent and spread a rumor that the bank had foreclosed, according to the affidavit. That wasn’t true, but it was becoming increasingly hard to avoid.

In 2010, Ingrum heard that the Obama administration was making a push to help farmers who were getting squeezed by consolidation in agriculture. Attorney General Eric Holder and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack were going around the country to hear from farmers about the problems in their markets. When they came to neighboring Alabama to meet with chicken farmers, Ingrum went and spoke on a panel.

At the hearing, Ingrum recounted how the company would pay him less if the birds were sick or underfed, even though the company supplied the chicks and the feed. Ingrum said he’d received a tray of 100 chicks with 35 to 40 already dead. Another time, he ran out of feed for three days and the chickens started eating one another.

“There’s no way it could be fair,” he said at the hearing, according to the transcript. “I had no control over the feed that they brought me.”

That night, when Ingrum returned home to Lovin’ Acres Farm, he found a note from Koch Foods saying his contract had expired.

The USDA investigator later inquired whether it was “solely a coincidence” that Koch Foods left the note at Ingrum’s farm on the same day he attended the hearing 300 miles away. A company supervisor said he “could not say.”

“I never got another chicken after going to that meeting over there in Alabama,” Ingrum, 55, said in an interview. “They put me slap out of business.”

As Ingrum ran out of money, the power company cut his electricity, but he refused to leave for three months. His former colleagues at the sheriff’s office had to come remove him. For the next five years, he stayed with relatives until he scraped together enough money from working at a car dealership to get back on his feet.

“Twenty years, everything I worked for, I lost it in one summer,” Ingrum said. “It just ruined me.”

Around the same time, two other black farmers in the area also stopped growing chickens for Koch Foods. Out of 173 chicken farmers under contract with Koch Foods in Mississippi, there was only one African American left. His name was Carlton Sanders.

Ingrum said he warned Sanders: “They’re coming after you, Carlton. You next.”

Sanders’ farm was in a nearby town called Lena. He had been in the business since 1992. Back then, he worked with a local family business called BC Rogers, which he said always treated him professionally. He used the chicken manure to fertilize his vegetable garden, and he took pride in his trees growing figs, pears and apricots. “I just had everything set,” Sanders said.

When Koch Foods bought BC Rogers in 2001, everything changed, Sanders said. Sanders’ performance was above average, according to the ranking system that the company used to pay farmers. But he felt singled out for disadvantages.

“I’ve never been treated like that by anybody,” Sanders, 63, said. “It was just like I was in hell with them.”

In 2014, Koch Foods wanted Sanders to make $105,000 worth of improvements, according to the USDA case file. Then Sanders borrowed an additional $93,000 to buy new curtains, insulation, cables and heaters. Suddenly, he owed a total of $295,000, but he made his payments on time, according to financial records reviewed by ProPublica.

The next year, Koch Foods informed its farmers of a new requirement for the ventilation in their chicken houses. Sanders went to his bank to see about another loan. The loan officer called the manager at Koch Foods and sent a follow-up email asking for “a listing of needed improvements that Koch Foods is requiring.”

The manager never responded directly to the banker. Instead, the company gave Sanders an “update list” with 23 items. Sanders gave the list to his banker, who understood it to be the company’s response to his inquiry. Sanders obtained work estimates for the 23 updates, amounting to $318,000, according to the case file.

The banker advised Sanders not to apply for another loan and to consider selling his farm instead. Meanwhile, Koch Foods stopped giving Sanders chickens to raise.

Sanders asked around and realized other farmers hadn’t gotten the same 23-item “update list.” So in December 2015, he filed a complaint with the USDA.

The complaint was assigned to a government attorney in Atlanta named Wayne Basford. Basford had also looked into Ingrum’s case, stretching back to 2010. Over the years, Basford had collected affidavits attesting to Koch employees’ calling black farmers “niggers” (the employees denied it), and he observed that the office staff was all white. He also noted that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was suing Koch Foods, alleging sexual harassment, retaliation and discrimination against Hispanic employees in Mississippi. (The company later paid $3.75 million to settle the lawsuit, though it did not admit wrongdoing.)

In February 2016, Basford notified Koch Foods that he was investigating a new complaint he’d received, without mentioning Sanders. Koch Foods’ lawyer responded by criticizing the condition of Sanders’ farm and, at the same time, denying that the company asks farmers to make “upgrades.”

As Basford inquired about the 23-item “update list” that only Sanders received, Koch Foods said these were optional. The list used the word “must” six times and never said the updates were voluntary.

“I hate to say it, but they just don’t like black people,” Sanders said. “There are no black people in the office — they don’t even want black people cleaning up after them.”

Basford asked to schedule a meeting with Koch Foods’ executives to present his findings. The company’s lawyer, Scott Pedigo, of the firm Baker Donelson in Jackson, Mississippi, called Basford to suggest meeting with local managers instead, according to emails included in the case file. Basford insisted on speaking with the top executives “due to the potential gravity of the situation.”

In July 2017, Basford and two colleagues from the USDA met in Birmingham, Alabama, with Koch Foods’ chief operating officer, Mark Kaminsky, along with two other executives and Pedigo. Grendys, Koch Foods’ billionaire owner, did not attend, but Basford sent Grendys a copy of his slides.

In the presentation, Basford said Koch Foods’ actions toward Sanders, combined with its treatment of Ingrum and the other black farmers, was “evidence of unjust discrimination.” Chicken companies are prohibited from engaging in “unfair, unjustly discriminatory or deceptive” business practices under the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. The Obama administration tried to tighten enforcement of this law by proposing new regulations to spell out what those prohibited practices are. But the meat industry lobbied Congress to block the proposed rules by withholding funding from the USDA. When the Trump administration came in, it swiftly prevented the rules from taking effect.

So when Basford presented his findings to the Koch Foods executives in July 2017, he included all the evidence of discrimination, but he alleged a narrower violation: that Koch Foods failed to notify Sanders of why it stopped delivering chickens to his farm. In response, Pedigo argued that the notification nine months earlier about the new ventilation requirement was enough.

The notice requirement had been strengthened by the Obama administration, but Congress reversed the change in 2015. That made it harder for Basford’s case to stick.

Basford, who declined to comment for this article, submitted the case for the USDA’s lawyers to evaluate possible next steps, such as seeking a fine against Koch Foods. The agency hasn’t taken any action so far. A USDA spokesman said the investigation is “ongoing” and the agency is coordinating with the Department of Justice.

Meanwhile, Basford tried to mediate between Koch Foods and Sanders. In the months following Basford’s presentation in 2017, he pushed Koch Foods to resume delivering chickens to Sanders’ farm so that Sanders could save it from foreclosure.

Pedigo responded with a list of 10 repairs that Sanders would have to make first. Seven were among the 23 fixes that the company had previously insisted were optional.

Basford wanted Koch Foods to assure Sanders that if he spent the money to make the latest repairs, the company would start bringing him chickens again. The company wouldn’t agree.

In the end, all Koch Foods agreed to was “reviewing its policies and programs.” Pedigo told Basford the company has a “commitment to treating all of its independent contract growers equally and with dignity and respect.”

In response to questions from ProPublica about Ingrum and Sanders, Pedigo declined to comment on the specific allegations in Basford’s investigation. In a statement, he said, “Koch Foods applies its standards and expectations to all growers uniformly without regard to race or any other protected status and has never discriminated against any grower on such basis.”

Kaminsky, the Koch Foods COO who attended Basford’s presentation, last October became chairman of the National Chicken Council, the industry’s trade group.

Koch Foods and other top chicken companies — Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, Sanderson Farms and Perdue Farms — are fighting multiple lawsuits from retailers, distributors and farmers accusing them of conspiring to fix prices. The companies have denied the allegations. In one of the cases, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division asked the judge on June 21 to freeze discovery in order to protect an ongoing criminal investigation.

The USDA is now doing fewer investigations like Basford’s. His office finished 1,873 investigations in 2017, the most recent data available, down from 2,588 in 2012. Penalties for violating the Packers and Stockyards Act dropped from $3.2 million in 2013 to as little as $243,850 in 2018, according to preliminary case data on the USDA’s website.

The enforcement office, known as the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, or GIPSA, was dissolved as part of a department-wide reorganization. The USDA shifted responsibility for enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act into another division whose primary purpose is helping companies boost sales. The staff in the Packers and Stockyards Division has decreased to 137 from 166 in 2010.

Sanders found himself in a downward spiral after the dispute with Koch Foods. He had a stroke and a heart attack. The bank foreclosed on his farm and he filed for bankruptcy. His wife left him. These days, he’s living on food stamps plus whatever he gets from hunting and fishing.

“I’ve been about as dead as somebody can go without being dead,” he said. “I’m trying to hold my head up, that’s all I can do.”

On Sundays, Sanders passes by his old farm on his way to church. The farm is just sitting there, still up for sale, lying fallow. Sometimes, he takes a long way around to avoid seeing it.

This article was co-published with The Clarion-Ledger.

Tyson, Perdue Recall More Than 120,000 Pounds of Chicken Nuggets Combined

CHINA USDA approves shipping slaughtered chicken to China and back, says you can eat it JASON WEISBERGER

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/wra50.html

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100183300

The Chicken Trail, Kathleen C. Schwartzman examines the impact of globalization—and of NAFTA in particular—on the North American poultry industry, focusing on the displacement of African American workers in the southeast United States and workers in Mexico. Schwartzman documents how the transformation of U.S. poultry production in the 1980s increased its export capacity and changed the nature and consequences of labor conflict. She documents how globalization—and NAFTA in particular—forced Mexico to open its commodity and capital markets, and eliminate state support of corporations and rural smallholders. As a consequence, many Mexicans were forced to abandon their no longer sustainable small farms, with some seeking work in industrialized poultry factories north of the border.

By following this chicken trail, Schwartzman breaks through the deadlocked immigration debate, highlighting the broader economic and political contexts of immigration flows. The narrative that undocumented worker take jobs that Americans don't want to do is too simplistic. Schwartzman argues instead that illegal immigration is better understood as a labor story in which the hiring of undocumented workers is part of a management response to the crises of profit making and labor-management conflict. By placing the poultry industry at the center of a constellation of competing individual, corporate, and national interests and such factors as national debt, free trade, economic development, industrial restructuring, and African American unemployment, The Chicken Trail makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the implications of globalization for labor and how the externalities of free trade and neoliberalism become the social problems of nations and the tragedies of individuals.

nafta

Kathleen C. Schwartzman

Who Rules The Roost? The Poultry Elite And Their Adversaries

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-bc-us--reveal-recovery-centers-forced-labor-20171004-story.html

ref

Investigation: Drug court rehabs survive on forced labor

AMY JULIA HARRIS and SHOSHANA WALTER

Associated Press

Judges across the country are ordering defendants into recovery centers that are little more than work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they've turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants, exploiting a nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.

The rehabs send defendants to companies large and small: a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina. The rehabs get paid. The participants do not.

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the nonprofit news outlet Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. To read — or publish — a full version of this investigation go to: https://revealnews.org/nopay .

Perhaps no rehab better exemplifies this allegiance to big business than Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery, also known as CAAIR , in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma.

It was started in 2007 by chicken company executives struggling to find workers. By forming a Christian rehab, they could supply processing plants with a cheap and captive labor force while helping men overcome their addictions.

Defendants work in grueling conditions at chicken plants owned by Simmons Foods Inc., a company with annual revenues of $1.4 billion. They work alongside paid employees, churning out chicken products and pet food for some of America's largest retailers and restaurants, including Walmart, KFC and PetSmart.

Reveal interviewed scores of former participants and employees, court officials and judges, and reviewed hundreds of pages of court filings and workers' compensation records.

Among the findings:...

https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-organic-eggs-2524568365.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-animal-welfare-2518422850.html

USDA Gives in to Big 'Organic' Poultry, Moves to Withdraw New Animal Welfare Rules

Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) formally proposed withdrawing a set of rules finalized at the end of the Obama administration that establish stronger, more enforceable animal welfare requirements for certified organic producers.

https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-animal-welfare-2518422850.html

USDA Gives in to Big 'Organic' Poultry, Moves to Withdraw New Animal Welfare Rules

The rules, titled the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule, are the product of more than a decade of collaboration and coordination among the organic community, including consumers, farmers, veterinarians, environmentalists and animal welfare groups. Unfortunately, a few large-scale egg producers fear the new rules will expose their less-than-organic practices and put pressure on USDA and Congress to stop the rule.

"The new rules are vital for protecting animal welfare, organic consumers, and the thousands of farmers that opt-in to organic certification," said Cameron Harsh, senior manager for Organic & Animal Policy at the Center for Food Safety.

The rules, which have been delayed from implementation three separate times since being finalized in January 2017, provide needed clarity on organic animal care, including prohibiting several painful alterations. In particular, the rules require all animals to have real access to the outdoors, which must include contact with soil and vegetation, and outline minimum spacing requirements for poultry. This is, in fact, what consumers already expect from the organic poultry and eggs they buy in stores. But the largest poultry producers have so far been able to consider small, cement, fenced-in areas as outdoor access and have not been required to abide by specific spacing limitations.

"The rules would hold all certified producers to the high standard of animal care that consumers expect and that the drafters of the organic law intended. If they are withdrawn, the steadily growing organic market and consumer trust in the organic seal will be at risk," added Harsh.

Center for Food Safety has submitted extensive comments in support of the rules. While the rules are not perfect, they are a substantial step toward ensuring all organic animals are provided a consistent level of care. The small but vocal opposition against the rules have misrepresented the realities of the rules in order to continue business-as-usual.

The proposal to withdraw the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule is open for public comment until Jan. 17, 2018.

'Antibiotic Apocalypse' as Livestock Is Force-Fed 80% of Prescribed Antibiotics Worldwide

By Sophie Linden

A recent report from the World Health Organization (WHO) describes the dangers humanity faces from overprescription of critical infection-fighting drugs, which has led to both superbugs and antibiotics' dwindling efficacy, making humans vulnerable to infections doctors otherwise regarded as benign. While overprescription in humans is a viable issue, recent statements from WHO express heightened concern over the ramifications from their misuse in the meat industry.

Stop Using Antibiotics in Healthy Animals to Prevent the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance is the title of WHO's latest press release, reiterating a message that has been clear for decades. The current culture of force-feeding antibiotics to livestock presents a danger to millions of humans. At present, animals used for livestock are fed around 80 percent of prescribed antibiotics worldwide. The measure has been perpetuated by the low cost of the medicines, as well as antibiotics' proven ability to accelerate growth and weight gain in livestock, effectively speeding up the process of food production. In 2015, the U.S. used 34.3 million pounds of antibiotics on animals. The result is antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals and humans through food and airborne pathogens.

At present, 700,000 people die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections, and it is predicted that this number could increase to 10 million by 2050, making low-risk operations like hip replacements and treatable urinary tract infections a new health crisis. The Guardian called the collapse an "antibiotic apocalypse," wherein the world is set to face the same surgical risks it did before 1928, when penicillin was discovered. Essentially a century's worth of medical advances could be reversed.

As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, confirmed, "A lack of effective antibiotics is as serious a security threat as a sudden and deadly disease outbreak." This is due in part to a lack of replacement therapies. In its statement, WHO warns that "there are very few promising options in the research pipeline." The Guardian pointed out that this is precipitated by the "failure of pharmaceutical companies to investigate and develop new sources of general medicines for the future." Perhaps, because what's broken is still paying off.

The threat of antibiotic overprescription has been clear since the 1960s, according to Tom Philpott, co-author of*Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats*. But it wasn't until this past January that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made any kind of regulatory change to address the escalating crisis, asking that the livestock industry no longer use antibiotics to accelerate the growth of animals. However, the language used by the FDA has left an opening for the agriculture industry to continue its use of antibiotic treatments, allowing them to be prescribed and used as preventative medicine—treating antibiotics as prophylactics, with plenty of room for indiscretion.

...

http://www.alternet.org/food/four-out-five-americans-want-factory-farm-abuses-end-heres-how-you-can-help

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http://www.ecowatch.com/kfc-chicken-antibiotics-free-2349462202.html

It’s Official: KFC Goes Drug-Free to Fight Superbug Crisis

By Lena Brook

What can America's most iconic fast-food chicken chain do to fight the growing epidemic of drug-resistant infections? Set a strong antibiotics policy for its chicken supply!

More than 70 percent of medically important antibiotics in the U.S. are sold for use on livestock and poultry. And more than 96 percent of those drugs are routinely distributed en masse in feed or water, often to animals that are not sick, to speed up growth and help animals survive crowded and unsanitary conditions on industrial farms. When livestock producers use antibiotics again and again, some bacteria become resistant, multiply and spread to threaten humans. It's a practice that is fueling the increasing failure of the drugs we rely on to treat a wide range of infections.

Unfortunately, federal policy regulating antibiotics use in agriculture has not stopped this misuse. But U.S. food companies are responding to growing consumer concern and committing to ending the use of medically important antibiotics in their chicken supplies.

Today KFC becomes the newest addition to this leader's circle, announcing that after 2018, the company will only sell chicken raised without antibiotics important to human medicine. This is great news for fried chicken lovers and, most importantly, for public health. The Natural Resources Defense Council has been calling on the company to set a meaningful antibiotics policy for its chicken supply since May 2016, when we launched our "Get KFC Chicken Off Drugs" campaign. Allies like U.S. Public Interest Research Groups, Consumers Union and Food Animals Concern Trust have also been pressing the company to clean up its supply chain.

Given that KFC is the nation's largest chicken-on-the-bone quick-service restaurant in the U.S., we know its commitment to responsible antibiotics use will have an impact throughout the chicken industry.

Today we give KFC kudos for taking a strong stand that will help to protect the public against the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant infections. We are also glad to know that consumers will be able to verify that the company is keeping its word, since the antibiotics practices of KFC suppliers will be regularly audited under the U.S. Department of Agriculture Process Verified Program. We look forward to updates from KFC on its implementation progress in the year to come.

KFC's announcement means that 11 out of the top 15 fast-food and -casual restaurant chains in the U.S. have now committed to some level of responsible antibiotics use for their chicken supply. KFC's promise is especially important because the company only purchases a portion of the chickens from any given flock, due to standards for the birds they buy. This means its change in policy will affect a larger number of chickens than what the company purchases itself, since farmers have to raise all the birds in the same barn the same way.

KFC's new policy is good news for all of us—chicken lovers or not—because drug-resistant infections (or "superbugs") are becoming increasingly widespread. Conservatively, at least two million Americans get antibiotic-resistant infections every year and at least 23,000 die as a direct result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent Reuters investigation suggests that these numbers significantly underestimate the scope of resistant infections in the U.S. Fortunately, the tremendous momentum we've seen in the chicken industry demonstrates that more responsible antibiotic practices are achievable and affordable. Looking at data from a 2017 WattPoultryUSA survey, the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that more than 42 percent of the U.S. chicken industry is either under an antibiotics stewardship pledge or has already converted to responsible practices. KFC's new policy will likely move this number even higher.

We are heartened by KFC's decision to join the fight against drug-resistant superbugs. The transition to responsible antibiotics use in the chicken industry has happened in the span of just four years, proving that where there is a will, there is a way. I hope this will inspire other sectors of the livestock industry, like pork and beef producers, to follow suit.

Lena Brook is a food policy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

http://www.alternet.org/food/worlds-largest-food-service-companies-make-historic-animal-welfare-announcement

http://www.alternet.org/food/big-food-fights-reform

From “battery” cages in egg production to excessive antibiotics, food activists are fighting some of the worst “factory farm” practices. California’s Proposition 2, for example, outlawed caged (“battery”) egg production as of 2015. “Just because they are certain to end up on a dinner plate or in a barn producing eggs...doesn't obviate the need to treat them humanely during their short lives,” read a Prop. 2 LA Times editorial about chickens.

But Big Food is fighting back. Out of state battery egg producers who sold eggs to California that are no longer legal brought suit against Prop 2. When the FDA tried to ban cephalosporin antibiotics, the egg, chicken, turkey, dairy, pork and cattle industries stormed Capitol Hill and won. And now, Big Food is claiming that “aviary”egg systems that replace battery systems are worse—and that antibiotics in egg production are just fine.

Antibiotics Are “Green” Say Factory Farmers

As AlterNet has reported, more than 70 percent of medically important antibiotics are not used in people but in livestock. They are given to make animals grow faster—less feed is required—and to compensate for overcrowded, unsanitary factory farm conditions, not to treat sick animals. While Big Food and Big Pharma deny it, such routine ag use causes antibiotic resistant bacteria according to every leading medical organization. “Superbugs”antibiotic resistant bacteria"hospitalize two million a year in the U.S. and kill 23,000 according to the CDC.

But wrestling antibiotics out of factory farmers’ hands has been a difficult prospect because they represent huge profits to Big Food and Big Pharma. For example, it took the FDA ten years to get Bayer to quit using dangerous fluoroquinolones in poultry water. And when the FDA tried to ban cephalosporins in 2008, Big Food said it couldn’t “farm” without them.

Now, even though almost all major U.S. poultry producers have pledged to reduce or eliminate antibiotics because of consumer opposition, Sanderson Farms, the country’s third largest poultry producer, says they are just fine. Not only are ag antibiotics not responsible for antibiotic resistant bacteria, says Sanderson, they are downright green and the poultry giant will not eliminate them despite marketing pressure. “We have decided we’re not going to sacrifice our environmental goals, our animal welfare goals or our food safety goals for marketing purposes,” says a new pro-antibiotic ad campaign from Sanderson.

How do antibiotics further Sanderson environmental goals? Without them “we would need more corn, more water, more soybean meal, more housing, more electricity,” because animals couldn’t be crowded together said Lampkin Butts, the Sanderson president and chief operating officer. How do antibiotics further Sanderson animal welfare goals? Without the drugs keeping chickens alive, more would die says Butts.

Calling drug and biotech farming in which more product is squeezed out of each, individual animal “green” is not a new Big Food tactic. Do you remember Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) which got more milk out of each cow at the price of udder infections, more antibiotics and a shortened life? "Fewer cows means less methane produced by bovine intestinal tracts, and manure production is cut by about 3.6 million tons” per year said a proXrBGH oped. "At the same time, more than 5.5 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel (enough to power 8,800 homes) are saved, greenhouse gas emissions are lowered by 30,000 metric tons."

Two years ago, Elanco, Eli Lilly’s animal division, rolled out a similar "squeezing the animals is green" message. "More innovation not more animals," said its ENOUGH "How We'll Feed The World" campaign, trying to sound like the UN or World Health Organization instead of the Big Pharma company it is. "Simply by using practices available today or already in the pipeline” 747 million tons of feed, 618 billion gallons of water and 388 million acres of farmland a year would be saved, said Elanco.

Non Battery Egg Systems Pose Dangers Says Industry

When it comes to egregious factory farming, the egg industry, with its animal, worker, environmental and consumer abuses is the poster child. Egg operations linked to the egg tycoon Jack DeCoster, for example, were charged with housing workers in cockroach-infested firetrap trailers, hiring children as young as nine, polluting groundwater with bird carcasses, improper asbestos removal and poisoning hundreds with salmonella outbreaks. DeCoster flocks also perished in fires more than once. (DeCoster still managed a gracious retirement.)

At the heart of the egg industry’s abuses are wire “battery” cages which allow each hen less than 67 square inches and in which hens spend their entire lives. Making such cage, in which hens cannot even spread their wings and live among sick, dying and dead cagemates, as Prop. 2 does, illegal is a big step. But the egg industry is fighting back.

Recently, the industry group, the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply, says letting hens move around in non-caged systems called aviary systems is unsafe because it spreads germs, produces dirtier feathers and encourage “cannibalism” or pecking by the birds. Not surprisingly, these are the same arguments used by United EggProducers (UEP), the U.S. egg producer trade group, to defend battery cages in the first place.

“The conditions in this migrant farm site are as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop we have seen,” said Labor Secretary Robert Reich when he visited DeCoster’s Turner, Maine facility in 1996. “I thought I was going to faint and I was only there a few minutes,” said Cesar Britos, an attorney representing egg workers, when he tried to enter an egg barn. A few years later at same egg operation, law enforcement officers who raided the barns had to be treated for burned lungs from the ammonia levels. Yet the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply says aviary systems harm workers?Pro battery cage egg farmers with the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply even played the “worker” card—claiming that ammonia concentrations, dust levels and particulate matter emissions were higher in aviaries than batteryXcage systems, threatening workers. Yet a quick look at the egg industry’s history shows their concern for workers is decades late, disingenuous and opportunistic.

Out of state battery egg producers who could no longer ship to California after Prop.2 because their products were illegal are also fighting back and brought suit. Not only did they challenge the legal authority of California to restrict its egg market to cage-free producers, they claimed that Prop 2 “will drive up retail prices for eggs over 20 percent.” When threatened with tighter regulations whether truth in labeling or elimination of risky or cruel practices, Big Food usually threatens “higher costs to the consumer.”

But Big Food is also just worried about the health of consumers, it says, certainly not its profits. Disallowing battery egg producers to sell in California would “have a widely disproportionate effect on poorer consumers who depend now on the relatively low cost protein source,” said the battery producer, even claiming that more costly eggs would cause obesity because consumers could not afford the high quality, non-fattening “protein.” While some health voices disagree, most medical professionals link eggs to higher rates of heart disease and stroke and recommend strong dietary limitations.

Antibiotic Use is Actually Getting Worse

Recently, the FDA asked Big Ag to voluntarily stop using antibiotics for “growth promotion and feed efficiency” and only use them for “disease prevention” before 2017. But according to the FDA’s 2014 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food Producing Animals antibiotic use is actually increasing. Domestic cephalosporins sales increased by 57 percent between 2009 through 2014. Use of lincosamide antibiotics like clindamycin increased by 150 percent and dangerous aminoglycoside antibiotics like gentamicin increased by 36 percent. Meat producers are using “disease prevention” as a loophole to continue to administer antibiotics says Scientific American.

While most major U.S. poultry firms have vowed to get human antibiotics out of their chicken products, a 2014 Reuters found that Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, Perdue Farms, George’s and Koch Foods are actually using antibiotics “more pervasively than regulators realize” and may be deceiving the public. Koch Foods, a KFCXsupplier, said “We do not administer antibiotics at growth promotion doses” on its web site, but documents from the mills that make its feed to its specifications indicated otherwise, said Reuters. (“I regret the wording” Mark Kaminsky, Koch’s chief financial officer, later told Reuters).

Similarly, Pilgrim’s Pride’s feed mill records show the antibiotics bacitracin and monensin are added “to every ration fed to a flock grown early this year,” to company specifications said Reuters. Tipped off that Reuters had procured the feed mill documents, Pilgrim’s Pride threatened legal action.

Despite Big Food’s contention that antibiotics are not causing antibiotic resistant bacteria, they are rife in conventionally grown U.S. meat. Almost half of beef, chicken, pork and turkey in samples tested from U.S. grocery stores contained staph bacteria, reported the Los Angeles Times in 2011—including the resistant MRSA staph bacterium (methicillin resistant S. aureus). Pork tested by Consumer Reports in 2013 also contained MRSA and four other kinds of resistant bacteria.

Resistant strains of Salmonella Heidelberg and Salmonella Hadar, recalled from JennieXO Turkey, Cargill and Schreiber Processing Corporation, were so deadly, officials actually warned that meat being thrown out should be in sealed garbage cans to protect wild animals.

“I’ve cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with alarm about antibiotic resistant bacteria. “We may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics.”

A Final Irony

There is a final irony in factory farmers’ resistance to safe and humane farming methods that eliminate animal crowding and antibiotics: bird flu. While Big Food hopes you have forgotten by now about the factory farming driven 2015 bird flu epidemic which took the lives of 50 million chickens and turkeys, many have not forgotten including animal and food activists and reporters. Big Food dosed egg layers with carbon monoxide and herded floor reared turkeys and broiler chickens into an enclosed area where they were administered propylene glycol foam to suffocate them. “Ventilation shutdown” was also used which raises the barn temperature to at least 104F for a minimum of three hours killing the flock—a method even factory farmers admit is cruel. “Round the clock incinerators and crews in hazmat suits,” were required for the 2015 bird depopulation reported Fortune.

The bird flu epidemic was reported only as “losses” to farmers and possible price increases not as millions of healthy animals killed for no other reason than to protect farmers’ profits. But bird flu had a perverse positive effect on egg farming reform and the move away from battery cages. As long as their entire flocks were depopulated and their barns were 100 percent empty, factory egg farmers were not as averse at looking at new, non-caged, aviary housing systems.

Martha Rosenberg is an investigative health reporter and the author of "Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp the Public Health (Random House)."

BIO is the fulcrum of CBI – developing and promoting toxic medicine to treat diseases and disorders caused by GMO

BIO not only represents biotechnology companies, but state biotechnology centers in about three dozen nations around the world. BIO members actually develop healthcare based on toxic pesticide consumption by the masses. They develop products that contain deadly chemicals and then plan the healthcare tailored to quell the symptoms of slow pesticide poisoning and the academics (hucksters and charlatans) who sellout and represent for BIO and CBI push the products that the sick masses buy to quell the pain, confusion and inflammation that drives every preventable disease epidemic in America. These same “gurus” plan the world’s largest gathering of the biotech industry, called BIO International Convention, where investors collaborate and spread the best propaganda for advertising, public relations, and swaying the votes of confused consumers and confused public officials and paid-for government regulators. You can subscribe to their newsletter. This conglomeration is like a huge example of GMA, Grocery Manufacturers Association, that spread propaganda about junk food and junk-science as being beneficial to society, the economy, etc.

March of 2012:Biotechnology Industry Organization announces that Richard Lobb has been hired by CBI as Managing Director for CBI. (1) Lobb has a record with crisis communication and government relations. He also ran communications for the National Chicken Council. Lobb spent 13 years as the “Merchant of Drumsticks” at his chicken parts empire the National Chicken Council. (2) Lobb is then used to bolster up the “science-based” information propaganda for agricultural biotechnology division and brag about sustainability (which is the complete opposite of what chemical pesticides do destroy soil nutrients, crop nutritional value, animal and plant health and human health. Lobb is told to write about how biotech will feed a growing population (sound familiar?) and “resist diseases and insect pests” and of course “reduce environmental impact.” These are all buzz phrases and catch phrases borrowed from actual organic farming practices and websites and the shills of the biotech industry try to claim them for their own, when it’s a bold-faced lie every time. They will go so far as to call spreading pesticides “outreach.” (3)

All of this propaganda is available for viewing at BIO’s website: Biotechnology Industry Organization: (https://www.bio.org/node/517https://www.bio.org/node/517)

They tell consumers, farmers and food investigators that humans have “used the biological processes of microorganisms for more than 6,000 years to make useful food products …” this is a con to make consumers and skeptics stop questioning the dangers of the NEW SCIENCE of inserting genes of toxic pesticides into food, which does not happen in nature, and has only been taking place in laboratories for thirty years.

They tell consumers and investigators that modern biotech provides “breakthrough products and technologies to combat debilitating and rare diseases …” but they leave out the part that these same chemical-agriculture products CAUSE DEBILITATING DISEASES for the humans that consume them daily.

CBI, BIO and GMOAnswers.com (5) tell consumers and investigators they can feed the hungry, but what happens to the hungry who get food laced with toxic herbicides like RoundUp, that the World Health Organization (IARC study) classified as “probably carcinogenic?” That’s certainly not “clean food” or “sustainable” agriculture practice or telling the truth to consumers who want to know if something is GMO (ninety percent or more of Americans want GMO labels).

CBI and BIO also push more than 250 health care products and toxic vaccines to diseases they now claim are treatable. Is that because they created them and know what the symptoms and side effects are? Nearly 20 million farmers around the world use chemical agriculture practices but see no difference in yield, see MORE insects that have grown immune to the synthetic insecticides (called Superbugs) and these farmers see MORE weeds that are herbicide-resistant (8) and ruining crop yield–which is just the opposite of what biotechnology claims to accomplish. Refineries are built and managed across the US and North America to produce bio-fuels and chemicals, adding to greenhouse gas emission problems.

The shills will also claim they can “Heal the World” with their chemical pesticides. By “harnessing nature’s own toolbox” and manipulating and mutating the genetic makeup of plants and crops, they claim they can reduce disease, drought, and famine.

Antibiotic use went up last year. Should we be freaking out? 12/15. See Food.

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fox biz bs

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/11/24/whole-foods-supplier-under-fire-for-turkey-treatment-activist-video/

... animal rights group released a video Tuesday showcasing turkeys living in filth at one of Whole Foods’ (WFM) top-rated turkey suppliers. The group, called Direct Action Everywhere, also known as “DxE” says turkeys live in crowded barns with feces covering much of the floor.

“This particular case was galling because the farm in question had a “front farm” that according to water quality records has not being a commercial farm in several years. And, the front farm is where all the photos and videos come from that Whole Foods have on their website,” Zach Groff, Investigator and Press Coordinator for DxE tells FOXBusiness.com.

The nine-month investigation was done at Diestel Turkey Farm in Sonora, CA, which has received Whole Foods’ highest rating for animal welfare.

“The truth is that a vast majority of the turkeys actually come from another facility that is absolutely horrific," adds Groff.

Michael Silverman, a Whole Foods spokesperson tells FOXBusiness.com that it’s important for consumers to understand the mission of animal activist groups like this one.

More on this...

“Everything they say, do and show is produced with that specific goal in-mind,” he adds. “Within hours of this video being brought to our attention, Whole Foods sent an expert team to evaluate the conditions of the Diestel farm. Our team found that the conditions were not as they were portrayed in the video.”

Silverman says all of their turkey farms, including Diestel are audited every 15 months by an independent third party in order to capture farm conditions in every season.

Heidi Diestel, a 4th generation family farmer at Diestel Farms says they “cannot confirm the video presented is from their farm” and that they pay close attention to the health of their animals....

huffpo

his Monday, animal advocates released a shocking investigation showing widespread cruelty at what some would consider the most unlikely of places ― a top-rated Whole Foods turkey supplier.

Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), the organization that conducted the investigation, saw turkeys suffering from inflamed crops, swelling, open wounds, severe feather loss, and leg injuries. The birds trampled each other in the massive crowds. Feces covered the floor, up to six inches deep in some places.

Diestel Turkey Ranch, the target of the investigation, holds the highest animal welfare rating, Step 5+, given out by the Global Animal Partnership, a nonprofit organization that received over 90% of its funding from Whole Foods in 2014. As of 2013, only 3 of the 2156 suppliers in the program held this rating.

These issues and others appear to violate several of Whole Foods' own minimal standards, and that Whole Foods' advertising of Diestel is based on only one of their facilities, which doesn't actually raise any turkeys for commercial use. Investigators visited this "showcase" facility and others, noting stark differences between the locations.

Photo: Diestel Turkey Ranch, documented by the investigators

This investigation is only the most recent in years of findings from advocacy groups showing the rampant cruelty in animal agriculture. Just last month, a Mercy for Animals investigation showed workers punching, throwing, and pulling the heads off live chickens.

Two weeks ago, Compassion Over Killing released disturbing video of a slaughterhouse where workers mocked the suffering of the sore-covered pigs writhing in pain.

The accumulation of these appalling reports have made "factory farming" a dirty word for the American public. Even though 99% of animals raised for food come from factory farms, the abundance of footage from all sorts of facilities, including those considered humane, indicates a deeper issue with our food system that affects even the remaining 1%.

As Thanksgiving approaches, we need to confront the immense and inevitable cruelty of our food system. We can't properly give thanks, celebrating family and good fortune, with the stain of this vicious industry that runs directly against our American values of liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.

We want to believe that we can just reform the current system to eliminate the suffering of farmed animals, but because these feeling individuals cannot mobilize and tell their stories without our help, they will never be able to protect themselves from behind closed doors. There will always be profit incentives for producers to cut corners, and the resources needed to monitor and enforce laws that give animals lives worth living are too immense to be realistic. Even the minimal standards we have now for slaughter, which don't apply to the birds who make up 95% of farmed animals, simply aren't being enforced.

As an activist who regularly speaks about the problems of animal agriculture, people sometimes try to ease my concern with statements like, "Oh, that's okay, I only eat humanely raised meat!" When I ask them about their actual purchasing behavior, they admit to only buying a small portion of animal products from sources that seem more ethical, and acknowledge that they haven't thoroughly investigated those facilities.

Even if they visited those farms, they'd face issues like those at Diestel, where a showcase farm paints a misleading picture of animal welfare to their customers.

The psychological refuge that "happy meat" provides is one of the greatest threats to the future of animal protection. Even if we think raising and slaughtering animals humanely is theoretically possible, we should still unilaterally oppose our current system of raising animals for food.

http://www.alternet.org/food/brad-pitt-wants-you-know-something-horrible-about-costco

===

5/15

Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have joined the American Farm Bureau Federation, Dairy Farmers of America, pesticide manufacturers, mining companies, home builders, state and local governments, water utilities, flood control districts, the timber industry, railroads, real estate developers and even golf course operators among the more than 230 organizations and companies that have listed “Waters of the United States” on federal lobbying disclosures since the administration proposed the rule in March 2014.

Many food and beverage giants have pitched their thoughts to lawmakers on the measure, too, including Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Land O’Lakes, the potato giant J.R.Simplotand Ocean Spray Cranberries. Also weighing in are about 40 energy companies, including Halliburton, BP, Shell, Chevron, Rio Tinto and the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, in addition to two dozen power companies such as Duke Energy and Pepco.

Many of the groups also made their case directly to White House and EPA officials during more than a dozen visits after the rule was sent for review at the Office of Management and Budget, meeting records show.

The lobbying effort has already had some success.

This month, the House passed a bill from Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) that would force EPA and the Army Corps to kick their rule back to the drawing board and consult with states and industries before writing a new proposal. The 261-155 vote included yes votes from 24 Democrats, of whom eight sit on the House Agriculture Committee and two sit on Energy and Commerce. Four of the Democrats are from energy-heavy Texas.

The Senate is considering a similar measure from Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) that is awaiting a vote in the Environment and Public Works Committee and has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Other supporters include three Democrats on the Agriculture Committee: Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Barrasso’s measure includes more detailed consultation requirements than the House version and sets a Dec. 31, 2016, goal for EPA to finish a revised rule.

eg http://www.oregonlive.com/usda-salmonella/index.html

cowspiracy

Watersheds receiving the highest volumes of toxic pollution were the Lower Ohio River-Little Pigeon River (Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky), the Upper New River (Virginia) and the Middle Savannah River (Georgia and South Carolina).

Of the top 10 parent-companies releasing the largest amount of toxins, four are corporate agribusiness companies: Tyson, Cargill Inc., Perdue Farms Inc. and Pilgrims Pride Corp.
Industrial facilities released more than 1.4 million pounds of chemicals linked to cancer into 688 local watersheds during 2012, including arsenic, benzene and chromium. The North Fork Humboldt River watershed in Nevada received the largest release of carcinogens among local watersheds, followed by the Lake Maurepas watershed in Louisiana.

2x is week the Texas Toxic Tour takes us to Titus and Camp Counties -- where over 99 million chickens are raised and slaughtered each year. Immense amounts of waste are spread over land and dumped into creeks and streams, eventually contaminating Caddo Lake--Texas's only natural lake. This is the story of Lola Barrett and Susan Nugent, two women suffering through horrible stench and disease who continue to fight both the corporate factory farms and processing facilities as well as the state's environmental agency which has done little to protect the public health and the environment.

divider

Chickens Come Home

to Roost in East Texas

Much like the dairy industry has concentrated regionally in Erath County and Central Texas the poultry industry has found a home in another part of the state-East Texas. Poultry CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) located primarily in the eastern part of the state produced approximately 480 million broiler chickens in 1998 and housed over 18 million laying hens for egg production in 1999.(1)

Not surprisingly, these millions of animals generate an enormous amount of manure and litter waste. Each bird produces anywhere from 62 to 95 pounds of manure each year,(2) adding up to over 31 billion pounds of waste which threatens to pollute the land, water and air of East Texas. In fact, the TNRCC has determined that several waterways in the region have already been impaired due to CAFO activity,including Big Cypress Creek, Lake O' the Pines, and Caddo Lake.(3)

Audio & Video

Listen to the Pilgrim CAFOs pollution story

Featured in our interview are Lola Barrett and Susan Nugent.

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Pilgrim's Pollution

By far the largest poultry producer in the region is Pilgrim's Pride, owned by native Texan Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim. Pilgrim's Pride now ranks among the top 5 poultry producers in the country and in recent years has expanded operations across the border to Mexico. In the Cypress Creek basin alone, Pilgrim's Pride raises as many as 99,000,000 birds per year and then dumps over 100,000 tons of chicken waste and litter onto the land as fertilizer.(4)

By TNRCC definition, Pilgrim's Pride uses a 'dry waste' management system to dispose of waste from its poultry houses. But since TNRCC does not require permits for those CAFOs which use a 'dry waste' system, Pilgrim's Pride and similar facilities are exempt from many of the state's CAFO environmental regulations.

Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire

Bo Pilgrim owns more than just 99 million broiler chickens and egg layers. The Pilgrim's Pride Corporation closely follows the industry model of vertical integration, incorporating all aspects of production under the management of one company. Bo Pilgrim owns virtually every aspect of production, from breeder animals and adult birds to slaughterhouses and processing plants, and the company distributes its own products as well. Many of these facilities are concentrated in Camp County and Titus County, especially in the towns of Mt. Pleasant and Pittsburg.

Many local residents complain about the odors and contamination from the poultry-growing facilities, and just as many citizens worry about contamination from the company's processing facilities and wastewater treatment plants. CAFO-related problems are widespread: Odors from chicken houses create nuisance conditions for residents, dust from feedmills affect air quality, wastewater discharges contaminate local waterways, and run-off of nutrients and contaminants such as arsenic and selenium (feed additives) from chicken waste affect water quality. A 1999 study conducted by TNRCC for the Texas legislature also discovered elevated fecal coliform levels in some creeks near highly concentrated poultry houses.(5)

Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution

Lola Barrett is a great-grandmother and life-long resident of Mt. Pleasant, Texas and has experienced firsthand the effects of the concentrated poultry industry in the area. Her house and property are separated from Pilgrim's wastewater treatment plant by Tankersley Creek, which runs between them. Barrett watches from her home as Pilgrim's discharges grease, oil, and wastewater into the creek, which has created layers of fatty foam, and once even a 6-foot high wall of foam, through the creek bed. Sludge is also removed from the wastewater treatment tanks and hauled off for spreading on nearby land, causing fish kills.

Living next to the facility has taken its toll on Barrett. Although she is an avid gardener, she rarely leaves her house anymore. Chronic respiratory problems which her doctors can only diagnose as "bronchitis" have sent her to the hospital several times in the last year, and force her to use a breathing apparatus four times a day.

Barrett has been outspoken about the effects of Pilgrim's operations on residents of Mt. Pleasant. She keeps a collection of photos documenting years of violations at the facility and attends hearings at TNRCC whenever a new Pilgrim's operating permit is up for discussion. Barrett is particularly concerned about Pilgrim's latest permit request to build another processing plant on 4000 acres in Camp County. After years of complaints about waste disposal from his facilities, this time Bo Pilgrim is proposing a new method of disposal: six deep injection wells in which wastewater will be pumped below the ground. Barrett and others fear that the injected waste will filter into the aquifer system and contaminate their well water.

Residents have expressed their concerns to TNRCC, but Barrett feels that her efforts over the years have not done much to improve the situation. After a particularly bad month in which Barrett called TNRCC sixteen times to report various violations at the Pilgrim's facility, she decided that the agency had simply gotten "tired" of responding to her concerns. Discouraged, she says that these days she rarely calls the agency to complain anymore, although she does continue to document violations with photos.(6)

Shameful History of Violations

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.(7) But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.(8)

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).(9) In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.(10)

TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." (11) For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join Texas PEER soon for another stop on the Texas Toxic Tour.

This week the Texas Toxic Tour takes us to Titus and Camp Counties -- where over 99 million chickens are raised and slaughtered each year. Immense amounts of waste are spread over land and dumped into creeks and streams, eventually contaminating Caddo Lake--Texas's only natural lake. This is the story of Lola Barrett and Susan Nugent, two women suffering through horrible stench and disease who continue to fight both the corporate factory farms and processing facilities as well as the state's environmental agency which has done little to protect the public health and the environment.

Chickens Come Home

to Roost in East Texas

Not surprisingly, these millions of animals generate an enormous amount of manure and litter waste. Each bird produces anywhere from 62 to 95 pounds of manure each year,⁽²⁾ adding up to over 31 billion pounds of waste which threatens to pollute the land, water and air of East Texas. In fact, the TNRCC has determined that several waterways in the region have already been impaired due to CAFO activity,including Big Cypress Creek, Lake O' the Pines, and Caddo Lake.⁽³⁾

Audio & Video

Listen to the Pilgrim CAFOs pollution story

Featured in our interview are Lola Barrett and Susan Nugent.

Video:

• QuickTime 643 KB

• QuickTime 1.2 MB

Need help with media tools?

End

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

**Pilgrim's Pollution**

**Pilgrim's East Texas Chicken Empire**

**Pilgrim Neighbors Suffer from Pride's Pollution**

**Shameful History of Violations**

Many of the violations that Lola Barrett has documented are a matter of public record. The Mt. Pleasant wastewater treatment plant has been cited on numerous occasions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Water Commission for repeatedly violating the terms of its discharge permit.⁽⁷⁾ But rather than clean up its facility, Pilgrim's Pride responded by requesting a 25% increase in its permitable discharge limit.⁽⁸⁾

Pilgrim's other facilities also have a long history of violations. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, the company amassed over $900,000 in fines through 68 violations (including seven federal water violations), 25 notices of violations, more than 100 official complaints, and seven out-of-court settlements (Agreed Orders).⁽⁹⁾ In one case, Pilgrim's was fined $325,000 for violations that included nuisance odors from the spreading of entire chicken parts (feathers, feet, beaks, etc.) on land as fertilizer.⁽¹⁰⁾

**TNRCC Continues to Permit Pilgrim's**

Despite repeated violations, TNRCC has rarely failed to approve a permit application from Pilgrim's Pride for new or expanding facilities. And local residents express little hope that things will change in the near future. As the dominant employer in the region, many residents work at Pilgrim's facilities and are not likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Susan Nugent, a resident who lived adjacent to one of Pilgrim's poultry CAFOs in Pittsburg, Texas until recently also believes that politics play a role in how strictly the state regulates Pilgrim's Pride. "I'm not happy with the fact that [Governor Bush] takes massive amounts of money from Bo Pilgrim," she says. "I'm not happy with the fact that Bo Pilgrim goes to the Governor's mansion for a Christmas party and comes back to Pittlsburg and brags about his relationship with Governor Bush-when folks like me sure can't get an audience with Governor Bush." ⁽¹¹⁾ For now then, it seems that Bo Pilgrim will remain the reigning Chicken King of East Texas.

Join *Texas* **PEER** soon for another stop on the **Texas Toxic Tour**.

Sources:

Texas Agriculture Statistics Service (TASS),www.io.com/~tass/tplegvl.htm, http://www.io.com/~tass/tckinvva.htm.
Barker, J.C., Hodges, S.C., and Campbell, C.R. 2000. "Livestock Manure Production Rates and Nutrient Content," in: 2000 North Carolina Agricultural Chemicals Manual, Chapter 10, North Carolina State University, p. 1.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C and Appendix A.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (1999), Appendix C, p. 4.
TNRCC, Poultry Operations Study (January 1999), Appendix C.
Interview with Lola Barrett May 12, 2000
Rich, Jan, "State squawks foul over fowl empire, pollution," Houston Chronicle, September 27, 1985, p. 1; Jacobs, Janet, "Pilgrim's admits to water violations," Longview Journal, March 24, 1996; Letter to Ms. Lola Barrett from Anthony Grigsby, Texas Water Commission, no date.
Letter to John Witherspoon, TNRCC, from Tim Weir, Pilgrim's Pride, RE: Annual Compliance Inspection, April 14, 1995.
Longview Journal, March 24, 1996.
TNRCC, Agreed Order Assessing Administrative Penalties and Requiring Certain Actions of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, Randee Corporation, Winston Land and Cattle Company, and John R. Winston Jr. under the Authority of the Texas Water Code, Chapters 5 and 26, and the Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapters 361 and 382, Docket No. 94-0378-IWD-E, July 27, 1995 (received).
Interview with Susan Nugent, May 12, 2000

A federal court in New Jersey has cleared the way for a class action lawsuit against the nation's third-largest poultry producer, Perdue Farms, Inc., over the company's alleged false advertising of factory farmed chicken products as “humane.” The suit—filed by two members of The Humane Society of the United States on behalf of consumers duped by Perdue—alleges that Perdue is illegally marketing chicken products as "Humanely Raised" in violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act. The complaint seeks a jury trial and damages for the class members, as well as injunctive relief. In adecision issued on Easter Sunday, the court denied every one of Perdue’s arguments for dismissal, clearing the way for the case to proceed to discovery and eventually trial.

"Companies such as Perdue are exploiting the dramatic growth of consumer demand for products that meet higher animal welfare standards," said Jonathan Lovvorn, senior vice president and chief counsel for Animal Protection Litigation at The HSUS. "Slapping 'humanely raised' stickers on the same old factory farmed products is not going to cut it with either consumers or the courts."

The lawsuit alleges that the standards upon which Perdue bases its "Humanely Raised" claim are not meaningfully different from the so-called "Animal Welfare Guidelines" of the National Chicken Council—a poultry industry trade group. The suit alleges that Perdue’s standards allow for treatment that no reasonable consumer would consider “humane,” including painful handling and shackling of live birds; housing in conditions that prevent normal resting behavior and cause painful health problems; the transport of birds on cramped trucks for long periods of time in extreme temperatures with no food or water; and inhumane slaughter of birds.

A key element of Perdue’s defense is the claim that consumers do not expect a “Humanely Raised” label to be an assurance that birds are humanely slaughtered. The Court disagreed and explained that it is entirely “plausible for the reasonable consumer to construe the Humanely Raised label as speaking to Perdue’s processes up until the time of death, including slaughter.” It is undisputed that Perdue’s chickens, like virtually all commercial poultry products, are slaughtered in facilities that according to USDA fall outside the protections of the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and are thus afforded no federal humane regulation or oversight at all.

The plaintiffs are represented in the case by Tycko & Zavareei LLP; David M. Wacksman, Esq.; and attorneys with The HSUS' Animal Protection Litigation Section.

Media Contact:Anna West: 301-258-1518; awest@humanesociety.org

=

see also tyson and ranching

Progressive Populist [1] / By Wenonah Hauter [2]

Pathetic: How the USDA Cowers to the Poultry Industry

February 19, 2014 |

This article originally appeared at the Progressive Populist [3], and is reprinted here with their permission.

Earlier this year, Food & Water Watch received information that USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) was going to permit a trade association — the National Chicken Council — to collect data in poultry plants to assess the rate of foodborne pathogens in chicken parts. The information came in the form of an e-mail from the Assistant FSIS Administrator for Field Operations Daniel Engeljohn, informing his district managers that he was aware of the effort and gave his full blessing to the project. What was troubling about the e-mail was that it told the district managers that the purpose of the data collection was for the industry to develop its own voluntary pathogen performance standards that it was going to enforce on poultry processing plants. It went on to say that FSIS inspection personnel assigned to the plants were not to interfere with the National Chicken Council data collection and that they had no right to look at the data that was collected.

In other words, the poultry industry would create the standards for pathogen levels in chicken parts, and they would only “voluntarily” stick with them. Not only would the industry be able to decide how much salmonella or campylobacter there is on your chicken, but there would be no USDA enforcement of the standard.

Welcome to the latest in privatization of chicken inspections that the industry is pushing, with the USDA’s blessing. Another example is the “Modernization of Poultry Slaughter Inspection,” the proposed plan whose “modern” twist is to turn most poultry inspection over to the very companies that produce our poultry, leaving only one government inspector per plant to inspect over 175 birds per minute — or three birds per second.

This hasn’t happened overnight. The industry has been chipping away at the USDA’s mandate to protect our food system for over a decade. Since the late 1990s, FSIS has established pathogen performance standards on the meat and poultry industry. The standards were supposed to be enforceable, but the agency lost a critical court case in 2000 when the industry successfully challenged their legality because the current meat and poultry inspection laws are silent on pathogen standards. There were a couple of attempts by Congress in the early 2000s to give FSIS authority to set enforceable pathogen performance standards, but they failed.Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) recently introduced a bill, S 1502, The Safe Meat and Poultry Act, that would give FSIS that authority, but that bill has still not received a hearing.

In the meantime, FSIS has continued to set pathogen performance standards, but they are voluntary for the industry. For salmonella, FSIS will post on its website monthly those poultry plants that fail the agency’s testing program. The agency has claimed that its sampling program has shown that the levels of salmonella in whole raw chicken carcasses have been declining in recent years. The Centers for Disease Control continues to report that the number of food borne illnesses attributed to salmonella remains high.

In 2010, Consumer Reports conducted its own study of food borne pathogens found in chicken parts. Consumers rarely buy whole chicken carcasses, but they buy chicken parts in packages at the grocery store. It found that 62 percent of the chicken parts they bought and analyzed tested positive for campylobacter and 14 percent tested positive for salmonella.

In response to the Consumer Reports findings, FSIS – to its credit – began a study to assess the levels of pathogens in chicken parts. In 2012, it posted the results of its survey on its website, which found that 26.3 percent of the chicken parts were contaminated with salmonella and 21.4 percent were contaminated with campylobacter. Agency officials have indicated that it was their intent to set government pathogen performance standards for chicken parts. In fact, the Salmonella Action Plan released by the agency in December 2013 listed that as one of the activities for FY 2014 Now, we find out that the industry is going to set its own standards that it will enforce.

In December 2013, Consumer Reports released data on a new study on pathogen contamination in chicken parts that found 43 percent of the chicken breasts sampled were contaminated with campylobacter and 10.8 percent with salmonella. In light of the rule proposed by FSIS in January 2012 that would turn over most inspection responsibilities over to the poultry companies to perform themselves, the Engeljohn e-mail seems to indicate that there is a dangerous deregulatory effort underfoot that would take FSIS out of the food safety business altogether. Instead of trying to enhance its ability to regulate food safety standards, this agency seems to be turning the keys over to the industry to police itself. That is not in the interest of public health and it needs to be stopped.

"Ten Least Wanted" list

In 2002, Cargill, Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods made the Sierra Club's "Ten Least Wanted" list.

NC Legislators Sneak in "Ag Gag" Bill as Butterball Employee Pleads Guilty to Animal Cruelty

by Rebekah Wilce [1] — April 10, 2013 - 7:17am

Topics: Agriculture [2], Animal Rights [3], Politics [4]

Projects: ALEC Exposed [5], Food Rights Network [6]

Share this [7]

A three-week investigation at a Butterball turkey farm in North Carolina by an animal welfare activist with a hidden camera documented workers beating birds with metal bars [8], stomping and kicking them, and throwing them violently into metal cages by their necks (video below). Mercy for Animals, the non-profit organization responsible for the investigation, turned the footage over to prosecutors in December 2011, and the police raided the facility. Five workers were charged with criminal animal cruelty, and a top-level Department of Agriculture official was convicted for obstruction of justice in February 2012.

How did North Carolina state Senators Brent Jackson, Wesley Meredith, and Jim Davis respond to the scandal? On April 2, 2013, the same day that the fifth Butterball employee pled guilty, they introduced a bill called the ":{Commerce Protection Act:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: [9]." It didn't mention animal agriculture, so it might have flown underneath the radar. But as independent journalist Will Potter :{pointed out:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: [10], the bill is yet another :{"ag gag" bill:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: [11], with similar language and provisions to at least ten others moving across the country in 2013.

Specifically, the bill would ban photography at a place of employment, make it a crime for anyone to make false statements on a job application (such as when an animal welfare activist applies for a job at an agribusiness operation for the purposes of an investigation), and make it mandatory to turn any recording over to authorities within 24 hours. Many of the investigations targeted take weeks to document a pattern of abuse, including the North Carolina Butterball investigation -- these investigations would be made illegal.

(Source: Mercy for Animals)As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported [12], "ag gag" bills have passed in Iowa, Utah, and Missouri; the first similar bill was introduced in Florida in 2011. Since then, similar bills have been introduced in a handful of states each year since. The larger number of bills introduced just in the first several months of 2013 prompted Grist to ask if 2013 will be "the year of ag-gag bills [13]."

In the last few weeks, the mainstream media have taken note. Two days after CMD's coverage traced the bills back to their "ideological ancestor" -- an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bill called the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act [14]" -- the Associated Press took up the story. The AP article quoted ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling: "At the end of the day it's about personal property rights or the individual right to privacy," he said. "You wouldn't want me coming into your home with a hidden camera." On April 7, ALEC and ag-gag were featured in a rare spot on the front page [15] of the New York Times.

The investigations undertaken over the years by citizen journalists and animal welfare advocates have helped to uncover inhumane farming practices and serious food safety violations. Banning these investigations will likely generate even more serious scandals.

For more information on each of the "ag gag" bills introduced since 2011 -- and their historical predecessors in ALEC and elsewhere -- please see CMD's SourceWatch resource here [11].

Poultry / eggs

Highly pathogenic avian influenza detected in Michigan

here is the broken and disturbing reality of modern chicken production — but there's a way outLauri Torgerson-White / Independent Media Institute

Markets for disease

Decimating wildlife and humans...

Tyson, Perdue Recall More Than 120,000 Pounds of Chicken Nuggets Combined

CHINAUSDA approves shipping slaughtered chicken to China and back, says you can eat itJASON WEISBERGER

USDA Gives in to Big 'Organic' Poultry, Moves to Withdraw New Animal Welfare Rules

USDA Gives in to Big 'Organic' Poultry, Moves to Withdraw New Animal Welfare Rules

'Antibiotic Apocalypse' as Livestock Is Force-Fed 80% of Prescribed Antibiotics Worldwide

'Antibiotic Apocalypse' as Livestock Is Force-Fed 80% of Prescribed Antibiotics Worldwide

More on this...

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Pathetic: How the USDA Cowers to the Poultry Industry

"Ten Least Wanted" list

NC Legislators Sneak in "Ag Gag" Bill as Butterball Employee Pleads Guilty to Animal Cruelty

here is the broken and disturbing reality of modern chicken production — but there's a way out Lauri Torgerson-White / Independent Media Institute

CHINA USDA approves shipping slaughtered chicken to China and back, says you can eat it JASON WEISBERGER