990361 Human Cost of Poultry Business Bared

Washington Post - In often emotional testimony, chicken farmers, workers who catch the birds for slaughter, and union and environmental advocates urged five congressional representatives to probe the human costs of chicken production. More than 100 people crowded a church hall in this Eastern Shore town to address the panel, which included a civil rights hero, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

"Fifty birds a minute are going by you," said Sharon Mitchell, 30, who formerly sliced chicken meat from the bone at a Vienna, Ga., plant operated by Tyson Foods Inc., the nation's largest poultry company. "It's sub-40 degrees and you're standing on a steel stand and you're cold and tired." At her urging, audience members chopped at the air, as if cutting meat themselves.

The gathering was part of the growing attention on those who raise, catch and process chickens and work in dangerous, low-paying jobs. The congressional visit also highlighted the increasing focus environmentalists place on the poultry industry's role in despoiling waterways including the Chesapeake Bay.

Those who took the floor sounded words that often seemed less like congressional testimony than church revival invocations.

"If any of you eat chicken, you have a duty and responsibility to join our cause," said Maria Martinez, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union who works in a Mountaire Farms processing plant in Selbyville, Del. She said wages average just over $7 an hour, even for workers who have been in plants for decades.

Lewis was joined by Reps. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), Wayne T. Gilchrest (R- Md.), Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio). Lewis and Houghton are board members of the Washington-based Faith and Politics Institute, which holds gatherings on spiritual issues for political leaders. The institute sponsored the session.

"Today was very, very moving," said Lewis, who grew up on a farm where he sometimes tended chickens. Lewis went on to march with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "There should be an organized legislative hearing so people can be educated. It's a question of human dignity."

Several farmers complained that they have no way of knowing whether companies they grow birds for pay fairly. The companies pay farmers after weighing the birds, then deducting the cost of the food the companies supply. But farmers can only speculate about whether the scales and feed charges are honest said David Barnes. "This is an all-faith business on our part," said Barnes, a member of a small activist group known as the Delmarva Contract Growers Association.

Poultry industry officials note that evidence of company wrongdoing rarely has been found by Packers and Stockyards, an investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Gilchrest later expressed his own doubts, declaring a need for Packers and Stockyards to "maybe quadruple the number" of its inspectors.

Thomas V. Grasso, Maryland executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation called on the federal government to force poultry companies to take responsibility for manure. rather than leaving it the sole responsibility of the farmers who work on contract to the companies. Manure can be used as fertilizer but also poses pollution problems.

Bill Satterfield, president of the Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., a trade group whose largest financial supporter is Perdue Farms Inc., sought to attend, but organizers said his presence would be intimidating.

Satterfield later said the industry pays competitive wages and good benefits. Plants also have government inspectors on site who can close them if they see unsafe working conditions, he added.

Nearly a dozen "chicken catchers" who run through 600-foot-long chicken houses, gathering birds for slaughter, described the subculture, alternately fascinating and horrifying their Washington visitors.

"We block them off with a pen and the chickens are everywhere," said Raymond White, 38, of Pocomoke City, Md., who has made his living picking up chickens for 13 years. "You've got 25,000 chickens in the house and we're really outnumbered."

Rep. Kaptur inquired about "wages and seniority," drawing a laugh from White. "There's one wage," he said -- anywhere from $50 to $80 for an 8- to 12- hour shift -- "and there's no seniority."

About 80 catchers are suing Perdue Farms Inc., asserting it has systematically denied overtime pay. The catchers ride to the farms in trucks owned and dispatched by Perdue processing plants. The company says the catchers are independent contractors.

After leaving a later, closed-door meeting in Salisbury, Md., with representatives for the major poultry producers on the Delmarva peninsula, Bonior said he was concerned about "the gap" between increased company profits and stagnant worker wages. He was particularly critical of the treatment of chicken catchers.

The closed-door session, said Charles C. "Chick" Allen Jr., president of the Allen Family Food, went "very well," and the prospect of congressional hearings is acceptable. "I give this group credit for seeking a balance."

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