010209 Poultry Companies Decry Maryland Rules

Berlin, MD - For generations, poultry processing companies have paid independent growers to raise company-owned birds from hatchlings to full-sized broilers. When the company trucks pull up to take their birds away, they leave the manure for the farmer to dispose of, usually as fertilizer on fields.

But that could change if the state gets its way.

Maryland wants to impose new regulations that would make big poultry processors like Allen Foods and Tyson Foods oversee how their contract growers handle chicken waste. Environmentalists in other states have said they might press for their governments to follow suit.

“It's a very flawed idea,” said Tyson Foods spokesman John Copeland. “Some growers, quite frankly, are going to lose their contracts.”

State environmental officials are concerned that waste runoff may be contaminating the fragile waterways of the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware's coastal bays.

Nutrients in manure, like phosphorus and nitrogen, are believed to be the source of algae blooms kill marine life, such as the grass that grows on the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.

There is also mounting evidence that nutrient runoff may be linked to Pfiesteria piscicida, a toxic microbe responsible for massive fish kills on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1997.

The chicken industry is a huge component of Maryland's agricultural industry. Approximately 2,530 growers raise the birds, making Maryland and Delaware seventh and eighth in the nation, respectively, in annual chicken production.

Chicken growers also demand more feed than area farmers can provide. The total feed bill for growers on the peninsula is about $475 million annually, according to statistics provided by the Delmarva Poultry Industry, a lobbying group that opposes the new Maryland regulations.

But new regulations ending self-regulation of how waste is handled could bring an end to contract farmers' independence from processors. It could even bring an end to their businesses if they fail to comply with Clean Water standards.

Independent growers, too, have joined the big chicken companies in arguing that the new rules will suffocate the industry.

Growers and poultry industry executives jammed the floor of a Berlin school auditorium during a hearing Tuesday to question officers of the Maryland Department of the Environment.

“We have 300 years of uninterrupted history of commercial agriculture in Caroline County, and that's being threatened,” county commissioner John Cole said.

Many said they want Maryland to adopt oversight closer to that of neighboring Delaware, which signed a memorandum of understanding three weeks ago with five poultry processing companies for voluntary efforts to meet federal Clean Water Act standards.

“All we're looking for is the ability to discipline ourselves,” said Frank Thomas, a chicken grower from Princess Anne.

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