For years now there has been a lot of controversy surrounding poultry production and its effect on the environment, more specifically, the use of chicken manure as a fertilizer. Agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) insist that the chicken manure runoff is a major source of pollution; however, it is viewed as “black gold” on Delmarva. It’s hard to believe that this is such a hot topic in Delaware and the surrounding area, yet some people don’t even know what a chicken house looks like. Delawareans need to become more involved and educated on the topic so that the poultry industry that does so much for this state isn’t shut down. In the following, a basic overview of poultry production, benefits of chicken manure, allegations against the use of chicken manure, and arguments against Federal Protection Agencies will be discussed.
Basic Overview of Poultry Production
For those who don’t know, Poultry production is an essential cog in the wheel of the agriculture industry. Last year, Delmarva alone produced 3.4 billion pounds of chicken worth about $1.9 billion (Hurdle, 2011).
The industry got its start in 1923 when Cynthia Steele of Ocean View, Delaware, raised 500 chicks. She sold 387 of them for 62 cents a pound and five years later she was raising 25,000 chickens (Hurdle, 2011). Today, the average chicken house starts with about 90,000 chicks. One woman paved the way for a multi-million dollar industry that has brought a countless number of jobs to the peninsula. Altogether, Delmarva’s poultry industry consists of five major companies that employ about 15,000 people and process about 11 million chickens a week (Hurdle, 2011).
Sussex County in particular is ranked the number one poultry producing county among...
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...1, 2013, from http://www.wdde.org/13455-chickens-play-big-role-delmarva-economy-history/
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On the topic of environmental impacts due to “industrial farming”, Bill McKibben and Blake Hurst share completely different perspectives. McKibben believes that industrial farming has simply left an unexcusable bad impact on the environment, saying that it is unethical and that the meat we eat is potentially killing our environment and us as well. McKibben states that “we should simply stop eating factory-farmed meat, and the effects on climate change would be one of the many benefits.” (page 201). McKibben addresses that the techno fixes brought in industrial farming are simply not enough to help our environment.
...urkholder, J., Libra, B., Weyer, P., Heathcote, S., Kolpin, D., Thorne, P., et al. (2007). Impacts of waste from concentrated animal feeding operations on water quality. Environmental Health Perspectives, 11(2), 308–312. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1817674/pdf/ehp0115-000308.pdf
Perdue Farms, Inc. has been a privately held family owned company since 1920. Over the years Perdue has become vertically integrated in order to be more competitive and maintain financial stability. Perdue's objective is to be the leader in broiler and related poultry products in the industry. They strive to maintain quality and constantly improve efficiency and service. Perdue Farms Inc. has a mission to provide the highest quality poultry and poultry related products to retail and food service customers. They want to be the recognized industry leader in quality and service, providing more than expected from their customers, associates, and owners.
This topic is interesting to me because it is a very local issue. I eat the seafood out of the Chesapeake, I fish in many of its tributaries, and I visit many sights built around this watershed. I live in Lancaster County which is focused on in many studies because of how much manure the live stock in this area produces. Lancaster County produces more than ten billion pounds of manure annually. (Runoff and The Chesapeake Bay)
"Record-High Antibiotic Sales for Meat and Poultry Production." pewhealth.org. The Pew Charitable Trust, 6 Feb. 2013. Web. 20 May 2014. .
In the book “Eating animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer, he points out the many negative effects of factory farming has on the environment. More particularly, in “Chapter 6:Slices of Paradise/Pieces of Shit”, Safran Foer talks about the environment tolls of animal agriculture waste, which results in killing wildlife, polluting air, water and land . He states “the problem is quite simple: massive amount of shit”. According to farmsanctuary.org “In the U.S. alone, animals raised on factory farms generate more than 1 million tons of manure per day, three times the amount generated by the United States population”. Because of this Safran Foer state factory farms use unorthodox methods to get rid of the excess waste. According to Safran Foer, one of the methods that factory farms use is dumping it into natural rivers, which results in killing wild marine life by pollution. Factory farms typically store animal waste in vast, air exposed lagoons, often the size of several football fields, which are likely have spills and leaks. In 2011 it was reported by the state-journal register that an Illinois factory farm spilled over two hundred fifty thousand gallons of manure into a creek, which killed over one hundred thousand fish. Because of their negligent choice the Illinois factory farm were fined over eighty thousand dollars. “Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan 's office said in a news release
Bovine have been a part of this world for the existence of mankind. They have been used for all necessities; such as, food and draft power. Europeans first brought cattle to the United States when they came over by boat. Since this time, the beef industry has played a big part in the U.S. economy, especially, the sale of live cattle. As stated by Thomas G. Field in Beef Production and Management Decisions Fifth Edition, on average forty-six billion dollars are shown via cash receipts annually. Nebraska, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Iowa, California, South Dakota, and Missouri each generate over one billion dollars in cattle sales per year. It also takes many other resources for a farmer or rancher to run cattle...
Daryl Buckmeister, CEO of The Chicken Coop, must decide whether to invest in market research, how much money to spend, and which programs to fund. His two vice presidents (of quality and marketing) have presented very different proposals.
In the source Environmental Action it is said that about Ninety-nine percent of animal suffering is in farming," chickens, pigs, and cows are kept in captivity day and night. Chickens are the most tortured animal in the farming factory. Five and a half billion chickens are raised every year (Farm Animals). And are kept standing in cramped, tiny cages filled with their own waste unable to move around living immobilized for the rest of their lives. Since chickens are denied normal social interactions they experience boredom and stress that leads them to an unnatural aggression behavior, to stop this aggression from fighting with the rest of the chickens their beaks and toes are cut off without anesthetic. In Factory Farming, Debra Miller talks about how Chickens are drugged to lay more eggs they are bred to be so heavy that their bones cannot support their weight. They never breathe fresh air where they inhale ammonia day after day, causing respiratory diseases, bacterial infection, and congestive heart failures.
(Big farms are highly suggested over smaller farms due to the amount of animals you can grow on them.) As told by Implications of Pig Factory Farming, “However, beginning with factory farming chickens in
The meat industry consumes over half of all water used for all purposes in the United States. Most of this water is used to irrigate cattle feedlots. Water utilized to produce 1 pound of meat amounts to 2,500 gallons. In comparison, the water utilized to produce 1 pound of wheat amounts to 25 gallons. In Texas, a quarter of the groundwater has already been used to grow crops for the expanding cattle feedlots and wells are drying up across the northern part of the state. Also, cattle contribute to water pollution. Cows are routinely washed and the runoff containing manu...
This is not true because the environment and the treatment of animals are overlooked by businesses to make their products cheaper and to maximize profits. Industrial organic animal facilities are only a few changes away from becoming the same as conventional farming. The difference between organic animal farming and conventional farming could be as little as a few windows put on a chicken den. There is still major overcrowding of animals in organic facilities. The animals are entitled to an outside grazing area under the organic system which at times can be very small. These grazing areas could only be a couple feet wide and have no other benefit to chickens other than having a few rays of sunlight. Chickens are usually raised in darkness to make it more convenient for the farmers to handle and feed the chickens. When these farms switch to organic farming, chickens do not even go in the grazing area because they are used to the darkness and they fear going out in the light. The organic companies try and twist the standards and make their facilities only slightly better than conventional farming. Organic farm workers also receive considerably lower pay than workers on a conventional farm because the prices to
Hirsch, Veronica. "Legal Protections of the Domestic Chicken in the United States and Europe." . N.p., 1 Jan. 2003. Web. 13 May 2014. .
A United Nations report states that land used for animal agriculture, both for grazing and production of crops fed to livestock, takes up an astounding 30% of land on Earth. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") To meet the industry’s demands, over 260 million acres of forest in the U.S. have been cleared to grow grain fed to farm animals. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") With that in mind, the meat industry also dumps disease-causing pathogens through animal waste that pollutes water and forces the need for waste lagoons to be constructed, which are susceptible to leaking and flooding. ("Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms”) Scientists say that about 14% of the world’s greenhouse gases are released by said agriculture industries, which is a growing concern for climate change and global warming. (Silverman) The meat industry uses one-third of all the fossil fuels consumed in the United States. (Moore) There is no question that farming animals has a negative effect on the environment and steps should be taken to mitigate air and water pollution risks and future deforestation. If animal agriculture was phased out, land used for animal grazing could be returned to forest land and some of it converted into fields for cultivating crops for humans. A global shift toward veganism, resulting in the elimination of the meat and animal agriculture industries, would protect the environment from various detrimental effects.
Animal agriculture is most directly influenced economically by industry. Decision Innovation Solutions, a research group with a background in agriculture, provides that “from 2004-2014, U.S. animal agriculture increased national gross product by $123 billion in economic output, boosted household earnings by over $21 billion and supported an additional 645,629 jobs.” The data, collected by Our Soy Checkoff, an organization for soybean farmers, shows how the growth of animal agriculture in the U.S. over a ten year course led to an increase in jobs and national wealth (“U.S. Economic Impact…”). The presented data demonstrates the improvement of the economy due to animal agriculture workers receiving more income, along with the increase in available jobs. iGrow, an extension of South Dakota State University with a focus on agriculture, says that in 2012 the U.S. animal agriculture was responsible for 1,851,000 jobs, a total economic output of $346 billion, $60 billion in household income, a paid income taxes of $15 billion, and paid property