Open Letter to Bush
I have always loved the concept of the"Open Letter". I have a few of my own I need to write. I know that the person who the letter is addressed to rarely actually ever reads it however the exercise of writing the thing is what is actually important. I think by forming things in something tangible like a written document, work of art, or music one can work through issues and dump emotional baggage that would otherwise fester into something distracting or worse destructive internal. Hell that is what half my own Rambling Rants are as well.
All that aside this is on of many open letters to our lovely president I have come across. It was in my morning edition of Alternet (an online magazine) and I have a direct link to it attached to this post and again here: http://www.alternet.org/story/32920/. There is also a link to other articles by the author if you click on the name (If your system supports it) as well as a few other link within the letter itself.
Open Letter to President Bush on His Visit to India
You may not have been informed that your future strategic partner in the war on terror is a nation plagued by child labor, starvation and poverty.
Dear President Bush,Air Force One will touch down in the Indian capital in the early hours of Wednesday, March 1, on your maiden presidential visit to my country, the new star on the horizon for Washington. I am concerned that your preparation for the occasion might be as half-baked as the intelligence reports on WMD in Iraq or the state of levees in New Orleans, so I am writing to fill you in on some important details.
Your visit follows the state visit of President Chirac, who was in India for three days in February with a delegation of 30 businessmen. The day after you leave, Australian Prime Minister John Howard will grace India, followed by Chinese President Hu Jintao two months later. Presumably, the success of your visit, just like the rest of the parade, will depend on your ability to help induct the Indian government into the elite nuclear club of nations and for you to secure new contracts for your defense manufacturers.
Just a month ago, India was the proud host of DefExpo. All sorts of goodies ranging from anti-aircraft guns, artillery, military vehicles, decoy systems, rocket launcher systems, submarines, tanks, infantry combat vehicles and torpedoes were on display. The hawkers came from all parts of the world: France, Germany, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Israel, Bulgaria, Switzerland, etc. But did you know that it was your 20 major defense companies, including Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and, of course, the U.S. Army, who outshone the others, promoting everything from fighter jets to over-the-horizon radars?
India's desire for military hardware and software has made it the third-largest spender on defense in the world, next only to the United States and China. It was the largest arms importer in 2004 and now is in the market for 126 new multi-role combat aircraft, which could be a lucrative $6.5 billion contract. Recent announcements from the Indian government indicate that additional perks might come for your defense corporations. The new budget presented in the Indian Parliament on February 28, 2006, has allocated a substantial amount -- Rs. 89,000 crores ($20 billion) -- to defense.
The 2006 budget is graced with the words of Swami Vivekanandp, "We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind? Â We make our own destiny."
But India's destiny, determined by the "karma" of the Indian government is described on the World Food Program's country page: "Nearly 50 percent of the world's hungry live in India  Around 35 percent of India's population -- 350 million -- are considered food-insecure  Nearly nine out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and anemia  More than half of the children under five are moderately or severely malnourished, or suffer from stunting."
Yes, an estimated 330 to 350 million people in India survive on less than $1 a day, joining the ranks of starving millions in the country who face the prospect of "starvation deaths" each year.
India's destiny is that it is a nation plagued by child labor. An estimated 60 to 115 million children are classified as working children -- the highest number in the world. Deprived of their childhoods, most have never seen the inside of a school. However, if confronted by those overzealous NGO types such as Human Rights Watch, you can always counter with the argument that no current figures are available for the number of children engaged in child labor, since the Indian government does not collect such data. And yes, it is for similar reasons that the efficient Indian government, proud of its human resources that are running Silicon Valley from the United States to Bangalore, does not bother to keep data on the numbers of people displaced by large dams either.
You are right about the possibility of India being a strategic coalition partner in the war on terror. You have much in common. You have come under a lot of flak for the war in Iraq. According to the U.S. group, National Priorities Budget, the $240 billion bill for Iraq could have fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 10 years; a worldwide AIDS programs for 24 years; or ensured basic immunizations for every child in the world for 80 years. Had that money been spent elsewhere, the lives of 2,291 American soldiers and countless Iraqis who have died in Iraq, might have been saved.
I don't expect that anyone has informed you of these realities. Quite the opposite: the Sunday edition of the New York Times exclaims, "In the India that President Bush will visit this week, an extravagant ethos of bling has arrived. Gone is a half-century legacy of independent India -- stubbornly socialist, avowedly nonaligned, deeply anti-American."
Such media coverage, devoted to modern-day Indian "nouveaux nawabs" -- some 70,000 people who earn about $232,000 a year -- has obfuscated the reality in a country of a billion people.
Mr. President, the obvious has been stated. It might be good to revisit your agenda. The poor, the marginalized and the hungry, along with civil society groups will line the streets of Delhi and Hyderabad, where your motorcade passes, to protest the visit of "W," a symbol of war. Indians want peace. Indians want bread, not bombs.
Anuradha Mittal is executive director of the Oakland Institute.
Your visit follows the state visit of President Chirac, who was in India for three days in February with a delegation of 30 businessmen. The day after you leave, Australian Prime Minister John Howard will grace India, followed by Chinese President Hu Jintao two months later. Presumably, the success of your visit, just like the rest of the parade, will depend on your ability to help induct the Indian government into the elite nuclear club of nations and for you to secure new contracts for your defense manufacturers.
Just a month ago, India was the proud host of DefExpo. All sorts of goodies ranging from anti-aircraft guns, artillery, military vehicles, decoy systems, rocket launcher systems, submarines, tanks, infantry combat vehicles and torpedoes were on display. The hawkers came from all parts of the world: France, Germany, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Israel, Bulgaria, Switzerland, etc. But did you know that it was your 20 major defense companies, including Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and, of course, the U.S. Army, who outshone the others, promoting everything from fighter jets to over-the-horizon radars?
India's desire for military hardware and software has made it the third-largest spender on defense in the world, next only to the United States and China. It was the largest arms importer in 2004 and now is in the market for 126 new multi-role combat aircraft, which could be a lucrative $6.5 billion contract. Recent announcements from the Indian government indicate that additional perks might come for your defense corporations. The new budget presented in the Indian Parliament on February 28, 2006, has allocated a substantial amount -- Rs. 89,000 crores ($20 billion) -- to defense.
The 2006 budget is graced with the words of Swami Vivekanandp, "We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind? Â We make our own destiny."
But India's destiny, determined by the "karma" of the Indian government is described on the World Food Program's country page: "Nearly 50 percent of the world's hungry live in India  Around 35 percent of India's population -- 350 million -- are considered food-insecure  Nearly nine out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and anemia  More than half of the children under five are moderately or severely malnourished, or suffer from stunting."
Yes, an estimated 330 to 350 million people in India survive on less than $1 a day, joining the ranks of starving millions in the country who face the prospect of "starvation deaths" each year.
India's destiny is that it is a nation plagued by child labor. An estimated 60 to 115 million children are classified as working children -- the highest number in the world. Deprived of their childhoods, most have never seen the inside of a school. However, if confronted by those overzealous NGO types such as Human Rights Watch, you can always counter with the argument that no current figures are available for the number of children engaged in child labor, since the Indian government does not collect such data. And yes, it is for similar reasons that the efficient Indian government, proud of its human resources that are running Silicon Valley from the United States to Bangalore, does not bother to keep data on the numbers of people displaced by large dams either.
You are right about the possibility of India being a strategic coalition partner in the war on terror. You have much in common. You have come under a lot of flak for the war in Iraq. According to the U.S. group, National Priorities Budget, the $240 billion bill for Iraq could have fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 10 years; a worldwide AIDS programs for 24 years; or ensured basic immunizations for every child in the world for 80 years. Had that money been spent elsewhere, the lives of 2,291 American soldiers and countless Iraqis who have died in Iraq, might have been saved.
I don't expect that anyone has informed you of these realities. Quite the opposite: the Sunday edition of the New York Times exclaims, "In the India that President Bush will visit this week, an extravagant ethos of bling has arrived. Gone is a half-century legacy of independent India -- stubbornly socialist, avowedly nonaligned, deeply anti-American."
Such media coverage, devoted to modern-day Indian "nouveaux nawabs" -- some 70,000 people who earn about $232,000 a year -- has obfuscated the reality in a country of a billion people.
Mr. President, the obvious has been stated. It might be good to revisit your agenda. The poor, the marginalized and the hungry, along with civil society groups will line the streets of Delhi and Hyderabad, where your motorcade passes, to protest the visit of "W," a symbol of war. Indians want peace. Indians want bread, not bombs.
Anuradha Mittal is executive director of the Oakland Institute.
I also found the next article this morning and wanted to put it up here. I lived in Gainesville Georgia for a time and in case you didn't know Gainesville boast that it is the poultry capital of the world. I can't verify that as I don't really care but I can verify that chicken is big business there. It is all over the South. I find it rather amusing that one of the reasons that poultry is so profitable is due to low labor cost. It is powered on the gruesome bottom-human labor level mainly by a hispanic population. The same population that in general is not well received by the good old upper level folks of paler complexions who profit from this segment (the Hispanics) of the work forces willingness to ..well essentially put up with a lot of bullshit and low wages. Of course that is not a thing restricted to the chicken killing industry, you will find it where ever you find a need for low cost and almost slave-like labor to do horriable nasty work.
A person driving through the South might notice the chicken houses dotting the hills and flatlands. He might marvel at the larger ones, as long as a football field. He might react to their gagging stench for a moment, and then forget as he travels on. But those who live near the structures -- stuffed with as many as 25,000 chickens each -- combat the odor and health hazards daily.
"There's a horrible odor, a stench, and I have flies and rodents digging in, trying to get into my house," says Bernadine Edwards, whose 39-acre farm near Owensboro, Ky., is surrounded by 108 chicken houses within a two-mile radius. "It is unbelievable."
The 65-year-old school bus driver, who recently bought a purifier to help her breathe easier in her home, says the value of her property has plummeted since the chicken houses arrived in the early 1990s. "I'm too old to start over," she says. "I can't afford to. My house is paid for."
Edwards is not alone. Over the last 15 years, the country has seen a boom in chicken farming. Today, the industry is serving a cocktail of injustice and pollution to rural residents, and most of them aren't in a position to fight back.
Growing pains
Since the early 1990s, observers say, thousands of chicken houses have cropped up across the South as consumer demand for poultry has grown. Today, the U.S. is the world's poultry leader, with production of broilers, turkeys, and eggs valued at $29 billion in 2004, according to the National Chicken Council. Broilers -- chickens raised for meat -- generated $22 billion of that. The leading broiler production states in 2004 were Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, which is home to the world's largest poultry producer, Tyson Foods.
Like chemical companies and industrial hog farmers, poultry producers don't tend to place these concentrated animal-feeding operations, or CAFOs, in ritzy neighborhoods beside multimillion dollar McMansions. Instead, chicken houses commandeer spacious rural areas, where local residents need the income and their neighbors won't speak out against them -- or are unaware of the factories' environmental and health consequences.
"These companies seek rural areas where unemployment, or underemployment, is high and people are desperate for ways to stay on the farm," says Aloma Dew, a Sierra Club organizer in Kentucky. "They assume that poor, country people will not organize or speak up, and that they will be ignorant of the impacts on their health and quality of life."
The companies provide local growers, who work under contract, with chicks, feed, medicine, and transportation. Growers take care of the rest, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction, maintenance, and labor costs. When the company requires upgrades, the costs fall to the growers. The massive amounts of manure, too, are their responsibility. (In Arkansas alone, chicken farms produce an amount of waste each day equal to that produced by 8 million people.) Payment is results-oriented, based on measures like total weight gain of the flock. It's a system, says the United Food and Commercial Workers, that leaves 71 percent of growers earning below poverty-level wages.
If growers protest, companies can cancel their contracts, leaving farmers responsible for incurred debt, says Laura Klauke, director of contract agriculture reform at the North Carolina-based Rural Advancement Foundation International. And that debt can be substantial: since banks in the region will more readily loan money for poultry houses than other types of agriculture, Klauke says, some farmers put everything on the line, mortgaging their property to make a living this way.
"If those contracts are canceled -- and they can be if the farmer doesn't do what the industry wants -- then that farmer could literally be homeless," said Klauke. "I know farmers who have been in that situation." (Industry representatives did not respond to requests for comments on this or any of the concerns expressed in this story.)
Pecks and effects
More frightening than the economic balancing act may be the health and environmental hazards posed by chicken farms, from the arsenic, ammonia, and other chemicals found in feed and manure to threats from diseased animals. While traditional farming can carry similar risks, CAFOs are especially hazardous because of the tight confinement that defines them. "The fact is, you put hundreds of animals in a very small area, that creates problems that would not exist if these animals were distributed across the countryside," says Barclay Rogers, who successfully litigated a pollution case against Tyson in Kentucky in 2003.
Rogers says the industry grew rapidly with little regulatory constraint, and has been "riding roughshod" over land and people. While CAFOs must follow federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, he says, many growers try to "duck and weave" regulations. "The industry may stand up and say we are over-regulating, and that we have all of these permits, but the practical aspect is that they have devised many ways to avert pollution controls," said Rogers. "That's why we are seeing the fouling of water and air. We just now are coming to grips with these consequences, as people are catching up and realizing what has happened to them."
Last year, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson (D) filed suit against Tyson, Cargill, and several other poultry companies, seeking to stop water pollution caused in his state by soiled chicken litter dumped in Arkansas. Polluted runoff, also known as non-point source pollution, is the biggest remaining water pollution problem in the U.S., according to the EPA, which cites agriculture as the largest source of such pollution. Edmondson described the problem as "an economic development issue, an agricultural issue, and a quality-of-life issue." Not to be outdone, Arkansas Attorney General Mike Beebe (D) -- who is running for governor -- countered in November by suing the state of Oklahoma directly, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prohibit Oklahoma from forcing his state's poultry farmers to adhere to the stricter standards. Both cases are still pending.
This messy interstate situation is just one indication of the many unknowns at stake. "Some of the [environmental] consequences of these CAFOs are just not clear," said Van Brahana, a geologist at the University of Arkansas who studies groundwater. "What we do know is when you have a lot of organisms living in close conditions and you have a buildup of chemicals, you might get a cause-and-effect relationship. The scary thing is we just don't know right now."
The effects on those who work directly with the animals are clearer. "In rural America, the poultry companies can get workers for a song, and the workers are so grateful to get the jobs," says Jackie Nowell of the United Food and Commercial Workers. These workers -- usually poor, and often African American or Hispanic -- "are exposed to feces [and] any disease the chicken has," Nowell says. "There are also horrible levels of dust and dander inside these houses."
Nowell adds that researchers in the region are currently exploring the possible crossover of various viruses from poultry to humans, like avian flu. "That's a real concern. These workers and people who live near these houses will be on ground zero of an outbreak."
Workers in poultry processing plants also face serious dangers from machinery, carpal tunnel syndrome, and health hazards such as contaminated microorganisms and dust. "There are huge health and safety violations in every plant," says Jennifer Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. In 2004, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations to Tyson for alleged violations after an employee was asphyxiated when he inhaled hydrogen sulfide, a gas created by decaying organic matter. OSHA fined the company $436,000.
Poultry companies "hire relatively low-income people, immigrants who have less of an understanding of rights and health issues," Rosenbaum says. Simply put, she says, the companies are hurting the South's small towns while they fatten their own wallets.
Chicken fight
Katie Tillinghast lives in rural northwest Arkansas. In early January, she received a call from a neighbor who told her he planned to put three large turkey houses on his property, 200 yards away. Tillinghast wants to stop the project, but the only plausible choice would be to buy her neighbor out at $3,000 an acre -- and he owns 73 acres. She can't afford that, and knows it's highly unlikely that a rich buyer will step in to help.
Like other states, Arkansas does not yet have a law to protect residents from these operations, though several states have considered such legislation. So Tillinghast can't do much but worry -- about her drinking water, about avian flu, about noise and light pollution, about air quality. "I agree someone should be able to do what they want to do on their land," Tillinghast says. "But I don't think you should be able to do something that hurts your neighbors."
Many others agree with her, but local dynamics can make it hard for activists to issue a battle cry. "Often these plants are the only major industry in town," says SPLC's Rosenbaum. "Everyone goes to church together or went to high school together. Everyone knows everyone, and it's hard to fight that."
Groups like the Sierra Club have fought the poultry industry for many years, but only recently have they begun to collaborate with people on the ground. In 2004, a group of growers, workers, and environmental, public-health, religious, and social-justice organizations created the National Poultry Justice Alliance.
The idea came from the Glenmary Commission on Justice in Ohio, a group of Catholic brothers and priests who have worked in the South since 1939. Marcus Keyes, the commission's director, says he was inspired by a statement from the Catholic Bishops of the South in 2000 about workers' rights. "These are moral issues -- the rights of workers, conditions of workers, pay and benefits," said Keyes. "These are human rights issues, and environmental [issues, but] in the end they are all moral issues." The group's members are working to strengthen the alliance before launching a major campaign.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit may come to trial in early April that could up the ante. While previous suits have dealt with pollution and workers' rights, this one tackles the issue of health effects on residents. In 2003, a group of citizens from Prairie Grove, Ark., a town of 2,500, filed a lawsuit against several poultry producers. Citing a connection between the community's high cancer rates and arsenic contamination from chicken litter spread as fertilizer, they are seeking damages from the companies that own the birds (not, it should be noted, from the local growers). Their lawyers say cancer rates in the small town are 50 times higher than the national average.
The Prairie Grove effort has grown to include about 100 plaintiffs in multiple suits, each of which will be tried separately. Supporters say that legal action may be the only way to bring these issues to light and hold the industry to higher standards. If the court rules in Prairie Grove's favor, the decision could provide ground for others to stand on. Until then, the only ones winning in this despair-filled industry are the mammoth corporations.
"There's a horrible odor, a stench, and I have flies and rodents digging in, trying to get into my house," says Bernadine Edwards, whose 39-acre farm near Owensboro, Ky., is surrounded by 108 chicken houses within a two-mile radius. "It is unbelievable."
The 65-year-old school bus driver, who recently bought a purifier to help her breathe easier in her home, says the value of her property has plummeted since the chicken houses arrived in the early 1990s. "I'm too old to start over," she says. "I can't afford to. My house is paid for."
Edwards is not alone. Over the last 15 years, the country has seen a boom in chicken farming. Today, the industry is serving a cocktail of injustice and pollution to rural residents, and most of them aren't in a position to fight back.
Growing pains
Since the early 1990s, observers say, thousands of chicken houses have cropped up across the South as consumer demand for poultry has grown. Today, the U.S. is the world's poultry leader, with production of broilers, turkeys, and eggs valued at $29 billion in 2004, according to the National Chicken Council. Broilers -- chickens raised for meat -- generated $22 billion of that. The leading broiler production states in 2004 were Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, which is home to the world's largest poultry producer, Tyson Foods.
Like chemical companies and industrial hog farmers, poultry producers don't tend to place these concentrated animal-feeding operations, or CAFOs, in ritzy neighborhoods beside multimillion dollar McMansions. Instead, chicken houses commandeer spacious rural areas, where local residents need the income and their neighbors won't speak out against them -- or are unaware of the factories' environmental and health consequences.
"These companies seek rural areas where unemployment, or underemployment, is high and people are desperate for ways to stay on the farm," says Aloma Dew, a Sierra Club organizer in Kentucky. "They assume that poor, country people will not organize or speak up, and that they will be ignorant of the impacts on their health and quality of life."
The companies provide local growers, who work under contract, with chicks, feed, medicine, and transportation. Growers take care of the rest, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction, maintenance, and labor costs. When the company requires upgrades, the costs fall to the growers. The massive amounts of manure, too, are their responsibility. (In Arkansas alone, chicken farms produce an amount of waste each day equal to that produced by 8 million people.) Payment is results-oriented, based on measures like total weight gain of the flock. It's a system, says the United Food and Commercial Workers, that leaves 71 percent of growers earning below poverty-level wages.
If growers protest, companies can cancel their contracts, leaving farmers responsible for incurred debt, says Laura Klauke, director of contract agriculture reform at the North Carolina-based Rural Advancement Foundation International. And that debt can be substantial: since banks in the region will more readily loan money for poultry houses than other types of agriculture, Klauke says, some farmers put everything on the line, mortgaging their property to make a living this way.
"If those contracts are canceled -- and they can be if the farmer doesn't do what the industry wants -- then that farmer could literally be homeless," said Klauke. "I know farmers who have been in that situation." (Industry representatives did not respond to requests for comments on this or any of the concerns expressed in this story.)
Pecks and effects
More frightening than the economic balancing act may be the health and environmental hazards posed by chicken farms, from the arsenic, ammonia, and other chemicals found in feed and manure to threats from diseased animals. While traditional farming can carry similar risks, CAFOs are especially hazardous because of the tight confinement that defines them. "The fact is, you put hundreds of animals in a very small area, that creates problems that would not exist if these animals were distributed across the countryside," says Barclay Rogers, who successfully litigated a pollution case against Tyson in Kentucky in 2003.
Rogers says the industry grew rapidly with little regulatory constraint, and has been "riding roughshod" over land and people. While CAFOs must follow federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, he says, many growers try to "duck and weave" regulations. "The industry may stand up and say we are over-regulating, and that we have all of these permits, but the practical aspect is that they have devised many ways to avert pollution controls," said Rogers. "That's why we are seeing the fouling of water and air. We just now are coming to grips with these consequences, as people are catching up and realizing what has happened to them."
Last year, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson (D) filed suit against Tyson, Cargill, and several other poultry companies, seeking to stop water pollution caused in his state by soiled chicken litter dumped in Arkansas. Polluted runoff, also known as non-point source pollution, is the biggest remaining water pollution problem in the U.S., according to the EPA, which cites agriculture as the largest source of such pollution. Edmondson described the problem as "an economic development issue, an agricultural issue, and a quality-of-life issue." Not to be outdone, Arkansas Attorney General Mike Beebe (D) -- who is running for governor -- countered in November by suing the state of Oklahoma directly, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prohibit Oklahoma from forcing his state's poultry farmers to adhere to the stricter standards. Both cases are still pending.
This messy interstate situation is just one indication of the many unknowns at stake. "Some of the [environmental] consequences of these CAFOs are just not clear," said Van Brahana, a geologist at the University of Arkansas who studies groundwater. "What we do know is when you have a lot of organisms living in close conditions and you have a buildup of chemicals, you might get a cause-and-effect relationship. The scary thing is we just don't know right now."
The effects on those who work directly with the animals are clearer. "In rural America, the poultry companies can get workers for a song, and the workers are so grateful to get the jobs," says Jackie Nowell of the United Food and Commercial Workers. These workers -- usually poor, and often African American or Hispanic -- "are exposed to feces [and] any disease the chicken has," Nowell says. "There are also horrible levels of dust and dander inside these houses."
Nowell adds that researchers in the region are currently exploring the possible crossover of various viruses from poultry to humans, like avian flu. "That's a real concern. These workers and people who live near these houses will be on ground zero of an outbreak."
Workers in poultry processing plants also face serious dangers from machinery, carpal tunnel syndrome, and health hazards such as contaminated microorganisms and dust. "There are huge health and safety violations in every plant," says Jennifer Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. In 2004, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations to Tyson for alleged violations after an employee was asphyxiated when he inhaled hydrogen sulfide, a gas created by decaying organic matter. OSHA fined the company $436,000.
Poultry companies "hire relatively low-income people, immigrants who have less of an understanding of rights and health issues," Rosenbaum says. Simply put, she says, the companies are hurting the South's small towns while they fatten their own wallets.
Chicken fight
Katie Tillinghast lives in rural northwest Arkansas. In early January, she received a call from a neighbor who told her he planned to put three large turkey houses on his property, 200 yards away. Tillinghast wants to stop the project, but the only plausible choice would be to buy her neighbor out at $3,000 an acre -- and he owns 73 acres. She can't afford that, and knows it's highly unlikely that a rich buyer will step in to help.
Like other states, Arkansas does not yet have a law to protect residents from these operations, though several states have considered such legislation. So Tillinghast can't do much but worry -- about her drinking water, about avian flu, about noise and light pollution, about air quality. "I agree someone should be able to do what they want to do on their land," Tillinghast says. "But I don't think you should be able to do something that hurts your neighbors."
Many others agree with her, but local dynamics can make it hard for activists to issue a battle cry. "Often these plants are the only major industry in town," says SPLC's Rosenbaum. "Everyone goes to church together or went to high school together. Everyone knows everyone, and it's hard to fight that."
Groups like the Sierra Club have fought the poultry industry for many years, but only recently have they begun to collaborate with people on the ground. In 2004, a group of growers, workers, and environmental, public-health, religious, and social-justice organizations created the National Poultry Justice Alliance.
The idea came from the Glenmary Commission on Justice in Ohio, a group of Catholic brothers and priests who have worked in the South since 1939. Marcus Keyes, the commission's director, says he was inspired by a statement from the Catholic Bishops of the South in 2000 about workers' rights. "These are moral issues -- the rights of workers, conditions of workers, pay and benefits," said Keyes. "These are human rights issues, and environmental [issues, but] in the end they are all moral issues." The group's members are working to strengthen the alliance before launching a major campaign.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit may come to trial in early April that could up the ante. While previous suits have dealt with pollution and workers' rights, this one tackles the issue of health effects on residents. In 2003, a group of citizens from Prairie Grove, Ark., a town of 2,500, filed a lawsuit against several poultry producers. Citing a connection between the community's high cancer rates and arsenic contamination from chicken litter spread as fertilizer, they are seeking damages from the companies that own the birds (not, it should be noted, from the local growers). Their lawyers say cancer rates in the small town are 50 times higher than the national average.
The Prairie Grove effort has grown to include about 100 plaintiffs in multiple suits, each of which will be tried separately. Supporters say that legal action may be the only way to bring these issues to light and hold the industry to higher standards. If the court rules in Prairie Grove's favor, the decision could provide ground for others to stand on. Until then, the only ones winning in this despair-filled industry are the mammoth corporations.
posted by Saint Tuesday @ 5:18:00 AM
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