Oklahoma Attorney General Takes on Big Poultry, Highlighting Unsustainability of Industrial Agriculture

It's not often that I get to write about a positive food policy story coming out of my home state, but it turns out that Oklahoma Attorney General (and Democratic candidate for governor in 2010) Drew Edmondson is suing the more lenient Arkansas poultry industry for its waste, which is polluting the Illinois River on the states' shared border. This case brings the spotlight to a huge, oft-ignored issue that many legislators in other states should take note of, too: agricultural pollution.

From AP:

In the lawsuit, Edmondson claims runoff from land that has been spread with chicken waste for decades has contaminated the watershed. He is suing a dozen Arkansas poultry companies that buy birds from the 1,800 poultry houses that dot the watershed in Oklahoma and Arkansas. The defendants include Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat producer.

Here's hoping that Edmondson gets heard on this issue. I needn't remind you that not a single Oklahoma county went for Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and that it is a stronghold for climate change deniers like Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe. So, not surprisingly, Edmondson faces an uphill battle in this fight, where poultry groups are pitting workers, whom they've told will lose their jobs, against him.

But Oklahoma could be poised to redeem itself, taking on the unsustainability of industrial agriculture.

Unfortunately runoff is not just a problem in this one river on the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas. It is a huge issue that we've seen increase worldwide since the industrialization of agriculture and the proliferation of animal confinement operations, which took off at an unprecedented rate in the 1970s. Factory farms raising animals had to answer the question of what to do with all that excess waste, which was being produced in quantities that rival the waste of small cities without a sewage system.

These are medieval conditions that could also be stoking disease outbreaks like the resistant bacteria MRSA, the salmonella and e coli that has been contaminating meat so often these days, and even possibly a cause of the swine flu. This potential for disease originating in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is precisely why these animals are currently given up to 70% of the antibiotics taken in the United States, and by extension, why antibiotic resistance is a topic of such great importance for Congress.

Manure makes for good fertility in reasonable quantities (and hopefully without the antibiotics, which plants have proven able to take up) -- but when spread in the massive quantities operations like these are forced to distribute, excess waste washes away from fields and goes down river, where it assists, along with over-used chemical-based fertilizers, in creating dead zones: water over-enriched with nutrients, creating an oxygen-free environment where only algae can survive. In 2003, there were 146 dead zones worldwide in our oceans (the clearinghouse for all the world's rivers and streams) and the largest measured 70,000 square kilometers. A new study in 2008 found 405 dead zones.

Algae is not just gross to look at or swim in, either. The French have recently taken increased notice of the problem of agricultural runoff, after decomposing sea lettuce, which creates a noxious gas, killed a horse on a beach on the coast of Brittany. Here at home, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) might consider regulating chemical fertilizer application. The woman in charge of the dead zone issue at the EPA is Suzanne Schwartz, and you can get in touch with her to let her know how you feel about industrial agriculture runoff at: [e-mail]

Here is what I had to say to her in a recent email:

I am very concerned with the effects large amounts of runoff from industrial agriculture are having on our rivers and streams, and by extension, our health as a nation. As you know, a report in 2008 revealed that we now have 405 dead zones worldwide, and life in those parts of the oceans cannot be supported. These areas are near the coasts, so they also affect the air we breathe, the water we drink, tourist and recreational usage, our food supply and more. Industrial agriculture is taking a huge toll on our collective landscape, and the corporations that cause the pollution are profiting handsomely on its demise. Please support Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson's attempt to take on this issue in the Illinois River on the Oklahoma border with Arkansas, where pollution is at its worst in that river's history. And please take a serious stand against synthetic fertilizer and confined animal feeding operation waste runoff -- these have proven in the last decades to be an unsustainable way to produce food. With your help, we can begin to shift to a new paradigm of food production.

In the United States, our largest dead zone forms every year in the Gulf of Mexico. If you'd like to better understand the process of dead zone formation, check out this excellent visualization by the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

Originally published on Civil Eats

Follow Paula Crossfield on Twitter: www.twitter.com/civileater

Comments

[RMankovitz]

Personally, I am a grassitarian because I believe it is the most ethical, sustainable, and healthiest diet on the planet. This diet was designed by nature and tested on 100,000 generations of our ancestors over about 2.5 million years.

The beauty of a grassitarian diet is that it does not require the use of artificial fertilizers or pesticides (both derived from fossil fuel), or diesel fuel to run agricultural machinery to plow, cultivate and harvest, or artificial irrigation (fossil fuel powered pumps), or GM seeds.

It is completely independent of farms and all of the agricultural machinery that destroys topsoil and kills millions of ground-living animals. It eliminates the need for any of the products produced by the pesticide, fertilizer, and GM AgriGiants, or the need for feed-lots, egg-breeders, or dairy farms.

It does not use anything made by Deere, Caterpillar, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, Dean Foods, Heinz, Nestle, Kraft, General Mills, Betty Crocker, Kellogg, Nabisco, Stonyfield, Yoplait, ConAgra, Cargill, etc.

The ecological footprint of this diet is estimated to be much smaller than either a vegan, vegetarian, or Standard American Diet. The grassitarian diet arguably has the lowest profile of natural toxins, and respects the ethical treatment of both animals and plants - something unavailable in any other diet.

A description of the grassitarian diet (an experiment based on nature), along with supporting references, can be found in "The Wellness Project", or "The Original Diet - The Omnivore's Solution".

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com

[dayala]

I stopped buying Tyson, Perdue, Smithfield long time ago.

[mlaiuppa]

Local butcher has free range chickens and eggs.

No more Vons, Albertsons, Ralphs et al.

[mlaiuppa]

Factory farms are bad for animals and bad for people.

The animals live their short lives in squalor and misery and the food produced is of poor quality for people.

Free range chickens and eggs. Grass fed and finished beef. And eat less of both. Americans eat a lot more protein than we have to. Maybe if it costs more and we'd eat less. European diet. Large soup and salad, small entrée w/ vegetables. If you're not full, follow it with cheese/fruit plate and a dessert.

Oh, and cook instead of buying a frozen dinner.

[Photofarm]

I know what free range chickens eat, I would not eat them.

[Photofarm]

Another article with all kind of assumptions that are not true and not based on reality. Soil erosion and manure/fertilizer runoff is less today than 50 years ago. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico would be there if you stopped all farming in the Mississippi watershed.

[memosyne]

I'm very happy eating organic grains and vegetables and cheese, soy milk, organic fruits when I can get them but also ordinary fruits and with occasional local fish from the nearby sea.

Not everyone would be happy with this but I am. A word to everyone on a restricted diet: vitamin K is important to keep blood clotting normally. Look up what you'd like to make sure you eat: just google Vitamin K.

[mlaiuppa]

If you take thyroid medication, no soy milk for you.

I'm drinking raw milk.

[spikeykitten]

The dozen Arkansas poultry companies and the 1,800 poultry houses that dot the watershed in Oklahoma and Arkansas, along with everyone they know in the poultry business, need to band together and not send chickens to market for a three month period.

[mlaiuppa]

And people will find alternative sources, such as local free range chickens or just not eating chicken. So then when they decide to sell chickens again, the price is down and the market is smaller.

But they won't do this. They'll go bankrupt not selling their product for three months.

And I believe....it's also illegal.

[wwew]

this is why i stopped supporting the meat industry 15 years ago. and if you claim to be an environmentalist you would do the same.

[Vickster]

So you think the produce industry is sustainable? In your dreams.

[MHainds]

I work from Virginia to eastern Texas, teaching landowners, foresters, agency personnel, biologists, and other interested parties how to restore the greatly reduced longleaf pine forests of the Southeastern US. Along the way, we've encountered many fields that have been treated with untold tons of chicken litter. Many of these treated fields can no longer be restored to the native longleaf pine, because the soil nutrients have been spiked to toxic levels. Soil tests find, Ca, Mg, P, Mn, Zn, Cu, and other micronutrients at levels off the charts from what these soils are supposed to contain. The problem is only going to get worse.