Chicken processor points finger at cows

Monday, December 3, 2012

In a classic case of finger-pointing, the lawyer for one of the defendants in a civil case brought against Maryland's Hudson Farms said the cows, not the chickens, were responsible for excessive nitrogen in nearby streams.

Hudson Farms was on trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore in October, but so was processor Perdue Farms. A key issue in the case is whether the processor is also responsible if its contracted farm is found guilty of polluting waters running into Chesapeake Bay. The Waterkeeper Alliance filed the lawsuit against the farm, specifying chicken manure as the culprit.

There are also 40 cows on the farm. According to local news reports, those cows produce about 600 tonnes of manure a year, considerably more poop than the chicken houses do. Perdue brought in a Virginia Tech University microbiologist to prove that point.

Meanwhile Save Family Farms, founded at least partly to raise money for Alan and Kristin Hudson's legal bill, writes that the Hudsons "are unfortunate victims of a tactic by radical elements of the environmental movement to use the courts to push their agenda."  

According to Save Family Farms, "farming continues to be an accepted and appreciated way of life in America today. A chief threat to this way of life is a handful of radical activists who don't understand that the food on their tables comes from the sweat and hard work of thousands of independent businesses around the country." BF