10/24

Perdue, Tyson experts speak at Maryland symposium

By MARK POWELL

Poultry companies are facing uncharted territory.
It’s a place filled with the potential for criminal charges from environmental regulators.
It’s a place where new ways of doing business may become a necessity.
Speaking last week at the National Poultry Waste Management Symposium in Ocean City, Md., Perdue Farms environmental manager John Chlada said the poultry industry will need to handle on-farm environmental issues to remain in business. It’s a complicated process.
“Throughout the discussion of on-farm environmental issues, companies must take care not to cross over that independent contractor line that is established by the contractual relationship between the producer and the integrator. On the other hand, companies may need to consider other business models and organizational structures.”
Chlada added, “Some believe that by mandating nutrient management or issuing a permit, farm environmental concerns can be solved.” (Maryland now has a law mandating nutrient management on farms and plans to issue so-called “co-permits” making poultry companies liable for contract growers.)
Solving environmental problems on poultry farms, Chlada said, is a complicated process because “our industry is dealing with a living biological entity — the chicken.”
To help solve environmental issues, poultry companies are going to have to look carefully at the farmers which which they contract with in the future, he said. Before building a poultry house, companies will have to look carefully at the site of the farm.
“Will the site present any environmental challenges to the daily management of the operation?” Chlada asked. “Does the producer understand his role and his responsibility as it relates to environmental protection?
“Will the producer understand and accept the role that the integrator must play to ensure it meets requirements imposed by environmental regulations? Clearly, there will be some evolution in the producer-integrator relationship.”
John Copeland, executive vice president of Tyson Foods in Springdale, Ark., discussed the criminalization of environmental law. He said complying with environmental regulations is the duty of every Tyson Foods “team member.”
“It can be expensive, but not complying is more expensive — for the company and the people involved,” Copeland said.
Tyson received a $4 million Environmental Protection Agency fine in 1998 for a Berlin, Md., plant it acquired as part of takeover of Hudson Foods. Later that same year, Tyson was sued by the Maryland Department of the Environment for “over-applying chicken sludge on its farm near Berlin, Md.” On June 1, Tyson agreed to pay $80,000 to MDE for the chicken sludge incident.
Tyson has agreed to pay $15,000 to MDE for improperly disposing of dead chickens. The EPA is also seeking a fine of approximately $75,000.
Copeland’s presentation showed that Tyson and other poultry companies are not alone in being targets of environmental prosecutions. From 1983 to 1993, there was an average of 91 criminal indictments per year in the United States. In 1997, there were 551. Criminal fines for environmental issues from 1983 to 1993 averaged $21.2 million per year. In 1997, that jumped to $169 million, according to Copeland.
And, he added, in 1999, some 208 years of prison time was given to those guilty of breaking environmental laws. Currently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has 500 pending investigations of environmental wrongdoing.
Environmental laws are extraordinarily broad and complicated, Copeland said. And, he added, they are constantly expanding through “creative interpretation” on the part of regulators.
While many of the current environmental issues affecting poultry production and other aspects of agriculture have been related to efforts to protect water quality, it appears the future may include regulation to protect air quality. According to University of Delaware professor David Hansen, also speaking at the Ocean City conference, the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act in 1990 created a program to study and address the effects of air pollution on water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. “Of particular concern,” Hansen said, “is deposition of nitrogen oxides.”
In September of 1998, the EPA finalized a regulation which requires 22 Eastern states to prepare plans to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. “Although the focus of this rule is on industrial sources, it is important to note that some authors have suggested that nationwide, approximately 27 percent of all ammonia emissions come from poultry houses,” Hansen said. Ammonia converts to nitrogen oxide, and thus may become a focus of air quality regulations.