Toxic Chickens, Anyone?

Chestertown Spy: MD Farms Putting Arsenic in Chickens
Washington Post: A Deadly Ingredient in a Chicken Dinner

This is a hot topic in the area right now, as we are in the middle of the chicken belt and Perdue's national headquarters are smack in the middle of Maryland's Eastern Shore (which is almost entirely rural, and dedicated almost entirely to raising chickens and grain for chickens- both of which are sorely contested as one of the main causes of the failing health of the Chesapeake Bay).

There have long been reports of arsenic in the drinking water on the lower shore, especially around chicken houses, and many children have tested positive for highly dangerous levels of arsenic in their systems.

This is the bit that got me going though:
"“It’s inhumane to withhold effective … treatment from sick animals,” Krushinskie said, comparing it to withholding antibiotics from a sick child."

Let's be clear that this is referring to giving arsenic based medication to chickens who are raised in chicken houses, to keep alive long enough to get to slaughter, because of the filthy conditions they live in- which are already about as inhumane as you can get.

Delegates against the ban actually argued that there is no problem with arsenic because it is natural and organic, citing its presence on the periodic table of elements as a basis for their argument. And of course, if the FDA says its ok, it must be.

Perdue claims to have stopped using it for their chickens but really have been using it off and on again, based on how much pressure they are getting from the companies they sell to (such as McDonald's). None of this is particularly surprising though, especially as Jim Perdue, CEO of Perdue, was recently awarded a prestigious award by the governor of our state: http://www.perdue.com/company/news/press_releases/press_release_detail.html?id=1224

Perdue cites their commitment to stewardship, sustainability, and family farming as the reasons for the success of their company- though they are well known around here for submitting their farmers to surveillance, harassment, and threat tactics to keep them from saying anything bad about the company, and several Perdue "family farms" have recently been sued for the MASSIVE amount of nutrient run off from their farms- including record levels of E. Coli, which run off straight into the Chesapeake Bay.

Just another example of how government officials are in the pocket of major corporations (did you catch O’Malley say he frequently turns to Jim Perdue for advice???), how corporations are able to get away with murder and yet still receive recognition as pillars of the community (AS IF), and how we are all in really, really deep trouble.

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Suspicious Statistics

I read an article a while back (The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies) that brought something to light I had always known but never really thought about. Companies make claims all the time, without any of us really expecting them to mean anything. So often you see billboards that say things like “best beer ever” or “#1 in the US”, which, if you look at the products being advertised, seems very unlikely. But no one is fussed by this, it’s just the way things are. Companies can make all kinds of claims and no one questions them or pays much attention to them.

As I was driving into work this morning, I passed a Waste Management truck. Waste Management does all sorts of things, but mostly they haul trash and other waste away from businesses and towns and that sort of thing. The side of this particular truck said, “Our landfills provide 17,000 acres of wildlife habitat.” Or something very close to that, I was driving rather fast.

Now, this kind of baffled me. Landfills… wildlife habitat?

…

Sorry, that was a pause while I attempted to make sense of that. I looked it up on the Waste Management website (Waste Management Wildlife Habitat Council), and apparently what they mean is that after landfills are full, they cover them over and plant things on top. I’ve seen covered landfills, but usually they just have grass on top, due to the fact that there are vents all over it to let the methane out. The smell is usually pretty horrendous. Sometimes I think they build schools on top and that sort of thing. Apparently now they’re building wildlife habitat, which is all well and good, we could use more wildlife habitat. It’s the landfill bit that’s got me a little perplexed. Somehow it just doesn’t seem like a great idea.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use landfills for SOMETHING. And wildlife habitat seems to be a better suggestion than most. I’m glad Waste Management is concerned about wildlife habitat. I’m just suspicious when I see messages purporting that a company is environmentally friendly on the side of a truck hauling trash. Their whole company is founded on hauling waste- they are (to my knowledge) the largest such company in the US. And I, personally, do not believe we should be producing all this waste, no matter how much wildlife habitat we build on top of it. I’d rather have the wildlife habitat intact in the first place, thanks ever so much.

But I suppose it’s technically not Waste Management’s responsibility to reduce the amount of waste produced- all they do is haul it after it’s been created. But, I have to ask, if it’s not their responsibility, whose is it?

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