Georgians for Pastured Poultry

By Kristine Dennis

As consumers, we all struggle to navigate the complex and often unclear labels covering the foods we purchase while trying to make informed decisions based on where our food has come from and how it was grown/raised.

A class action lawsuit regarding this issue was filed by two members of the Humane Society of the United States against Perdue, one of the largest poultry producers in the country. The suit was first brought against Perdue in 2010 claiming a violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act, alleging false advertising of their “Harvestland” and “Perdue” chicken products as “humanely raised”.

In an exciting development over the past month, a federal court in New Jersey has denied Perdue’s arguments for dismissal. This brings the case forward into a pre-trial phase of evidence collection and trial later this year. The lawsuit alleges that most consumers would not consider the conditions under which these chickens are raised “humane”. The standards allow for housing conditions that prevent normal resting behaviors, transportation of birds for long distances with no food or water in extreme temperatures, painful handling and ultimately inhumane slaughter.

Perdue’s primary defense has been that consumers do not expect “humanely raised” to apply to slaughter. The court opposed this argument stating that the labeling could reasonably be understood by a consumer to apply all the way through slaughter. Chicken slaughter by Perdue does not fall under any federal humane regulations (poultry is currently not covered under the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act).

With consumer demand growing for “humanely-raised” products, this case emphasizes the need to hold companies accountable for their labeling. Ensuring that the raising and slaughtering practices that a label and price represent is key to both the consumer and the poultry producers who truly are leading the way in humane practices.

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By Kristine Dennis

Last week Southern Poverty Law Center released a comprehensive report discussing the dangers of poultry plants for both workers and consumers. The report  “Unsafe at These Speeds” is the product of 302 interviews with Alabama plant workers and reveals the injuries, illnesses, and inequalities they face every day.

Of those surveyed, 72% reported significant work-related injury or illness. As this survey and other studies have shown, higher rates of injuries are documented among poultry workers, particularly musculoskeletal disorders. Although many of these injuries are concentrated in the hand and wrist, one-third of workers also specified pain or injuries in their back, shoulder or arm.

The workers come from low-income areas, are often immigrants, and are typically considered disposable by employers due to their circumstances. Given these factors, they are left with little opportunity to speak up for themselves due to risks of retaliation or firing by employers.

U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has no specific regulations that require poultry plant workers to be protected from musculoskeletal disorders. Additionally, musculoskeletal injuries and lacerations which primarily impact poultry workers are currently exempt from OSHA’s recordkeeping requirements provided they are not linked with more severe outcomes such as death or loss of consciousness. Ergonomics programs have been shown to successfully decrease repetitive-motion injuries and the risk of other musculoskeletal disorders yet no standard requirements currently exist.

Line-speed was identified by 78% of the workers surveyed as making them feel less safe and increasing pain and injuries experienced. The USDA regulates line speeds for food safety and has recently proposed to increase line speeds from a maximum range of 70 to 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute. Along with this proposed regulation, there will be fewer USDA inspectors on processing lines, leaving already overwhelmed workers with the responsibility of inspecting chickens for abnormalities and contaminants as they speed by. (Even if a designated USDA inspector is within the plant, they will have one-third of a second to inspect each chicken.)

Alabama is the third largest poultry producer in the United States and employs 75,000 people through the industry. With so many people directly impacted by the lack of OSHA regulations to protect poultry workers and the current proposal by the USDA to increase line speeds, this is a critical time for regulations to be put in place that protect workers rather than leave them in greater danger. The report summarizes the importance of this issue stating “Alabama, Georgia and Arkansas, the three leading poultry-producing states, are not among the 27 states that have job safety and health standards approved by OSHA as being at least as effective as federal standards. It is the responsibility of policymakers to protect the hard-working people who produce our nation’s food.”

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By Kristine Dennis

With spring quickly approaching and fresh, local food on our minds, it was a fitting time for the 16^th annual Georgia Organics conference. This year the focus was on the way fresh food from the farm can be a vehicle for improving and maintaining health. With the obesity epidemic impacting everyone from young children to adults, the focus of this conference couldn’t come at a more needed time. 

The conference provided in-depth workshops for everything from farming and gardening strategies to food access and job creation through urban agriculture. Educational sessions were also held covering everything from the details of farming to the broader implications of policy to the ultimate goal of health.

Pastured poultry featured high on the agenda as usual! A special session, Pastured-Poultrypalooza, discussed the growing demand for pastured-poultry products in Georgia. Two of Georgia’s leaders in pastured poultry, Will Harris of White Oak Pastures and Chad Carlton of Carlton Farms, led the session focusing on the management and legal requirements for successfully developing a pastured farm model all the way to processing and marketing. Georgians for Pastured Poultry had a table to help conference-goers learn more about where they could buy pastured poultry and why it was important to get behind this growing alternative to factory farmed chicken. A few lucky people even won Dan Imhoff’s book –  CAFOs – The Tragedy of Animal Factories for stopping by and answering one of our trivia questions!

In conjunction with the conference, Georgia Organics is piloting a new farmers market prescription program. Once adequate funding is met, the hope is to work with both a pediatrician and obstetrician to provide resources for preventive health through better diet and opportunities for children to have early access to healthy foods. Keep an eye out for new programs such as this promoting the interaction of food and health!

With such a diverse conference bringing together leaders in farming and health, an incredible amount of energy was generated behind the push for a healthier, more sustainable future.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table!!!

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By Jenni Harris

At White Oak Pastures, we take pride in farming. We aren’t animal scientists or nutritionists with facts and figures that explain every part of what we do; we just know what feels “right.” Right, these days, looks and feels different to each person asked. For us, pastured poultry is “right” for many reasons: furthering the Serengeti rotational grazing model, fertilizing our farm in a completely different way than ever before, and adding variety to the meats we are able to raise and process.

At White Oak Pastures, we are proud to raise ducks, geese, guineas, and turkeys seasonally in addition to our year-round pastured chicken program. This July, we are expecting about 5,000 heritage breed poults to put on pasture to be ready just in time for Thanksgiving.

I hope eating pastured poultry doesn’t exclusively become a seasonal event and that you will integrate this sustainable food model into your everyday diet!

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By Kristine Dennis

This past week Atlanta hosted the International Poultry Expo (IPE) for the 65^th year. Over 25,000 attendees traveled from all over the world to hear about new technology developments and updates from all elements of the industry including processing, marketing, feed production, etc. With current large-scale industrial poultry and egg production practices, there are inherent animal welfare issues.

Currently, 40 billion meat chickens are slaughtered each year across the world with 9 billion produced in the U.S. The realities of industrial production are hidden from consumers with often misleading or meaningless labels.

The true picture is as follows:

-25,000 chickens, each with only the space of an 8”x11” sheet of paper

-each animal has been genetically selected for rapid growth. He or she grows so rapidly his or her heart, joints, and lungs often can’t support the chicken, frequently leading to debilitating leg conditions, breathing difficulties, and heart problems among many others.

- a lifespan around 45 days in dim lighting with limited stimulation until being roughly packed into cages for transport to slaughter

A recent article in Food Safety News http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/why-we-havent-seen-inside-a-broiler-chicken-factory-farm-in-a-decade/#.UQWHBY6lrMA describes in greater depth exactly “Why We Haven’t Seen Inside a Broiler Chicken Factory Farm in a Decade”.

By the end of IPE, we hope attention was swung to components of production that will have a high impact on animal welfare and open the door to future discussions about improving the lives of billions of animals. As highlighted by Leah Garces in the above article, “Key issues like the welfare problems caused by fast growing breeds, the overcrowding, the barren environment, and the lack of natural light will need to be recognized and addressed.”  Two conference sessions—Animal Agriculture Sustainability Summit and Poultry Handling may have provided a platform for some of these issues to be discussed in the future.

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By Kristine Dennis

There’s a new restaurant in town—Shaun Doty’s Bantam + Biddy opened its doors last fall and has quickly established a strong foothold in the Atlanta food scene.

My immediate impressions as we entered the restaurant—warm and inviting. All of the chicken on the menu comes from local farmers raising their animals humanely. With their combined forces, Doty and these farmers are leading the way in sustainable food. Chef Shaun Doty, long-time Atlanta chef and board member of Georgians for Pastured Poultry, has created a modern meat-and-three featuring a seasonally influenced menu of Southern classics that includes a variety of pastured poultry products.

A few highlights from our visit included rotisserie chicken, sautéed broccolini, spinach quinoa salad, and sweet potato fries. So if you’re looking for sustainable, fresh and delicious food at a reasonable price, Bantam + Biddy should be the next restaurant on your list.

Says Doty, “Fine dining is a luxury that many cannot afford. Many ingredients are priced out of reach of the consumer and it is my passion to introduce these items to a new audience.  It is our challenge as chefs to support our farmers 365 days a year by purchasing their products and finding innovative ways to offer them affordably.”

Pastured poultry products featured by Doty include his signature chopped Liver, Spotted Trotter custom-made chicken sausages and a pastured chicken burger from White Oak Pastures. Additionally, Bantam + Biddy exclusively uses local eggs from JB Farms.

Bantam + Biddy is located in the Midtown area of Atlanta in the Ansley Shopping Center. More information about Shaun and his restaurant can be found at BantamAndBiddy.com.

Keep your eyes open in April as Doty’s second pastured poultry restaurant Chick-a-Biddy opens at Atlantic Station. Although Doty’s vision of responsibly sourced and delicious cuisine will be replicated, the restaurant will be unique to Bantam & Biddy.

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By Kristine Dennis

Over the past three years, an environmental nonprofit group, Waterkeeper Alliance has fought a case against Perdue, one of four companies responsible for the majority of poultry production within the U.S, for violations of the Clean Water Act (CWA). After documenting significant amounts of chicken waste polluting waterways in and around Hudson Farm (a contract grower for Perdue), a lawsuit was brought against Perdue and Hudson Farm.  This was after receiving a 60 day notice of the complaint (as required by the Clean Water Act) and refusing to allow the Maryland Department of the Environment to conduct further sampling in order to resolve the issue out of court.  Instead, Perdue spent the past three years presenting the case as an attack against small family farmers, using a website (http://www.savefarmfamilies.org/).

On December 20, the final decision was made in Waterkeeper v. Hudson, finding Hudson Farm (the contract grower for Perdue) not in violation of CWA despite ample evidence of water pollution presented by Waterkeeper Alliance. Although most media sources have jumped on board with the “protect the family farm” perspective, Food & Water Watch has put together a nice breakdown of the myths Perdue perpetuated in this case (http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/factsheet/six-myths-and-facts-about-perdues-savefarmfamilies-org/).

To summarize a few myths, the case has primarily been presented as an attack on animal agriculture within the country as well as an attempt to bankrupt the Hudsons and other family farmers with future lawsuits. In reality, the case draws attention to the massive amount of agricultural pollution impacting Chesapeake Bay, causing algal blooms, associated fish die-off, and long-term negative effects on the ecology of the area[1] .

In 2008, chicken farms around Maryland’s East Shore of the Chesapeake Bay produced 1.5 billion pounds of manure. [2] With this high level of waste, the questions becomes “Who is responsible for this manure?” and “Is it being dealt with properly to prevent pollution of Chesapeake Bay and the surrounding watershed?”

As industrial animal agriculture continues, it is hoped that court cases like these will slow and ultimately prevent large-scale pollution. Major producers  need to become accountable for the pollution ultimately resulting from this unsustainable form of production.

The loss of the family farm is a concern and in reality, industrial production is one of the reasons family farms are in danger. Over the past 40 years, about 800,000 farms have disappeared as agribusiness has continued to grow and small farming progressively becomes less profitable under current farm policies[3] . Contract growers become trapped in a cycle of debilitating costs and agreements with their supplier, leaving them in unfair contracts with limited power. Although this case wasn’t won, the battle wages on against the repercussions of industrial poultry production, with the family farm, the environment and the right to clean water on the line.

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Imagine your children lived in an environment so unhealthy, that you had to give them daily doses of medicine just to survive.  Anyone would consider it an emergency to get them out of that environment. That’s the state of factory farming for animals today. It’s an emergency now, as each day it seems a new study is published on the growing cases of antibiotic resistance.

The latest study narrowed identified antibiotic resistance  in farm soil. The source?  Factory farms and the overuse of antibiotics in these sickly environments. Cephalosporins are used to treat bacterial pneumonia in pigs and cattle and to control early mortality in chicks and turkey poults. The FDA have singled out the use of ceftiofur in dairy cattle as a concern, saying dairy farmers often fail to keep required records.  Pneumonia? Mortality? Poor records? Clearly something is not right here.

Let’s not wait until it’s a crisis.  Support alternative farming methods that do not use routine antibiotics to keep their animals alive in these filthy environments.

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By Kristine Dennis, Intern Compassion in World Farming

This month, a whirlwind of activities occurred between Emory University and University of Georgia as Georgians for Pastured Poultry (GPP) gears up for close collaboration with each university throughout the next year to bring higher welfare poultry to their menus.

At the beginning of the month, Emory’s Sustainable Food Fair occurred accompanied by a mix of students, professors, and community members.  This proved  a great opportunity to share information about the scale of poultry issues across Georgia, all the way from the immense costs of industrial poultry production along with the fantastic solutions available from farmers producing pastured poultry in high welfare systems. Food Emory University later in the month hosted Leah Garces (co-founder of GPP & USA director for Compassion in World Farming) and Will Harris (White Oak Pastures) to give a talk on the impacts and alternatives to factory farmed meat chickens. The room was full, as were the audience’s bellies, thanks to a mean dish of chili, using White Oak Pastures chicken, and vegan cornbread.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, the GPP team headed up to Athens for the UGA kick-off event organized by Real Food UGA, again featuring Garces and Harris. With food donated from local farm to table restaurants, a line-up of bands, and the GPP Garces-Harris duo,  all the elements were there for a strong start to Real Food UGA’s campaign to bring higher welfare poultry to their campus menus. After an introduction from Real Food UGA, Garces opened up the conversation, describing the repercussions of industrially farmed meat chickens while painting a picture of GPP’s vision for sustainable, high-welfare poultry production throughout Georgia. Harris followed up with a stirring speech about his transition to sustainable farming and a business model based on the principles of environmental stewardship and animal welfare.

Universities across Georgia watch this space! GPP has already had the opportunity to talk to the students at Georgia College & State University about factory farming and pastured poultry.   If you are interested in improving your campus food in support of good farm animal welfare and local farmers please contact us!

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By Kristine Dennis (Compassion in World Farming, intern)

Last Saturday September 8 brought the long-awaited panel discussion “Animal Production in a Sustainable & Humane Food System” to Emory’s food literacy center. A prestigious group of panelists from all over the country came together to discuss the problems with and solutions to industrial farm animal production.

Panelist included Dan Imhoff (anti-CAFO author & advocate, co-founder of Watershed Media), Patty Lovera (Food & Water Watch), Bob Perry (professor at University of Kentucky), and Leah Garces (co-founder of GPP & USA director for Compassion in World Farming), A diverse mix of public health professionals, local food producers, concerned food citizens and many more attended the event.

The moderator, Joel Kimmons, challenged the panelists to present the one dimension of industrial animal production they viewed as the worst of the worst. The take-home message boiled down to the fact that animals are now considered a production unit, in which they no longer can live out the natural behaviors encoded in their genetics. Science has been taken out of context to create a mythical system of high efficiency.  The existing food system has left a long list of those who lose (farmers, consumers, animals, etc.) with a very short list of winners (the few major meat packers).

Luckily, there are fantastic alternatives to this system that promote high animal welfare and environmental stewardship. After a morning of learning the challenges and unfortunate realities of the industrial system, three other panelists (Will Harris, White Oak Pastures; Charlotte Swancy, Riverview Farms; George Frangos, Farm Burger) who are leading the way with humane and sustainable alternatives joined the conversation.  As food citizens fight for a better system, the hope lies in our ability to drive the market by purchasing meat from small, local farmers and demanding humane and sustainable options on the shelves of our neighborhood grocery store. Although broader policy reforms will ultimately need to occur, we must remember that each one of us has the power and opportunity to not only vote for political change but with our forks, three times a day, 365 days a year.

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