Chicken Mess: More Neo-Liberal Nonsense (libs want to drive chicken farms out of business?)

This spring we wanted chicken manure spread on the pastures because it is incredibly rich in nutrients, the best “natural” fertilizer known to man, and quite inexpensive, comparatively speaking. So I asked one of my truck driver friends, who cleans out houses for Sanderson Farms affiliates, to bring me several dump truck loads. “No can do, because they aren’t having it done, this year,” quoth he.

The greenies are at it again! THIS time they are claiming that litter (sawdust and, ah, processed chicken feed) is polluting the sacred environment, and I guess they’ll have to fight it out with those who insist we should eat lots more chicken and much less red meat.

AP online reports that Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has accused a dozen Arkansas processors of “polluting the Illinois River watershed with bird waste.” A federal trial–Oh, grief, now we’re making a federal case out of chicken mess?

The federal trial begins September 21st. If the Feds win, other “environmental” lawsuits may ensue in other states, threatening the multi-billion-dollar poultry industry. At stake in this suit are 1,800 poultry houses which employ more than 55,000 people who produced over eight billion pounds of chickens and turkeys last year. The average investment is over half a million dollars. It may not be pertinent, but raising fowl is not a pleasant way to earn a living.

Greeeeaaaat, I guess the enviro weenies want us to offshore this to china too, I guess they can just dump the chicken litter into the rivers over in china, rather than using it as fertilizer here.....

Bye bye 55,000 jobs...

Sorry, guys, but you’re on the wrong side on this one. I own property on the lake in Oklahoma that is being polluted by the chicken crap that the chicken manufacturers in Arkansas allow to run-off into the Illinois river, which feeds the Oklahoma Lake Tenkiller. This lake is a major recreational area, with homes, tourism and businesses that stand to suffer huge losses all because the folks on the Arkansas border refuse to be good neighbors.

This is an inter-state problem, where one state has tried without success, to reasonably request that the folks on the Arkansas side stop being so irresponsible with their chicken litter, and they have steadfastly refused. Their objection? It costs more money to truck the chicken litter off than it does to let it sit on the property and run-off into the river.

The problem of the run-off is that the pollutants are starving the lake of oxygen, which in turn, kills not only fish, but causes one of the (formerly) clearest lakes in Oklahoma to become cloudy.

This is not an environmental whacko issue, this is an intrusion on other people’s livelihood and one state’s refusal to be responsible for the impact its actions are having on the good people of Oklahoma.

‘nuff said.

So what is the solution? The original post concerned a farmer that wanted it for fertilizer, not chicken farms letting their crap run into the river.

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