Chicken Industries Commitment To Environmental Protection
Published for Earth Day 2009, this report from the National Chicken Council highlights regional environmental management practices within the chicken industry. It is a public relations effort in response to increasingly compelling evidence that the poultry industry is responsible for much of the pollution of the Chesapeake Bay region.
According to the report, the Chesapeake Bay area includes more than 80,000 non-poultry farms that use fertilizer (including manure) and more than 300 municipal sewage systems that discharge treated effluent into the Bay. Degradation of the Bay is caused by growing human populations and the associated land-use changes.
The National Chicken Council says that the regional poultry industry is operating under federal and state regulatory permitting systems and that the industry and individual companies have launched environmental initiatives. This report argues that the “broiler” chicken industry is not the largest contributor to environmental degradation in the area.
Though some claim that the chicken industry in the region produces 1.5 billion pounds of manure per year, the council claims that this is the theoretical output of about 571 million birds and that most of the manure and litter is applied to the land. Additional specifics about the industry’s response to environmental protection are listed [Excerpted from report]:
Poultry Farmers:
- Poultry growers in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia have had state nutrient management laws for at least ten years
- The new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) rule has added a new level of regulation to farms that already have been operating under state laws.
- Producers follow environmental best practices, including building and using manure sheds and installing concrete pads at the end of poultry houses to contain litter.
- The Vegetative Environmental Buffers program operated by Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc., works with poultry producers to install vegetative buffers to capture air emissions from chicken houses, to take up nutrients in the soil near chicken houses, and to conserve energy through shade in the hot weather and blocking cold winds in the winter.
- Poultry growers follow environmental best practices and have spent millions of dollars to install environmental and stewardship improvements on their farms, such as manure storage structures, carcass composters, concrete pads to protect high-use area and contain litter.
- Poultry growers on the Delmarva Peninsula have requirements to attend continuing education courses related to nutrient management practices.
Poultry Companies:
- Poultry companies are voluntarily formulating feed with ingredients (such as phytase) that reduce the phosphorus levels in the litter.
- Poultry companies have helped pay for products used in chicken houses to reduce the formation of ammonia and to help bind phosphorus in the litter that might later be land applied.
- The chicken companies will not provide birds to growers unless they are in compliance with local, state, and federal environmental laws and the companies work to help make sure the growers are in compliance.
- Chesapeake Bay “Clean Bays” Initiative is an historic agreement (September 2006) between Perdue Farms and the EPA setting up a program to minimize the environmental impact of poultry farms on the Chesapeake Bay and coastal bays around the Delmarva Peninsula.
- P.I.N.E. (Poultry Integrators’ Nutrient Effort) project is a cooperative agreement between non-profit Delaware Center for the Inland Bays and the poultry industry focusing on Delaware’s Little Assawoman Bay watershed to accelerate compliance, best management practices and nutrient management certification and create a “model watershed” concept.
Poultry Litter:
- When official sources mention animal manure as a source of pollution to the bay, they are referring to all types – livestock (dairy cattle, beef cattle and pigs) as well as poultry. The amount of manure produced by the broiler chicken industry is frequently exaggerated by including litter – the wood shavings and other organic matter used as bedding material in chicken houses.
- Poultry litter is a natural fertilizer resource, which has a value to poultry producers who sell it to crop producers or use it on their own farmland, applied according to crop needs and regulated through nutrient management plans. On the Delmarva Peninsula, litter is often moved to farmland that is farther inland and farther away from the waters of the Bay.
- Poultry litter consists mostly of sawdust or wood shavings. When applied to the land, it is mostly organic matter which enhances the sandy soils of the Delmarva Peninsula, increasing their capacity to hold and filter water while providing nutrient benefits to plants.
- Poultry companies are working to improve the use of nutrients by the chickens, thus reducing the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in the manure/litter.