It wasn't the chickens that did it

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A Maryland farm family and the contract company for which it grew chicken were vindicated of charges that they polluted a tributary of a river flowing into nearby Chesapeake Bay.

On Dec. 20, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that a New York-based environmental group had not proven that chicken manure from 80,000-bird barns owned by Alan and Kristin Hudson ran into a drainage ditch and polluted the Pocomoke River. According to the Baltimore Sun, the judge ruled it was far more likely that the manure came from 42 cows that roamed on the 300-acre farm. The charges were brought by a local Waterkeeper Alliance affiliate, which asserted that manure was blown into the ditch by the barns' ventilation fans.

Chicken industry groups were worried that a guilty verdict might set precedents across the nation with regard to shared responsibilities between contracting companies and their growers. Nearly $500,000 was raised in a defense fund.

According to a press release from the National Chicken Council: "The violation was based on a pile of material on the property that was erroneously assumed to be chicken manure, but was instead municipal sewage sludge from Ocean City, Maryland, that was used to fertilize crops.  The Maryland Department of the Environment inspected the farm, confirmed the pile was biosolids, asked the Hudsons to move the pile, and the Hudsons complied." The complaint that chickens were to blame came after that. BF