Sound Bites: Community Impacts of Industrial Poultry Operations On The Eastern Shore

Photo Credit: Citizens for a Better Eastern ShoreJanuary 28, 2016 – Hour 2

On our newest edition of Sound Bites, our series about our food and our world, we look at Community Impacts of Industrial Poultry Operations. Last week I took a trip to Exmore, Virginia, a small town south of Chincoteague on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, where I moderated a forum for the Citizens for a Better Eastern Shore, exploring community impacts of industrial poultry operations — including the construction of poultry houses and the spreading of poultry litter on fields — at the Broadwater Academy. Just as communities on Maryland’s Eastern Shore are beginning to organize against the mass expansion of industrial poultry farming, communities in Virginia are beginning to do the same.
The panelists included:
  • Mark Brush, Associate Professor of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science;
  • Jillian Fry of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health;
  • Carole Morrison, former Industrial Poultry grower, now small-scale farm grower;
  • Roger Everton and Neil Zahradka of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality; and
  • Maria Payan, Consultant, Socially Responsible Agricultural Project.

This broadcast was edited for time. To hear the full, unedited audio from this town hall forum click here