Do chickenhouses create dangerous air pollution? Legislator aims to find out

A new bill proposed for the 2018 Maryland legislative session aims to address health and environmental concerns about air pollution caused by industrial chicken farming, according to its supporters. 

State Sen. Richard Madaleno, D-Montgomery, announced plans on Friday to sponsor the Community Healthy Air Act, which will require the Maryland Department of the Environment to conduct a one-time study to examine the impact of air emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations, commonly known as CAFOs.

Madaleno said he hopes it would address any public health issues that may arise from the study.

He said people on Delmarva are concerned about health and economic factors of “living in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and residents want answers this bill will hopefully address.

“A lot of people are standing up saying, 'I want to know about my health. I want to know what this means for me, for my children, for my grandchildren — I don't want to put them at risk,’” Madaleno said at the Clarion Resort Fontainebleau in Ocean City.

Socially Responsible Agricultural Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization, promoted Madaleno as one of its four-day conference highlights.

The summit is "aimed at discussing the increasing threats that industrial animal operations pose on rural America," according to a news release from the group.

The hotel was also the location of the Maryland Farm Bureau annual convention, which ended Tuesday. 

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The purpose of the bill is to acquire data so that informed policy decisions can be made by legislators, Madaleno said, without any intention of attacking the thriving Eastern Shore poultry industry.

“All we're doing with this bill — we're not prejudging anyone, we're not making any assumptions, we're just saying 'Let's have the information so everyone can make the right decisions,'" he said.

But some with the largest industry on the peninsula don't agree about the motivation behind the bill.

James Fisher, a spokesman for Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., wrote in an email that air quality issues are already of great importance to family farmers who raise chickens near their own homes, and that environmentalists credit farmers' practices to improving the health of the environment.

The Delmarva Poultry Industry is a trade group that works for the "common good" of farmers and residents, according to its website. 

The organization supports scientifically valid and accurate data about air quality and agriculture, but Fisher said this bill wouldn’t provide any such thing.

“It would lead to a quick-and-dirty study that is clearly meant to give ammunition to the industry’s critics, who just don’t believe there should be a Delmarva chicken industry at all,” he said.

It would also put at risk thousands of jobs and impact the farm income of the state, Fisher added.

The chicken industry on the Delmarva Peninsula accounts for about 70 percent of cash farm income in Delaware, 35 percent of cash farm income in Maryland and 22 percent of cash farm income in Virginia, according to the group's statistics.

Madaleno, who was asked about criticisms of the bill, said changes in the industry from 20 or 30 years ago need to be studied. 

"The vast majority of Marylanders eat chicken," he said. "As someone that eats chicken, I want to know that I'm not contributing to the decline in my fellow Marylanders' health, their economic livelihood.

"These are important issues for everyone, not just people on the Eastern Shore."