'Animal Factory' author to speak at Hopkins
Do you know where your chicken comes from? What’s in it? And what pollution was left behind?
Journalist David Kirby will talk about this and his book “Animal Farm” tonight from 5 p.m.-6:30 p.m. at the JHU Center for a Livable Future, Sheldon Hall, Room W1214, 615 N. Wolfe St.
The book explores the environmental, social and economic implications of how we raise and market chicken, pork and beef. He follows the system from the start on the large industrial farms to the dinner table.
A portion of the book focuses on Carole Morrison, who until recently grew chickens for Perdue. Kirby said in interview today with The Sun that she quit because she couldn’t take all of the dictates from the company, which owned all the birds, including demands that she build chicken houses with little air and light.
Kirby also discusses the implications for the health of the Chesapeake Bay from chicken waste and for human health from additives given to the birds. He discovered cancer clusters in many of the large farming communities in the Delmarva region.
“I was most surprised by the states that are supposedly progressively blue, or green, or however you label them, when it comes to environmental enforcement of agriculture,” he said. “Some are really surprisingly lax. Washington state, in dealing with the dairies, and Maryland, in dealing with the chickens. It was surprising to me that there was such little monitoring and enforcement.”
He said the Obama administration has inidcated it will be more agressive than previous administrations and is rewriting regulations to controll pollution from the large ag producers, but implementation is years away.
If you miss the talk tonight, Kirby will be a guest on the Marc Steiner show tomorrow, which runs from 5 p.m.-7 p.m. on WEAA 88.9 FM.
