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IN WEST Virginia's chicken industry, the big out-of-state corporations reaping most of the benefits use local contract farmers as buffers for criticism. It's a cynical ploy that often works.
Regulatory agencies don't want to come down too hard on struggling local folks, and public sympathy is much greater for "family farmers" than for impersonal corporations.
But it is the firms that are calling the shots. The consequences in West Virginia are severe.
WLR Foods, which contracts the job of raising chickens to local farmers, takes this self-serving stance: It owns the chickens and it owns the feed the chickens eat - but not the manure produced when the chickens eat the feed, nor any chickens that die.
Farmers are left to deal with both carcasses and droppings, but their resources are limited. They've often gone into debt to build the chicken houses and other facilities, and the pay they receive for taking care of WLR's birds often barely covers costs. By the time the debt is paid off, the facilities need repair and renovation.
The result is that often the farmers simply don't have the money for proper disposal of the mountains of waste.
After months of bad publicity, WLR recently announced that it will require contract farmers to have manure disposal plans in place by the end of 1998. WLR will provide technical assistance, but no money.
Some of the cost will come from the farmers' already thin budgets. The rest will be covered by new federal and state programs (which means taxpayers foot the bill).
Don't blame the farmers, though. It isn't their fault that WLR is getting off the hook.
Write a letter to the editor.
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