October, 09 2012, 11:04am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Darcey Rakestraw, Food & Water Watch, 202-683-2467, DRakestraw@fwwatch.org
Rich Bindell, Food & Water Watch, 202-683-2457, RBindell@fwwatch.org
Groups Say Perdue Hiding Behind Farmers as Court Case Begins
Several organizations held a press conference outside of the Federal District Court in Baltimore this morning to call attention to Perdue's unjust treatment of its farmers and the public health and environmental effects of factory farm runoff, as highlighted by a case that goes to trial today. The case brought by Waterkeeper Alliance against Perdue and one of its contract growers, the Hudsons, seeks to put a stop to the pollution found pouring off the farm and hold Perdue liable for the discharges.
BALTIMORE
Several organizations held a press conference outside of the Federal District Court in Baltimore this morning to call attention to Perdue's unjust treatment of its farmers and the public health and environmental effects of factory farm runoff, as highlighted by a case that goes to trial today. The case brought by Waterkeeper Alliance against Perdue and one of its contract growers, the Hudsons, seeks to put a stop to the pollution found pouring off the farm and hold Perdue liable for the discharges. Throughout the nearly three years of litigation, activists said Perdue has been using the Hudsons as "human shields," hiding behind its farmers instead of taking responsibility for the waste that its factory farming operations produce.
"When this case was filed in 2010 Perdue was enjoying $4.6 billion in sales while Alan Hudson was driving a school bus to make ends meet," said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. "If Perdue really cared about farmers like the Hudsons, they've had the opportunity for almost three years now to stand up and say 'this is our waste and our problem'. Instead, they've chosen to once more hide behind the false guise of the family farmer and hold the Hudsons out as the only ones responsible for the mess created by Perdue's own industrial chicken empire. Perdue owns the chickens, the feed, and the profits. The Hudsons, apparently, own Perdue's waste--and Perdue is fighting hard to keep it that way."
Responsibility for the waste from the highly integrated meat production systems that now dominate our chicken, beef and pork industry remains a central question as this case goes to trial. A single Perdue farm generates hundreds of tons of animal manure a year, far beyond what can ever be properly and responsibly used by contract growers like the Hudsons to fertilize crops. As a result of all this excess waste, the Bay and other waterways around the country are being impacted by damaging amounts of nutrients and other pollutants.
"Perdue's abuse of contract farmers goes beyond their refusal to take responsibility for their own waste," says Hauter. "It goes to unconscionable contracts, economic inequity, inappropriate uses of drugs and horrendous working conditions. Perdue and the other mega-meat companies are the biggest threat to family farming in the United States and around the world."
Kathy Ozer, Director of the National Family Farm Coalition, stated, "This case highlights the power of a company such as Perdue and the vulnerability of growers. We have spent many years working to shift that relationship and it is exactly why this case is so important. There is no reason why Perdue, which exerts total control over the day to day operations, the chicks and the feed, is not responsible for the environmental costs."
"Pollution from industrial poultry operations can harm human health, in addition to causing environmental problems," said Jillian P. Fry, Project Director for
Public Health & Sustainable Aquaculture at the Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "This method of food production produces massive amounts of concentrated waste and relies on routine use of antibiotics and other drugs, resulting in contamination of air, water, soil and the actual birds. This can lead to a range of public health issues for surrounding communities and consumers. The court case beginning today has the potential to increase corporate and producer responsibility for these issues, which could lead to positive changes in poultry production and reduce associated public health effects."
"Chicken manure is one of the largest pollution sources in the Chesapeake, contributing to the dead zones we see every summer in up to one third of the Bay," said Megan Cronin, Clean Water Advocate with Environment Maryland. "We are never going to have a clean Bay if we don't take agriculture pollution seriously and if we don't hold corporate agribusiness accountable. This is a local treasure that we all share, we can't let the mess of the few lead to a loss for so many. "
Food & Water Watch revealed last year that the site SaveFarmFamilies.org, a site that suggests the suit was brought by overzealous, out-of-state environmentalists was registered by Perdue Inc. Earlier this year, Food & Water Watch released secret emails between Governor Martin O'Malley and Perdue's General Counsel, Herb Frerichs, which showed an unusually close relationship. The day that Governor O'Malley released a letter to the Maryland Law Clinic denouncing the merits of the ongoing litigation, he received an email from Frerichs that simply said, "Very nice." Subsequently, the Baltimore Sun reported that around the time these emails began, Perdue began shifting its political giving from the Republican Governor's Association to the Democratic Governor's Association--which O'Malley heads.
"Perdue has tried to fool the public into thinking that the environmentalists are the villains here," said Hauter. "But astroturfing won't change the fact that they will continue to pollute the bay while letting their contract farmers take all the blame. Meanwhile, Governor O'Malley continues to prop up the poultry industry despite the fact that all Maryland agriculture combined contributes only 0.35% to the state's Gross Domestic Product, with chicken contributing only a fraction of that number. We don't need cozy relationships--we need real gutsy leadership to force polluting operations to stop killing the bay."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
Bernie Sanders Says US Must 'Fundamentally Rethink' Its Foreign Policy
"In this pivotal moment in human history, the United States must lead a new global movement based on human solidarity and the needs of struggling people."
Mar 18, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday called for a "revolution in American foreign policy" that replaces "greed, militarism, and hypocrisy" with "solidarity, diplomacy, and human rights."
In a lengthy piece published in Foreign Affairs, Sanders (I-Vt.) asserted that "it is long past time to fundamentally reorient American foreign policy," a shift that starts with "acknowledging the failures of the post–World War II bipartisan consensus and charting a new vision that centers human rights, multilateralism, and global solidarity."
"If the goal of foreign policy is to help create a peaceful and prosperous world, the foreign policy establishment needs to fundamentally rethink its assumptions," the democratic socialist senator wrote. "Spending trillions of dollars on endless wars and defense contracts is not going to address the existential threat of climate change or the likelihood of future pandemics. It is not going to feed hungry children, reduce hatred, educate the illiterate, or cure diseases. It is not going to help create a shared global community and diminish the likelihood of war."
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Sanders' article examines U.S. foreign policy since World War II, underscoring commonalities between the many wars and acts of aggression perpetrated by Washington over the decades.
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Sanders also highlighted the U.S. record of perpetrating or backing coups in Iran, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, and other countries, "often in support of authoritarian regimes that brutally repressed their own people and exacerbated corruption, violence, and poverty."
"Washington is still dealing with the fallout from such meddling today, confronting deep suspicion and hostility in many of these countries, which complicates U.S. foreign policy and undermines American interests," he wrote.
Sanders then moved on to the 21st century, when the George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attacks by committing "nearly 2 million U.S. troops and over $8 trillion to a 'Global War on Terror' and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq"—the latter "built on an outright lie."
The senator continued:
The Iraq War was not an aberration. In the name of the Global War on Terror, the United States carried out torture, illegal detention, and "extraordinary renditions," snatching suspects around the world and holding them for long periods at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and CIA "black sites" around the world. The U.S. government implemented the Patriot Act, which resulted in mass surveillance domestically and internationally. The two decades of fighting in Afghanistan left thousands of U.S. troops dead or wounded and caused many hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Today, despite all that suffering and expenditure, the Taliban is back in power.
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"In the past decade alone, the United States has been involved in military operations in Afghanistan, Cameroon, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen," he noted. "The U.S. military maintains around 750 military bases in 80 countries and is increasing its presence abroad as Washington ramps up tensions with Beijing. Meanwhile, the United States is supplying [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's Israel with billions of dollars in military funding while he annihilates Gaza."
"U.S. policy on China is another illustration of failed foreign policy groupthink, which frames the U.S.-Chinese relationship as a zero-sum struggle," Sanders said. "For many in Washington, China is the new foreign policy bogeyman—an existential threat that justifies higher and higher Pentagon budgets."
Revisiting a major theme from his two Democratic presidential runs, Sanders contended that "economic policy is foreign policy."
"As long as wealthy corporations and billionaires have a stranglehold on our economic and political systems, foreign policy decisions will be guided by their material interests, not those of the vast majority of the world’s population," he said. "That is why the United States must address the moral and economic outrage of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, in which the richest 1% of the planet owns more wealth than the bottom 99%—an inequality that allows some people to own dozens of homes, private airplanes, and even entire islands, while millions of children go hungry or die of easily prevented diseases."
"The benefits of making this shift in foreign policy would far outweigh the costs," Sanders wrote. "The United States must recognize that our greatest strength as a nation comes not from our wealth or our military might but from our values of freedom and democracy."
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Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee filed a petition Monday with National Labor Relations Board formally requesting an election to join the United Auto Workers, which is campaigning aggressively to organize nonunion plants in the U.S. South and across the country.
The UAW tried and narrowly failed to organize Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant in 2014 and 2019, but the union's historic strike and contract victories at the Big Three automakers last year emboldened its unionization efforts.
"We want to be heard," Crystal Jenkins, a logistics worker at the Chattanooga plant, says in a video released by the UAW on Monday. "The reason I'm voting yes for the union is to have a voice."
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The UAW said Monday that "a supermajority" of the more than 1,000 workers at the Chattanooga plant—Volkswagen's only assembly facility in the U.S.—signed union cards in just 100 days, a sign of broad support for the organizing effort.
"I come from a UAW family, so I've seen how having our union enables us to make life better on the job and off," said Yolanda Peoples, a production team member in assembly. "We are a positive force in the plant. When we win our union, we'll be able to bargain for a safer workplace, so people can stay on the job and the company can benefit from our experience. When my father retired as a UAW member, he had something to fall back on. VW workers deserve the same."
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Lawmakers warned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that keeping interest rates high "needlessly worsens housing market imbalances" and "could threaten" workers' jobs and wages.
Mar 18, 2024
Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate urged the Federal Reserve on Monday to begin slashing interest rates in the near future, warning that the increasingly tight monetary conditions the central bank has imposed over the past two years risk imperiling strong post-pandemic job and
wage growth.
In a
letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined 19 House Democrats in calling for a "prompt timeline for future rate reductions," noting that the central bank has hiked rates 11 times since March 2022 and that inflation has nearly fallen "into line with the Federal Reserve's target."
"Today's excessively contractionary monetary policy needlessly worsens housing market imbalances and the unaffordability of home ownership, creates risks for banking stability, and could threaten the achievements of strong employment and wage growth and its attendant reductions in economic and racial inequalities," reads the letter, which was sent a day ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) March 19-20 meeting.
If the Fed waits too long to begin cutting rates, the lawmakers cautioned, overly restrictive monetary policy could "reduce employment and real wage growth."
"We worry that higher unemployment and a harmful economic slowdown could result from a lagged effect of the prior 11 interest rate hikes since March 2022," the lawmakers added. "We believe it is critical for the FOMC to present the public with a clear and rapid timetable for reducing interest rates, ideally beginning at the May FOMC meeting in order to ensure a strong labor market and full employment for working Americans."
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 11 times in the last 2 years, keeping working people from being able to get a raise, a mortgage, or car.
Today, @SenSanders, @SenWarren, and House progressives call on the Fed to finally lower interest rates.https://t.co/VvFNPwZ8lS
— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) March 18, 2024
Since the Fed started raising interest rates for the first time since 2018 just over two years ago, progressive lawmakers, advocates, and economists have been arguing that jacking up borrowing was not the solution to inflation fueled in large part by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and corporate price gouging. According to one recent study by the Groundwork Collaborative, corporate profiteering drove more than half of inflation between April and September 2023.
Last month, following a strong jobs report, Groundwork's Bilal Baydoun called for rate cuts, arguing that "the data is very clear that we never had to sacrifice jobs for lower prices."
"High interest rates will only slow our clean energy transition and put families in more debt," said Baydoun. "Chair Powell must change his tune and cut rates in March."
But the Fed is not expected to announce rate cuts following the two-day FOMC meeting that begins on Tuesday. The Associated Pressreported Monday that "Powell and his fellow Fed officials are expected to play it safe when they meet his week, keeping their rate unchanged for a fifth straight time and signaling that they still need further evidence that inflation is returning sustainably to their 2% target."
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