A Game of Chinese Chicken With Perdue

[jackdaniels]

A Game of Chinese Chicken With Perdue. Will The Bay Lose?
If you try to make me clean up my pollution, I’m going move my business out of your state – maybe even out of the country. And I’ll take all my jobs with me. So back off!

It’s a threat (usually vacant) that industries have made repeatedly over the decades to try to scare government officials away from imposing common-sense rules to protect our environment.

And now we’re hearing a similar tune from big poultry business interests and other representatives of industrial-style agriculture. The Salisbury, Maryland, based Perdue Farms Inc., the third largest poultry company in the U.S., is fighting hard against the most important legislation in a generation for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act would create legally-binding pollution reduction targets for the Bay area states, increase federal oversight, and threaten federal penalties if states fail to keep their cleanup promises.

During a U.S. House subcommittee meeting yesterday on the bill and the Obama administration’s Bay cleanup plan, a Perdue representative raised the specter of the company pulling out of region if the legislation passes.

“This bill would be a tremendous burden to poultry growers,” Steve Schwalb, vice president of Environmental Sustainability for Perdue, told a House agriculture subcommittee. “Not that we want to move out of the Bay watershed, but it’s an economic decision – pure economics.”

Schwalb even mentioned that Perdue already has an operation in China. He did not say right out that Perdue would move to China. But he did hint darkly that poultry production for Americans would flee America. “We have a genuine concern that production of our food will be outsourced overseas, because it is more economical,” he said.

Classic scare tactic. Excuse me, but how much does this reflect a concern for the common good in our Chesapeake region? In my mind, corporations, like citizens, should be dedicated to their local communities, not making threats.

No, Perdue, it is not all about economics. It’s about civic responsibility, instead of the narrow financial interests of one industry. The Chesapeake Bay is a treasure for everyone in our region – young and old, rich and poor. And the Bay must be saved so that future generations can enjoy its beauty, history, culture and ecological bounty.

A claim often made at the committee hearing yesterday was that the Chesapeake Clean Water act would impose new regulations on farmers.

“We have concerns that this legislation creates new law on how agriculture can operate,” Schwalb told the committee.

Not true. The bill would require states to meet pollution reduction goals. But then the legislation would give the states flexibility, allowing them a variety of options to meet the cleanup targets. In addition, the bill requires the federal government to create a new pollution credit trading program that will provide money to farmers and others to help them reduce their pollution. This program might actually generate as much as $85 million a year for farms in Maryland that meet baseline standards for controlling runoff, and $50 million a year for similar farms in Virginia.

Listening to yesterday's hearing was like venturing into an alternative reality, in which the long-stalled Chesapeake Bay cleanup was performing wonderfully well.

Opponents of the Chesapeake Clean Water Act made the assertion that the voluntary nature of the current cleanup program is delivering great progress. So there’s no need to change, in the eyes of the farm industry lobby. The claim was made over and over again that agriculture has met 50 percent of the goals set in 2000 for reducing nutrient pollution into the Bay by 2010 (based on a 1985 baseline).

So why not just let the current system continue, and eventually 100 percent of the goals will be met?

My reaction: Two deadlines to clean up the Bay have already passed. One deadline was blown in 2000, and now we will miss a second one in 2010. Meeting 50 percent of our goals, after two blown deadlines, isn’t even close to good enough. In school, 50 percent wrong on a test means an F grade, not something to crow about (as was happening at the meeting yesterday).

If a student gets an F grade, the teacher does not say: “Okay, great! Keep on doing what you’re doing.” An F grade means that a student needs to change his or her behavior and work harder.

Wilmer Stoneman, associate director of government relations for the Virginia Farm Bureau, did not seem worried about the pace of Bay cleanup during the hearing yesterday.

“We have had 400 years of effects on the Chesapeake Bay,” he told the committee. “We are not going to fix it in 30 (years), we are not going to fix it in 25 years, and we are not going to fix it in 2 year increments.”

That's debatable. But it is certainly true that we will never fix the Bay if we follow the farm bureau’s advice and continue with the status quo.

[giantfan]

Chicken Payback!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN48kxZut98