Sierra Club
Western Lake Erie Group
of the Ohio Chapter
Chair's Corner - March 1997
by John K. Estell
One of the memories I have of my childhood was visits to my neighborhood by
the "Egg Man". The passing of time has taken away from me the name of both
farmer and farm, but he would come from around the Grand Rapids area each
week selling farm-fresh eggs to my mother and to other households in the
neighborhood. Today home delivery is almost non-existent and small farming
operations are becoming increasingly endangered. We now face agribusiness
corporations with farms containing millions of hens for whom the "bottom line" is
the sole concern. The chicken gene pool, with all its diversity, is being sacrificed
to promote monocultures emphasizing egg production. Yellow dyes are added
to chicken feed to color the yolks due to lack of sufficient carotene production in
the hen. Additional feed additives include antibiotics and growth hormones.
Thanks to the "recycling" of unused body parts, salmonella is an unintended
additive in the feed. Accordingly, the threat of salmonella poisoning is ever-
present for the consumer. Our rivers are the recipients of waste products from
these farms; the Ohio EPA has already proposed that the 2.5 million hen
AgriGeneral egg farm in LaRue, Ohio (about 15 miles west of Marion) be fined
$128,000 for its alleged pollution of a tributary of the Scioto River. The working
conditions also are suspect: authorities from the Ohio Department of Health have
cited AgriGeneral for allegedly running an illegal migrant camp at their LaRue
facility. Over 100 violations were found by inspectors, including unsanitary living
conditions in the housing made available for the workers. All this so that we can
go to the grocery store and buy perfectly colored white-shelled eggs at 79 cents
a dozen.
Your help is needed to return us to a better life. Let us support those family
farmers who still raise their own chickens. Assist our activists to stop the
agribusiness corporations from locating additional farms in our area, thereby
polluting our communities and costing local producers their livelihood. Ask
questions when you buy your groceries and create a demand for naturally raised
poultry products. Eat healthy!
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John K. Estell - 7 February 1997
estell@bluffton.edu