Little Farm, Big Chicken

 

Several Town Creek Foundation grantees – Waterkeeper Alliance, the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic, and the Assateague Coastkeeper – are involved in a controversial lawsuit alleging that the Perdue Company and one of its contract growers have run afoul of the Clean Water Act.

As is to be expected whenever citizens seek to hold power accountable, the air has grown thick with the stench of corporate populism. A Perdue-financed public relations campaign is fomenting anger against ‘deep pocketed New York-based environmentalists’ looking to destroy family farms on the Eastern Shore, and some of our elected officials – impatient with the workings of the legal system, and unburdened by significant acquaintance with the facts of the case – have gone after the plaintiffs and their attorneys.

In this context, a serious, thoughtful consideration of the various dimensions of the case is difficult to come by.

Not impossible though.

Town Creek-grantee Marc Steiner has interviewed just about all of the relevant parties – Perdue officials, Alan Hudson, the Assateague Coastkeeper, and Scot Edwards and Michele Merkel, formerly of the Waterkeeper Alliance.

It’s worth a listen.