Some of the nation’s largest poultry companies — including Aviagen, Pilgrim’s Pride and Wayne-Sanderson Farms — suspended operations at their local facilities due to power outages in recent days.
It’s happened multiple times over the last quarter-century, a period in which Big Ag has only doubled down on building more, and bigger, factory farms.
Chicken factory farms store manure in giant pits or as large mounds, creating a similar pollution risk as hog farms.
Later the same year, Hurricane Michael destroyed over 80 chicken barns in Georgia that housed more than 2 million chickens.
Many chicken farmers, most of whom raise birds on a contract basis for meat companies, are already toiling in precarious economic conditions.
Over 110 people have been killed by Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm that devastated the American Southeast over the weekend. Millions of chickens have probably also perished.
The US raises and kills nearly half of the more than 9 billion “broiler” chickens that are raised for meat. At 1.3 billion processed each year, Georgia is the leading producer of chicken in the country. Throughout the weekend, Georgia Gov. Reporters were informed by Brian Kemp that the storm had “damaged or totally destroyed” 107 poultry facilities in the state. “.
When questioned about the exact number of hens that died during Hurricane Helene, the Georgia Department of Agriculture remained silent. It is estimated that between 2 and 5 points14 million birds have perished due to the fact that poultry companies usually cram up to 20,000 to 52,000 chickens into each barn, which can span almost twice the length of a football field. The real total may differ slightly because some birds may have survived the damage and because some barns may have been temporarily abandoned while businesses cleaned them out in between flocks. ).
Due to power outages in recent days, several of the biggest poultry companies in the country, including Wayne-Sanderson Farms, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Aviagen, have suspended operations at their local facilities. A spokesperson for Clemson University’s agriculture program told Vox that while this is a fluid situation and it is still evaluating the hurricane’s damages, 45,000 chickens died at one South Carolina poultry operation due to generator failure.
Almost all chickens raised in the US for meat are kept in these enormous warehouses, which have nothing in common with the modest barns of the country’s agricultural history. A minimum of several sheds are frequently present in these factory farm operations, providing simultaneous housing for hundreds of thousands of birds. A natural disaster such as Hurricane Helene can cause enough facilities to be compromised, leading to the death of millions of animals, whose final moments would probably be agonizing and terrifying.
Cooking meat.
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The financial stability of farmers and the chicken industry is also at risk due to their deaths. Commissioner Tyler Harper of Georgia’s agriculture department has asked the federal government to provide the state’s agriculture industry with emergency assistance.
The difficulties that governments and the people who live there face after powerful storms are exacerbated when hurricanes hit factory farms because they can also wash enormous amounts of animal dung into rivers, streams, and groundwater.
Hurricane Helene represents the most recent, but by no means the first, powerful illustration of the extreme cruelty that our industrial farming system inflicts on animals while simultaneously endangering the health of humans. Even in the wake of such a disaster, the meat industry has no incentive to alter since the majority of the financial losses meat producers suffer from natural disasters are paid for by taxpayers.
How the risks of factory farming are subsidized by taxpayers.
The Southeast’s poultry industry has seen hurricanes destroy crops many times before. During the past 25 years, Big Ag has only increased its efforts to construct more and larger factory farms. This has occurred numerous times.
Approximately 24.4 million chickens, 100,000 pigs, and half a million turkeys were killed in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd submerged a large portion of eastern North Carolina under water. Pig farms in North Carolina store their manure in enormous “lagoons” that are designed to hold the animal waste. During Hurricane Floyd, several of these lagoons overflowed, releasing toxic sludge that contained bacteria and viruses, including E. coli) into drinking water and waterways, as stated by the climate office of the state.
Manure from chicken factory farms is kept in enormous pits or mounds, which pose the same risk of pollution as hog farms.
Millions of hens and thousands of pigs were killed in North Carolina by Hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Florence (2018), which also damaged some manure lagoons and released “fecal soup” into the air. Over 80 Georgian chicken barns housing over 2 million chickens were destroyed by Hurricane Michael later that year.
The problem of manure seeping into groundwater and contaminating private wells—a common occurrence in rural areas—especially after significant storms is concerning.
Despite this history, the pork and poultry industries haven’t taken any significant steps to reduce the risks associated with natural disasters, such as cutting back on the number of animals raised on their farms or altering the way they handle the massive amounts of manure that their animals produce. That’s because the majority of the expenses for cleaning up the environment and replacing the dead pigs and chickens fall on US taxpayers.
In the event that a typical chicken farm is devastated by a natural disaster, the US Department of Agriculture pays the meat company—which is technically the owner of the chickens, not the farmer—$3, or roughly 75% of the bird’s market value. Merely 33 cents are paid per bird to the farmer who supplies the meatpacker.
Precarious economic conditions already exist for many chicken farmers, the majority of whom raise birds under contract for meat companies. Natural disasters like hurricanes have the power to exacerbate the situation.
In addition, the federal government pays damages for economic losses resulting from disease outbreaks and other extreme weather events like heat waves and cold snaps. The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed over 100 million poultry birds in the last two years. The poultry industry has received over $1 billion from the federal government, with the largest companies receiving the majority of this funding.
Hurricane Helene shows how livestock production both contributes to and is a victim of climate change. Politicians ought to reconsider the factory farming model as climate change increases the frequency and severity of natural disasters. Rather, as evidenced by a recent federal accounting of the US agricultural system, we are intensifying our efforts to raise more and more animals on larger and larger farms.
“The extreme concentration of animals is just a fundamental vulnerability, in addition to all the environmental problems associated with the factory farm model and the public health problems that it causes,” stated Chris Hunt, deputy director of the nonprofit Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. The vulnerability of the system to unforeseen shocks is apparent. It is problematic that poultry farms are not the only places where they are concentrated; there are also other locations where they are concentrated. “.
