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... An advocacy group, Environment Texas and it’s umbrella organization Environment America, crunched the numbers reported to regulators. They found that of pollutants discharged into Texas waterways by all industries, poultry processors were among the top sources for sheer volume.

“When people think of farms they think of the old mom and pop family farm. But these have turned into giant corporate, mechanized facilities that generate huge amounts of waste,” said Luke Metzger, Environment Texas’s founder.

Metzger was talking not just about the processing plants but the hundreds of poultry “growers” scattered in nearby counties. The growers (Sanderson Farms alone said it uses 300 of them in Texas) are usually contractors, providing the millions of chickens for processing.The concern is the tons of chicken manure they generate. Rainwater runoff can potentially carry the nitrate-rich manure into streams and creeks...

For full text of this article, visit http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/04/03/big-chicken-in-texas-and-wor...