Paper prepared for conference at Yale University, May 17-19, 2002
"The Chicken: Its Biological, Social, Cultural, and Industrial History"

Heather Williams
Department of Politics, Pomona College
[email protected]

As we emerged from a poultry house into the spring air after he had obligingly showed me the 20 thousand seven-week-and-one-day-old chickens inside, Mr. Thompson, the grower, asked me a question. "What brings you all the way here to eastern Oklahoma from Los Angeles?" he queried. "It seems like a long way to travel to study chicken waste."

Having been the one to ask questions all week of growers, citizens� groups, mayors, state legislators, and cabinet agency officials, I stumbled for a moment. I hesitated and picked my words carefully. I didn�t want to offend Mr. Thompson, who had graciously agreed to talk with me about the business of raising poultry, but I was in fact there to try and figure out why the kind of farming he did had stirred up so much controversy. I was there in Heavener (pronounced HEE-ven-er), Oklahoma that day, I explained, to try to get a better picture of the politics of poultry production.

"Umm hmm," he said, listening intently. "Well, it is political these days, that�s for sure."

I continued. "The politics, as you well know, mostly have to do with there being too much phosphorus in rivers and lakes, and chickens being a part of that problem. That interests me, along with the issue of whether integrators are treating contract growers fairly. I know there are a lot of states that produce chickens, but I came here because there have been a prominent set of state, municipal, and private efforts to regulate both swine and poultry production here. I guess I wondered, �Why Oklahoma?� My family�s from Kansas, which isn�t that different. The politics of growers versus corporations, I understand. We have anti-corporate farming statutes on the books in my home state, and so did you until recently. But for as long as I can remember, the environmental aspect of intensive production agriculture hasn�t been controversial. We�ve always known it wasn�t great for our surface waters,¹ but a lot of people felt that regulation would hurt family farmers. And from what I know now of Oklahoma�s history, it was a similar climate here until recently."

"So you study agriculture," he answered, now a little more curious.

"No," I said. "I mean yes, but not as an economist or an agronomist. I�m writing a book that I�ll call for now �The New Politics of Food and Agriculture,� which examines controversies over food and farming that are emerging in new places or in new ways. I also want to know how or if these debates fit together. Disputes over animal production and waste are one example. Others include debates over genetically engineered foods and seeds. Also, the movement of a lot of new immigrants to rural America is bringing up new debates about wages and labor rights and crime and tax bases and things. You also see groups calling for more competitive markets in agriculture. Some groups are asking questions about irradiation or antibiotic use or food safety. Other groups want different trade policies and country-of-origin labeling."

"That�s an important point," Mr. Thompson said. "People should know where their food�s coming from. I�m a cattleman too, and we�re getting clobbered by imports. And the part about safety, that�s a fair concern. As for us, we make a clean bird. It�s tested for salmonella and antibiotics before it goes overseas," he noted. This was a crucial point, because we had just talked about the Russian embargo of U.S. poultry that had been imposed on the basis of food safety complaints in March.

Mr. Thompson and I talked for quite a while longer. The conversation had its unique points, but what struck me about our exchange at the same time was how typical it had been of discussions I had had with so many people in the previous year in so many different places. These days, you bring up any question about food--who grows it, who processes it, who pays for it directly and indirectly (and at what price), and most importantly, who is allowed to control it--and you�re likely to have a long conversation about the state of the world itself.

A walk through Mr. Thompson�s town, Heavener, is to be reminded that the global economy is never more global than in the quiet hinterlands. A tiny town of 2,500 people two hours from Tulsa and 40 miles from the nearest interstate, Heavener faces dilemmas not unlike those confronted by officials in far-away countries, who also weigh the costs of harboring corporate operations versus the cost of not doing so. Mr. Thompson himself is in the chicken business because he gets a contract from OK Foods, a major poultry corporation making meat primarily for everyday processed foods that we recognize as nuggets, chicken fingers and the marinated hot wings. The OK Foods plant in town, just over the railroad tracks, is visible from a long way away because of the plume of steam coming up from the one-story warehouse-like building. There, behind a guard building and razor-wire fencing warning in Spanish and English that pamphleteers will be prosecuted, several hundred workers, almost all from the Mexican states of Jalisco, Puebla, Michoacan, and Tabasco, slaughter, eviscerate, chop, and reassemble Mr. Thompson�s birds. After that, the birds, now as meals, go to malls, grocery stores, and drive-up windows by way of the rumbling 18-wheelers that drive in and out of the plant just off Highway 59 at all hours of the day and night.

Just a little time in Heavener�s downtown teaches one a little bit about bit about new rural economy. The turn-of-the-century red-brick buildings are what one imagines in the rural Midwest, along with about twelve different spires for a church-going but decidedly non-ecumenical population. A closer look reveals what is changing in Heavener. The buildings are about half empty, but it looks like this is actually better than it might have been in late 1980s after that decade�s farm crisis, just before OK Foods moved to town. In most of the rest of them one finds not dry goods and hardware stores that Hollywood still imagines line the main streets of small towns, but instead Spanish-language storefronts divided evenly between various Christian ministries and mercaditos. The former are in stiff competition with one another, with Baptists battling the Assembly of God, Jehovah�s Witnesses, a Catholic mission, and a New Life church promising full gospel services. The latter small markets are intensely low-budget affairs in which items sit on bare metal shelves with no neon signs or shiny banners or electronic scanners at the checkout. The stores carry a strange mishmash of items that initially makes no sense. Mangoes, chicharron (fried pork skin), Peñafiel sodas, piles of Tía Rosa peanut marzipan, pirated copies of CDs from the newest Sinaloa banda sensations, and outdated copies of Proceso and Estar Guapa share space with Western Union forms and long-distance telephone cards. Later, it might occur to the observer that these items are precisely what one doesn�t find fifteen miles away in the country seat at the Walmart Supercenter, which, with everyday low prices, captures most of the local retail dollars.

In every sense, Heavener is a factory town. Despite the paychecks OK Foods writes to its workers, infrastructure and housing are perennial problems. Trailers outnumber the old wood houses with trademark front porches. Some homes are hybrids, with mobile units attached haphazardly to wood and metal structures. As the mayor, Mark Morris, pointed out, better housing for people would do more to improve residents lots than anything else. "The point is for residents to have some equity," he emphasized. As for infrastructure, especially a water treatment plant that can handle the plant�s substantial effluent, this is also a challenge. OK Foods pays no direct taxes to the city, so facilities must be built with sales taxes captured locally. These two challenges, along with school budgets and the like, provoke some ambivalence from officials like Morris when it comes to the question of whether the plant is good for the region. On the one hand, most residents wouldn�t be there except for the plant jobs. On the other hand, the public costs of it are considerable. "We�d like to build the tourism industry," he said, pointing out that Heavener is within close driving distance of six big lakes and a mountain range. "You can go turkey hunting before work in the morning. That�s the kind of lifestyle that makes people want to stay." He pointed out that this is no easy task, though, in an economy where besides jobs in the OK plant, there is little else by way of employment aside from farming, a small service sector, the railroad, and a few government jobs.

When asked about the demographic transformation of Heavener from English- to Spanish-speaking residents, Morris gave thoughtful, compassionate answers. "It definitely hasn�t been a smooth transition," he said. "Any time there�s change, people don�t want to accept it." The Hispanics,² as Morris and nearly all English speakers refer to the mostly Mexican-born migrant workers who now reside in substantial numbers in rural factory towns, bring some new tasks for government such as finding Spanish-speaking teachers for the schools. He said the town and the county, however, have not become polarized over migration, as has happened in new packing towns elsewhere in Midwest, such as in Kansas and western Oklahoma, where migrants have become the emblem of the transformation of towns by large corporations. In Guymon, Oklahoma or Garden City, Kansas, English-speaking residents have often made political scapegoats of migrants because of their anger over school systems that receive no tax revenues from resident processing factories, but which must accommodate several hundred new children and find specialized teachers for them. In those cities, crime rates also skyrocketed after slaughterhouses opened, largely due to circumstances under which human cargo was smuggled into rural industrial enclaves. Many of the individuals seeking work in the facilities arrived badly in debt to gangs of coyotes (smugglers of immigrants) and to the swine and beef-packing corporations that had set up shop there.³ By contrast, in Heavener, Morris affirmed that the town had remained tranquil, and that the only problems with the law had to do with more complicated traffic violations, as many migrant workers are unable to obtain drivers� licenses legally.

Walking through the shops, and stopping at the one of three Mexican kitchens on Main Street for lunch, I asked with people I meet where they come from, and what the town is like. The family running the restaurant was from the tierra fría (cool side) of the Mexican state of Michoacan. The proprietor of the restaurant, Guadalupe Rosas, commented in Spanish that she, like every migrant in town, came for work in the factory, having heard about the locality through relatives. She seemed glad to have gotten out after several years. The work is difficult, she said. The line speeds are rapid, "and it�s so cold in there." But more difficult sometimes, she noted, was the difference in culture from her rural community in Mexico to that of rural Oklahoma. "People don�t sit outside their houses," she noted. "They don�t walk down the streets and chat in the evenings. They�re all inside. It�s hard to get to know people. It�s like they don�t want talk. They�re not unpleasant, just reserved. That�s different from where I come from. And the shopping, that�s a problem. If you don�t have a car, you can�t get groceries. So you�ll have several people pool their money and buy a car together." She then echoed what the mayor mentioned, saying, "But that�s also a problem because if you don�t have your papers you can�t get a license, and then you have drive without one sometimes." Her son then piped in saying, "Sometimes that makes people think we bring trouble with us. It�s hard, because maybe one person will do something (bad), and we all get blamed for it."

I asked them, a propos of nothing they had mentioned, whether there was a union in the plant. "No, gracias a dios. There�s no union. Sometimes they have meetings over in the Catholic mission on fiesta days, but they haven�t gotten anywhere." I decided not to pursue the issue, but it was on my mind. Their anti-union sentiment might have come from home--some upland residents of Michoacan still carry the legacy of the arch-conservative sinarquismo of the early 20^th century, linked to the Catholic Cristero revolts against the Revolutionary government in the 1920s. The union organizers who passed through town may also have done something to antagonize people. Additionally, the political climate in Oklahoma has turned against unions, with right-to-work legislation passing by popular referendum in 2001. And of course, the plant management itself has undoubtedly warned workers that starting a union would cause problems, if it has not explicitly threatened people with losing their jobs if they sign union cards. The work in chicken processing plants, though not minimum wage, is notoriously punishing, with injury rates that have ranged as high as 27 percent annually and are three times higher than national workplace average (Broadway 1995; Sun and Escobar 1999).

The question about unions also had come to mind because of my adventure that morning at the plant, where I had dropped by with the idea of trying to get an interview with someone in management. An armed guard had stopped me outside the plant and asked me my business. When I asked him whether I could go inside and speak with a receptionist or secretary, he told me I could not. He asked me to wait in my car about two hundred yards from the factory door, which I did for 20 minutes while he made inquiries. "You ever heared of the Sierra Club? Are you with them?" he asked. I told him I was not, but that I was interviewing people about politics and poultry. After several telephone calls and a look at my driver�s license, he told me I�d have to speak with an assistant to the plant manager on the telephone. Later that day, I tried telephoning the office number I had been given, and was referred to a public relations department in the corporation�s headquarters in Fort Smith, Arkansas. A receptionist in this department promised to call me back, and later told me that I would have to speak with one of two mid-level managers, and that they would call me. Neither did. Several days later, I received an e-mail from the legal counsel to OK Foods saying that he had advised his clients not to grant any interviews thank you very much.

My journey through eastern Oklahoma in March of 2002, taking me not only to metropolitan Tulsa but also to its periphery in small towns like Heavener, Poteau, Talequah, Miami, reminded me again that it is the seemingly incidental details that may reveal subtle truths about social and political change. The specific reason I was there studying the controversy over poultry waste and surface waters (including but not limited to Tulsa�s water supply) was due to a most fortuitous meeting with State Senator Paul Muegge, whom I had interviewed in the summer of 2001 at his home in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. At that time, my questions were fairly narrow. I was traveling through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri speaking with individuals who been involved in campaigns to regulate corporate swine operations that had set up massive confined feeding farms and slaughter operations in the Great Plains states in the early- and mid-1990s. Promising jobs and economic development for ailing rural counties, corporations such as Seaboard Farms, the Pig Improvement Corporation, Premium Standard Farms, and Murphy Family Farms instead built barn complexes holding tens of thousands of animals and draining waste into toxic open-air lagoons. In the process, the new complexes drove 60 percent of independent hog operators out of business and left rural counties hosting the corporate operations divided and bitter over the experience.

Senator Muegge, a farmer himself, had made waves nationally when he sponsored and helped pass some of the country�s toughest regulatory laws.⁴ I asked him my questions about the hog industry legislation, but realized that Senator Muegge saw the swine campaign as only one part of a larger shift in rural areas and the farm economy. As I talked with him about my rather vague ideas of how campaigns against swine corporations might be linked to issues of declining farm income, food insecurity, and labor and environmental crises, Senator Muegge argued convincingly that the larger problem at hand was that commodity markets had been highjacked by corporate cartels. Battling this for him meant standing up as a lawmaker for various groups afflicted by corporate power, including citizens affected by hog corporations, but also people in other sectors. In this vein, poultry growers were an important constituency, he pointed out. Unlike self-appointed farm representatives such as the Oklahoma Farmers� Union or the Farm Bureau, he saw no contradiction in passing legislation to protect the environment and sponsoring laws to protect contract growers from abuses of integrators. By making corporations liable for the pollution created by ever-larger production facilities, smaller but more efficient farmers producing less waste would be better able to survive. Keeping independent farmers on the land, Muegge argued, keeps markets competitive and rural communities vibrant.

Thus, after speaking with Senator Muegge, it occurred to me that by examining the public debate over poultry and water in Oklahoma, I might better understand whether the increasing concentration of corporate power in food production might be breaking down the perennial schism between advocates of the environment and champions of the family farm. The latter, for example, are forced to produce ever more at declining profit margins, and might well stand to benefit if litigation against companies forced corporations to assume liability for pollution, rather than leaving the responsibility for putrid waters with growers. Similarly, environmentalists might benefit by legislation protecting growers� rights. Mr. Thompson, for example, along with other growers, pointed out that growers ought to be granted the means to construct a cooperative manufacturing enterprise that would convert waste into fuel or pelletized fertilizer. Emphasizing how much he and fellow growers cared about the areas� waterways, there was a clear sense that many did not see the region�s controversy as a curse of environmentalists, but instead as a symptom of a food production system in which costs that should have been borne by corporations were externalized to the general population.

As has been emphasized at this conference, poultry was the first of the commodity meats to become fully integrated by corporations. Ownership now extends from chromosome to cellophane, with standard genetics enabling efficient slaughter of 10 billion birds a year in the U.S. alone. The problems people have with the industry, by this point in the conference, are also well-known. Consumers worry about the impact of antibiotics, pathogens, and feed additives such as arsenic (put in chicken feed to kill vermin). Animal ethicists also question standard practices that include de-beaking, crowding of animals, and fattening regimes so rapid that bones often cannot support animals� frames as they near slaughter weight. There is also concern over labor conditions in the factories and in animal transport. Chicken catchers and factory workers often suffer chronic illnesses that far outlast their tenure in the plants. Declining farm income and fraudulent practices by the integrators are occupy the list of complaints with poultry production.

The litany is such that it is something of a wonder that comprehensive changes have not been brought down on the industry yet, except that when problems are examined closely, it is apparent that constituencies are divided among themselves. A unifying filament or mechanism that bridges concerns and mobilizes a critical mass of reformers has thus far been elusive. Farmers such as Mr. Thompson insist they�re growing a clean bird. Consumer advocates often insist they want no part of labor grower complaints. Opponents of antibiotics in food include groups that may have no sympathy for antitrust work, preferring instead to negotiate with fewer rather than larger numbers of corporate actors. The situation raises the question of what element within the ranks of critics will succeed change the way poultry is produced, and to what degree those changes will mitigate the grievances cited by each group.

In this talk, I want to suggest that any changes in the way poultry production is organized may in fact begin with the back end of the bird. The element that may have the most serious implications for the way poultry is produced isn�t the meat or its pathogens, but instead, its waste stream. The title of my talk, "Tulsa Blues: Phosphorus, Fish Kills, and Foul Drinking water," is an examination of one aspect of contemporary poultry politics--the fight over the disposal of chicken litter and factory effluent. For those thinking about more comprehensive changes in the food system that would promote greater equity and more sustainable practices, it is a telling topic because substantive changes in waste disposal might well require the poultry industry to move out of eastern Oklahoma if alternatives to present farming methods are not identified. Municipal and state government experts now uniformly claim that phosphorus, a nutrient in dry chicken litter, must be reduced drastically--by about 70 percent--in the state�s principal eastern watersheds to avoid the putrification of water supplies and the death of riverine and lake ecosystems. With about half that nutrient load attributed to runoff from litter spread on farmers� fields, it is an open question as to whether confined broiler facilities in large numbers can coexist with people and fish in the same region. While some say that a nominal tax on the industry (about one penny per pound of chicken) or better management practices might solve the problem, a closer examination of the controversy suggests that no serious response to the state�s water problems will be painless. If the industry is taxed in Oklahoma, integrators may look for less expensive regulatory environments. If farmers are fined directly with no compensation from industry or the taxpayers, their narrow profits will undoubtedly disappear. Also, the solution will involve inter-state litigation and backlash due to the runoff flowing into Oklahoma�s waterways from over the state line in Arkansas and Missouri, where the number of chicken houses outnumbers Oklahoma�s eight times over.

When people thing about Oklahoma, what comes to mind usually isn�t forested hills, crystal-clear lakes, and fast-flowing creeds and rivers. People generally think of the central and western parts of the state where one finds a mix of tallgrass prairie and arid flatlands, fields of pastured cattle, row crops, and oil wells. Driving east of Oklahoma City, however, the topography changes rapidly. An hour past the capital, open fields with gallery forests of cottonwood and oak give way to greener pastures with forests of elm, maple, locust, and redbud. Rainfall here is two to three times that of other regions in the state. Waters are abundant in bass, sunfish, bluegill, catfish and rainbow trout. Often called Oklahoma�s Green Country, it has long been the home of the state�s richest hunting and fishing grounds and its poorest farms. It is also the center of tribal life and governance for the Cherokee, Deleware, Modoc, and Choctaw nations among others.

What made the area ideal for chicken farming beginning in the 1970s, however, beyond its generally mild winters, had more to do with what it didn�t have than what it did. What it lacked were large population centers where people might object to confined animal production and flat lands suited to commodity crops like wheat, milo, and corn. It also lacked job opportunities for your people. Not incidentally, located just across the state line with Arkansas was the growing poultry empire of Don Tyson, whose ambitions for the industry were limited only by acreage and manpower in his home state. Under Tyson, and eventually under five other integrating companies, including Simmons, Peterson Farms, Cobb-Vantress, Cargill, and George�s Incorporated, the poultry flock in Oklahoma grew over three decades from mostly household production to a standing flock of 32 million, which translates to annual production of about 220 million birds. For many in the rural counties of Ottawa, Delaware, Le Flore, Craig, and Cherokee (see map), chicken houses appeared to be welcome sources of income. Senator Muegge pointed out in an interview that this promise was often illusory. Growers who signed non-negotiable contracts with integrators took on massive debts⁵ to build poultry houses to company specifications. Thereafter, making the mortgage on houses meant accepting integrators� practices without complaint for risk of losing contracts, which, on the companies� side could be severed at will. However, despite the risks, many landholders chose to become contract growers, seeing no viable alternative as commodity prices in other livestock fell over time. As one grower said in an interview, "For a lot of farmers, especially if they were around retirement age, it was the only thing they felt they could do to stay on their land. Physically, it�s easier work than a big cattle operation. There, you�ve got to be loading cattle and bailing hay, and you�re up at all hours of the night in calving season. If that�s too much, the only alternative [to not raising chickens] is moving to town, and that�s like a death sentence to a lot of farmers."

By most accounts, people and poultry coexisted in the area for a good two decades without much outcry about waste, surface waters, or contract disputes. Grumbles of sportsmen and recreationalists occasionally occurred. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, residents who as children had played in water so clear that one could count rocks on the bottom 15 feet below the surface began to realize that rivers and lakes had begun to cloud. Downstream from processing plants, such as in the Elk River Basin in the southeast corner of Missouri and northeast Oklahoma, the situation was far worse. River trips were marred more and more by foamy waters lapping at banks and fishing expeditions where the catch of the day was chicken viscera from nearby plants. Ken Midkiff, who grew up in the area and is now the national coordinator of the Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign commented of an area downstream of a processing facility, "I remember canoeing on the King�s river in the 1970s, and catching bass and chicken entrails and chicken feathers. It looked like deliverance. There was this chicken processing plant putting raw chicken parts into the river." (Author�s interview, 2001)

Despite this, however, most accepted the pollution (though few ever called it this) as the price of progress for the region, or at the very least, the price of breaking even in an increasingly impoverished rural America. Chicken houses and processing plants, as messy as they were, kept a lot of farmers on their land. In addition to providing a paycheck every eight to ten weeks, chicken manure spread as fertilizer changed the equation of pasture productivity for farmers. With the help of phosphorus-rich litter, farmers could graze two, three, sometimes five times the number of cattle on their acreage and still find it green through the winter. Where poultry growers chose not to pasture cattle, the fields were welcome sources of income from tenants.

So, as far as the nuisance factor went with the chicken complaints, rationalizations tended to outweigh concerns. Unlike the swine industry in the western part of Oklahoma, where a set of corporations had expanded their herd from about 100 thousand to 2.5 million in the space of five years in the 1990s, resulting in a massive citizen outcry, poultry production grew at a rate of about 50 percent every ten years, from about 10 million birds in 1977, to 22 million in 1987, to 31 million in 1997 (1998). In addition, although the number of poultry farms was increasing, most farms did not expand in size rapidly, as they did in swine production from herds of several hundred to tens of thousands per facility. The latest figures available, for example, indicate that the average poultry farm in Oklahoma is 3.4 houses, or about 68,000 birds--well below the standard of 100,000 set by the EPA to qualify a facility as a point-source polluter (see figure 3).

Source: Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Water Quality Division

As Ken Midkiff of the Sierra Club commented of poultry pollution, farms� effect on surface waters tends to be less immediate than that of massive swine farms or industrial dairies, where lagoons frequently leak and cause massive fish kills. By contrast, he remarked, poultry�s effect on rivers and lakes was akin to "death by 1,000 cuts" (Author�s interview, 2001). Finally, poultry�s impact on the ecosystem is not straightforward, at least to the naked eye. Although runoff does present a problem for surface waters and well water, its rich nutrients also create thick pastures that staunch erosion on soils that might otherwise be overgrazed from cattle. However, as Ed Fite, the administrator of the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commision pointed out in an interview, the lush, blue-green pastures of rye and clover covering the hillsides are indeed a symptom of phosphorus over-application. Thus, it may be that in the short run that there is some tension between the dual conservation goals of soil and water conservation in a populous area.

The idea of chickens as the farmers� mortgage maker was a powerful suppressant of public criticism, though many were aware that all was not well with the region�s surface waters. Even now, with four federal lawsuits pending, nuisance complaints flying, emergency regulations put in place by the governor, critics of the industry are careful to insist that their target is not the small farmer. "We�re not against the family operations," said one critic of the industry in Ottawa County, where citizens are facing off against a plan by the Simmons Corporation to build 90 new houses in the vicinity. "Our complaint is with the corporate operations."

Understanding why poultry went from being an accepted part of eastern Oklahoma�s economy to being quite literally, the number one focal point of public anger in the region by late last year was the reason I went to Oklahoma this last March. It�s an interesting sort of paradox--especially considering the fact that Oklahoma has become, in electoral terms, more conservative in the last decade than ever before in its history, with its Congressional delegation going from a southern Dixiecrat slate through the 1980s to an all Republican group of federal legislators by the middle of the 1990s. Led by Governor Frank Keating, a self-described pro-business conservative Republican, the state government would also not appear to be terribly likely to put pressure on corporations to change established practices to reduce pollution. As a Western state, the population has generally been hostile to meddling by the national government in such matters, certainly, and as a result have put relatively few public lands and no scenic rivers in the hands of federal managers (Fite 2002). Agriculture, like oil, was an industry that built Oklahoma, and was long considered unregulable even under Democrats. Republicans, by contrast, as champions of private property rights, would seem to be the least likely candidates for reform-minded action in the current climate. Appearances, however, are deceiving. Consider the following:

• In 1998, Oklahoma passed regulatory legislation that puts it at the forefront of pollution control in the manufacture of swine and poultry. Legislation aimed at corporate swine operations established setbacks limiting swine operations from locating next to residences, recreation sites, public water supplies, wells, and surface waters. It mandated annual inspections for large operations (and in the process, cut in half the number of animals per operation that define a facility as a CAFO, or confined animal feeding operation) and instituted a rigorous licensing and review process.
• Poultry operations, named in separate legislation the same year, were required to register poultry operations with maps detailing poultry house locations, land drainage, storage facilities and land application sites. Growers are also required under the law to take an annual course in environmental management practices.
• Legislation introduced in the current legislative session attempted to ban corporate farms altogether and direct the Department of Agriculture to set waste application rates for poultry litter.
• Litigation against the poultry industry in Oklahoma now includes: 1) a suit by the City of Tulsa against all six major integrators and the city of Decatur, Arkansas, calling for the companies cease polluting the Eucha-Spavinaw watershed and to repair the damage done to the city�s two Spavinaw Creed lakes used for municipal water; 2) a suit against OK Foods by groups in Sequoyah and Le Flore counties for emissions from processing plants in Oklahoma and over the border in Arkansas; 3) a class action suit by Waterkeeper Alliance and 10 major law firms against Tyson over waste in the Elk River, which feeds Grand Lake of the Cherokees.
• Citizens� groups have moved into high gear opposing the expansion of the poultry industry. A group called Citizens for Responsible Development, for example, has mobilized a mighty local campaign to stop further expansion of the Simmons empire in Ottawa County in the far northeast of the state. The campaign, begun in mid 2001, has had far-reaching repercussions. A campaign to stop the construction of 90 new chicken houses on the outskirts of Miami, Oklahoma, prompted the governor to enact Draconian emergency measures to prevent the construction of that number of houses. In prohibiting the siting of houses anywhere on a 100 year flood plain, within 300 feet of state of state waters, or within one-quarter mile of any residence, the new rules acted as a virtual moratorium in a fairly well-populated area of the state cut through with riparian areas.
• Not to be outdone by a Republican governor, Democrat Attorney General Drew Edmundson is preparing to sue the integrators and the state of Arkansas in order to bring nutrient loads in waters running into the state down to levels recently set by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.

Oklahoma�s problem with poultry pollution is serious and overdue for solutions. In recent statements, Oklahoma Water Resources Board indicated that phosphorus loads in the fast-running water sources feeding the Illinois and Elk River watersheds by 50 to 70 percent. In Oklahoma, nearly 100 percent of the approximate 1.1 million tons of chicken waste produced are spread on fields in eight counties. These counties--Le Flore, McCurtain, Delaware, Adair, Haskell, Ottawa, Craig, and Mayes--are also the counties that receive the highest rainfall in Oklahoma and which are home to the state�s most abundant surface waters. Running through all are streams and tributaries feeding Grand Lake, Lake Tenkiller, Lake Eucha, Lake Spavinaw, Lake Oolagah, and Broken Bow Lake. Notably, the water supply for Tulsa and many municipalities in the region which purchase service from the Tulsa Metropolitan Water Authority, comes from Spavinaw, Eucha, and Lake Oolagah. Now that three recent studies conducted by the Oklahoma Conservation Commission, Oklahoma State University, and the Oklahoma Water Resources Board have all indicated that most of the area�s lakes are imminently threatened by excess phosphorus, all eyes turned to the poultry industry. Though not the sole culprit in nutrient overloads, data indicate that poultry may be responsible for 50 percent of the phosphorus in surface waters.

In the final portion of my discussion, I wish to consider two issues: first, whether trends in Oklahoma toward rigorous regulation of the industry appear to be sui generis, and therefore unlikely to be echoed nationally, or whether, on the hand they are indicative of regulatory trends to come; and second, what implications regulation may have on the shape of poultry production in the future.

Examining the flurry of legislative, executive, legal, and citizen initiatives to curtail the expansion of the poultry industry in Oklahoma might lead one to view this case as a harbinger of regulatory efforts generally. As a "least likely" candidate for stiff environmentally-based regulation of agriculture or extractive industries, Oklahoma today would seem to suggest that more urban, more heavily Democratic states would soon follow suit with tough runoff standards and litigation against integrators. However, this may be deceptive. As I will point out, Oklahoma�s regulatory shift has partly to do with conjunctural factors somewhat unique to the area, and partly to do with trends that exist elsewhere.

If Oklahoma�s case is to serve as a more general lesson in the politics of poultry, one must examine the factors that transformed an accepted industry into a topic of considerable public concern. I will argue that industrial poultry became a problem as a result of: 1) unique conjuncture with a heated controversy over swine farming; 2) longer-standing interstate rivalry; 3) demographic and economic shifts; and 4) a growing public antipathy toward large corporations, particularly in the food sector. The first of these factors would indicate that Oklahoma�s controversy is unique and unlikely to occur elsewhere in the same manner. However, the latter factors are not particular to Oklahoma, and suggest that the poultry industry may indeed be forced to reckon with its pollution and other aspects of its production system.

Although several respondents interviewed in Oklahoma denied that the current range wars over poultry were linked to recent controversy over industrial swine farming, there is considerable evidence that the two were closely intertwined. As mentioned in an earlier section, the arrival of massive swine complexes in the western part of the state in the early 1990s drew unprecedented public scrutiny to industrial agriculture and the relative lack of safeguards or serious licensing procedures, even for complexes producing raw effluent in quantities larger than any of the human settlements around them. The story was unexpectedly newsworthy: according to Dan Parrish, now the head of water quality at the Department and a former journalist, the issue of animal agricultural pollution received more column inches in Oklahoma newspapers in the 1990s than other story besides the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

When asked why this was the case, respondents working in different capacities in the public and private sector had different answers. Several pointed out the groundbreaking work of citizens� lobbies in making the issue newsworthy. The Oklahoma Family Farm Association, formed in 1996 by rural residents overwhelmed by noxious plumes emanating from giant hog complexes, was coordinated by an extraordinarily skilled and determined set of people and was the most prominent of such groups. Particularly notable was the leadership of Suzette Hatfield, an Oklahoma City resident with family ties in one affected county in the Panhandle. As affirmed by Senator Paul Muegge and Representative M.C. Leist--respectively, the state Senate and House members who carried tough regulatory legislation through the legislature--this citizen pressure did much to change the political climate surrounding agriculture. What was most crucial about the campaign, both remembered, was that it was largely made up of growers and rural residents rather than urban environmentalists or professional lobbyists "If we hadn�t had them, nothing would have happened. The farmers themselves were out there complaining" affirmed Senator Muegge. "Suzette [Hatfield] never came to the capitol alone," remembered Representative Leist, "She always brought farmers with her to make their own case." As they both pointed out, this helped dispute the perennial argument of established farm lobbies such as the Oklahoma Farmers� Union and the Farm Bureau that regulation of agricultural pollution unduly penalized family farmers.

Having made the point effectively that a lax regulatory environment helped intensify corporate concentration in food sector and bankrupt family farmers, the campaign against corporate swine opened for a more thoroughgoing examination of agricultural pollution in other sectors. Undoubtedly hoping to avoid the sort of morass created by industrial hogs in the similarly unregulated state of North Carolina, where floods, fish kills, and pfiesteria outbreaks had plagued a pro-hog governor and legislature with the tarnish of collusion and graft, Governor Frank Keating responded to public outcry in Oklahoma by convening a public/private sector task force on animal waste. To the surprise of many, weekly polls conducted in 1997 by public relations consultants linked to the Republican Party indicated a 90 to 95 percent support for regulation of chickens and hogs. As recalled by Senator Muegge, who also saw the numbers, "It was incredible. It didn�t make any difference whether it was from southeast Oklahoma or from northeast Oklahoma or from southwest Oklahoma where they don�t have either one."

If hog waste appeared in some ways to push the question of poultry pollution, the reverse was also the case. Citing mounting evidence of threats to Tulsa�s watershed, the Tulsa World made a crusade of the issue. Having waged an historic battle with a competing paper in the 1920s to locate Tulsa�s water system in the Eucha-Spavinaw watershed and build what was at the time one of the country�s most elaborate and expensive canal systems, the editors spared no ink in covering the controversy. Governor Keating, a native of Tulsa, then had reason to back tough legislation on both poultry and swine. Whereas the stench of open lagoons, the exploding livestock numbers, and the concentrated farm ownership in the swine industry made regulating that sector immediately politically acceptable, the threats to Oklahoma�s surface waters and Tulsa�s drinking water posed by the poultry industry made regulating chicken farming equally if not more important to the governor�s political legacy. However, avoiding the specter of putting small contract operators out of business by mandating expensive improvements or more costly waste-removal procedures required putting greater pressure on integrating companies themselves. Accordingly, the governor directed members of his cabinet to work with the Attorney General in gathering data that would eventually help make the case in court that integrators rather than contract growers were liable for damage to Oklahoma�s rivers and lakes.

Public officials and the print media have been quick to point out that the biggest polluter in eastern Oklahoma is Arkansas. The second biggest is Missouri. With streams and tributaries in the greater Arkansas River Basin meandering east and west over state lines, and with Arkansas and Missouri growers raising nine times as many chickens as Oklahoma and processing perhaps twenty times that many (see figure 2), Arkansas (and to a lesser extent, Missouri) has assumed the role of easy villain in Tulsa�s drinking water controversy. Adding to Oklahomans� ire is the fact that the headquarters for the integrators are in Arkansas and Missouri, so those states are seen as literally sucking out profits and sending back the manure. The analogy is further fortified with the question of Walmart, headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, which similarly captures profits and leaves little but minimum wage paychecks and sales tax behind.

The question of whether integrators and point-source polluters associated with the poultry industry in Arkansas can be brought to heel is unclear,⁶ but certainly, the existence of villains who do not vote in state or municipal elections makes the prospect of placing blame on non-Oklahomans appealing to public officials across the board. Conversely, however, forcing out-of-state polluters to comply with regulations (new or already-existing) takes vast amounts of time, money, and legal resources. In a recent exchange of fire, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee threatened to retaliate against Oklahoma for tightening surface water phosphorus standards to a level considered unrealistic by upstream polluters in Arkansas.⁷ The current battle has its roots in an older dispute over discharges into the Illinois River Basin from a wastewater treatment plant servicing Fayetteville, Arkansas and its processing facilities. That standoff, which culminated in a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1992 (Arkansas v. Oklahoma), allowed the treatment plant to stay in operation, but determined--significantly--that states could force upstream point-source polluters to comply with state across state lines. This ruling set the stage for the establishment of strict phosphorus emissions standards by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board in early 2002. The new standards, unsurprisingly, were protested immediately by upstream authorities in Arkansas as unreachable. Criticized on one side for being too strict and on another for being too lax (the Oklahoma Water Resources Board set a ten-year time frame on compliance), the new standards, notably will keep surface water quality and poultry pollution in the public eye as standards are tested in court and in warring state legislatures.

The willingness of public officials to regulate agriculture and heavy industry in Oklahoma is undoubtedly influenced by the declining importance of those sectors in the economy. Oklahoma's economy has diversified in the past decade, becoming more like the U.S. economy. In 1999, oil and agriculture - once the backbone of Oklahoma's economy - accounted for 6.4% of the state's total economic output, much lower than the 17.5% share of the gross state product (GSP) in 1985 (OSU College of Business Administration 2000). The state is also becoming more urban, with a rapid population shift toward the eastern counties where the poultry industry is located.⁸ At the same time, Oklahoma�s difficulty in attracting the most prized of industries--the so-called "New Economy" industries that include communications, aerospace, and pharmaceuticals--also puts pressure on industrial agriculture. Insofar as problems as basic as water quality threaten one of only two major cities in the region, Oklahoma stands at a clear disadvantage in attracting the remunerative high-technology industries that are expected to generate about one-third of all new jobs in the early 2000s (Strong 2002; Warner 2002). According to J.D. Strong, Director of the Environment in the cabinet-level environmental agency reporting to Governor Keating, the fallout from the governor�s strong regulatory stand on poultry and swine was minimal. "Rural Republicans saw it as a betrayal and might have been offended," he recalled, but added that by carefully parsing the difference between family farms and corporate power, the governor maintained support among urban conservatives. Strong also noted that several of the high-technology executives the governor had courted during his tenure had emphasized the importance of pristine municipal water supplies for production processes involving microchips and chemical-sensitive manufactures.

Without state-level data, it is hard to gauge the relative importance of this factor in fomenting public antipathy toward poultry and swine corporations in Oklahoma. There is little doubt, however, that concern over water and food is at an unprecedented level nationally. If print media coverage alone can be taken as an indicator, for example, a Lexis/Nexis search on "food" and "contamination" reveals a staggering 100-fold increase in annual coverage of stories of food adulteration between the years 1980 and 2001. Reports of meat and dairy contamination occupy a significant proportion of these stories, and, as has been discussed at this conference, poultry corporations have become quite visible for their use of antibiotics in feed as well as for the prevalence of salmonella and antibiotic-resistant strains of campylobacter. In Oklahoma, meanwhile, there is some evidence that public opinion about corporate power, the environment, and their food supply is far more mercurial than is often assumed. Even among apparently pro-business, anti-regulationist electorates in an increasingly Republican Midwest and South, latent anxiety about food, contaminants, and the environment come to the fore through disputes such as are now occurring over poultry production. Several individuals in Oklahoma who had worked on poultry and swine legislation in the 1990s or on the governor�s task force on animal waste mentioned, for example, that public opinion polls asking respondents whether they felt that the government ought to favor industry over the environment or vice versa showed rapid reversals during the controversy. Prior to the public controversy, polls showed approximately 80 percent favoring industry over the environment and 20 indicating the opposite. One year into the legislative controversy in 1997, the numbers had reversed entirely, with 80 percent now favoring environment over industry.⁹

The combination of citizen mobilization, high-profile litigation, and public sector concern has placed corporations and growers on notice for the way chickens and their waste are handled in eastern Oklahoma. What precise changes in production will occur are unclear. However, insofar as a substantial and bipartisan set of actors recognize and agree on the magnitude of the threat posed to Oklahoma�s rivers and lakes, it is unlikely that the industry will muddle through with only cosmetic reforms. As one highly-placed respondent in the public sector put it, the solution to nutrient overload in Oklahoma�s eastern lakes and rivers is simple. "The growers just have to put a lot less litter on the ground or move it somewhere else," he said. "The science is clear on the phosphorus [being excessive]. Poultry isn�t the only problem in the watershed, but it�s the biggest single problem we�ve got." More easily said than done, the question remains as to what it would mean for the organization and profitability of the poultry industry for 900,000 tons of chicken manure to be moved somewhere else. In this final portion of my presentation, I wish to consider the implications of litigation and regulatory changes for various groups making claims on water resources in Oklahoma�s Ozark plateau.

While no respondent would say for the record that the goal of even the most far-reaching litigation or legislation was the ouster of the chicken industry from eastern Oklahoma, it is possible that the combination of increasingly tough regulatory standards in Oklahoma and lax standards elsewhere may prompt poultry corporations to end contracts with Oklahoma growers and set up shop elsewhere. This is not inevitable, as it has been estimated that a tax or fee of one cent per pound of poultry would enable growers and the state government to eliminate the hazards presented to surface waters by the industry�s waste. However, where profits and market share may be determined by as little as one half cent per pound, and where liabilities for past waste disposal remain, it is possible that corporations will pull out of areas where they are under fire. If poultry follows swine, for example, the next two decades may mark a shift toward overseas production. Although extreme temperatures may preclude moving poultry complexes to Canada, it is possible it might move to Mexico or central Europe, with the latter constituting an attractive option for exports to Russia. Although at present, Mexico exports only beef to the U.S. in significant quantities, the largest swine corporations are, as reported by Successful Farming magazine, "poised for massive expansion, integration, and consolidation" in that country and in Poland. Remarking in their new ventures that costs in new venues are still high, but that productivity is also high, companies may simply move poultry production abroad in the same manner as they have most other manufacturing. As one Purina executive said of the increasing political barriers to swine production in the U.S., "The environmentalists are protecting us from ourselves. ... It�s so hard to get a farm built anymore, even if you want to expand" (Freese 2001). Considering the relative lack of transparency in integrators domestic operations at present, the relocation of operations abroad would almost certainly intensify existing problems for growers and laborers in the industry, driving incomes down and accelerating production schedules.¹⁰ As is evident in other agricultural sectors where corporations sequence production over the U.S.-Mexico border, such as winter vegetables, wages for workers on the Mexican side are 80 to 90 percent lower than in U.S. factories and farms.

Although an all-or-nothing scenario of poultry production in a region grown accustomed to the industry in many ways is a very stark picture, it may be accurate if the sector itself remains highly concentrated, oriented toward dominating lowest-cost products, and characterized by extremely narrow profit margins (Bjerkle 1995). As has been highlighted by various presenters, the logic of the industry today is itself an all-or-nothing proposal. With production squarely anchored around the production capacity of state-of-the-art processing plants, any spatial dilution of production stands to disrupt the equation of integrated slaughter, factory line dissection, and store-ready production now in place. Without ready supplies of birds in a twenty to thirty mile radius, plants processing one to two million chickens per week are likely to close, and contract growers will be left with absolutely no finance, market, or alternative use for their chicken houses.

If private and public sector plaintiffs in current lawsuits prevail against the region�s six poultry corporations, integrators will be liable for the industry�s waste stream. The most dire assessments (taking into account the thousands of tons of phosphorus already in soils but which have not yet leached into waters) estimate costs to the industry at hundreds of millions of dollars.¹¹ Notably, while many people seeking reforms through litigation and regulation see such a realignment of risk as benefiting contract growers (who then would not be expected to bear the cost of cleanup), many contract growers are ambivalent or skeptical about such an arrangement. As one grower in Ottawa County pointed out, "If the integrators are made liable, they�ll probably take possession of the litter. But that will be a whole other problem, and it might make big farms even bigger because of the costs." Such an assessment would appear to be supported by a study commissioned by the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, which concluded that transporting litter out of the watershed area disputed by the city of Tulsa would range up to $26 per ton. The price paid by farmers for litter fertilizer is about $15 per ton. Thus, with net disposal costs of about $12 per ton, and uncertain markets among growers who are accustomed to bagged fertilizer, the transport, warehousing, and marketing of hundreds of thousands of tons of litter may prompt integrators to further centralize production in order to facilitate waste removal (Wimberly and Goodwin 2000).

Fiscal solutions involving a tax on the integrators, on the other hand, might well be a means by which contract growers could gain greater power vis-à-vis the poultry corporations. As pointed out by Le Flore county grower Sam Johnston, a grower-owned cooperative that enabled growers to manufacture fertilizer from litter would augment incomes and strengthen associations among growers, many of whom remain isolated from one another because of the vertical structure of contracts they maintain with the integrators. Similarly, Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission Administrator Ed Fite argued that a nominal one-cent-per-pound fee on production would enable the state to provide technical assistance to growers with substantive follow-up. Fees might help finance riparian fencing, storage for waste during winter when application is most likely to result in runoff, and incentives for growers to improve management practices.

Sitting amid field notes, interview tapes, dozens of articles and reports and press releases assembled in past weeks on Oklahoma�s ongoing poultry controversy, I felt some dismay at a certain lack of clarity that pervades my written account and presentation of the issue. As evidenced by the gathering of academics, attorneys, business representatives, growers, and reform advocates here this weekend at Yale, there is a clear sense among many observers of poultry and of food production worldwide that the tensions inherent in the expansion of production amid the concentration of ownership are leading to pivotal controversies. Such disputes over time will undoubtedly change the way food production is organized, and will alter the distribution of costs among consumers, retailers, processors, growers, and workers.

What the current politics of poultry in Oklahoma illustrate is that fairly well-established boundaries dividing urban from rural, environmentalist from farmer, or rural officials from state and federal regulatory entities may break down rapidly when a resource so vital as water is threatened. What is notable in this respect about Oklahoma�s controversy is not only its ability to make forge new alliances and cleavages, but also to revive in some form a set of anti-corporate, agrarian sentiments that were present at Oklahoma�s founding in the form of Populist mobilization. In many ways, the public examination of the industry has challenged certain ideas of freedom that compelled many to accept the problems created by poultry production as something natural or inevitable. A discourse about "the price of progress" utilized by poultry corporations and their champions in government breaks down when it becomes clear that neither citizens nor the family farm naturally prosper through a partnership with industrial agribusiness. In challenging corporations� claims that they represent the future of farming, citizens and public officials have begun to argue that industrial chicken production does not constitute farming, but instead manufacturing. Accordingly, critics are maintaining that society has overriding claims to regulate the size of farms and the nature of technologies used to produce food. Making these arguments challenges a larger orthodoxy that has up to this point dominated agriculture in regulatory, policymaking, and research circles. As this orthodoxy breaks down so too may the impediments to a more sustainable and more equitable agriculture and food system.

(2002). Stream Dispute Runs off into Silliness. The Daily Oklahoman.

Bjerkle, S., in Stull et al, eds. (1995). On the Horns of a Dilemma: The U.S. Meat and Poultry Industry. Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small-Town America. D.D. Stull, M. Broadway and D. Griffith. Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press.

Broadway, M. (1995). From City to Countryside: Recent Changes in the Structure and Location of the Meat- and Fish-Processing Industries. Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small Town America. D.D. Stull, M. Broadway and D. Griffith. Lawrence, Kansas, University of Kansas Press.

Environmental Defense Fund (1998). Pollution Scorecard, Environmental Defense Fund. 2002.

Environmental Working Group (2001). Farm Subsidy Report. Washington, DC, Environmental Working Group.

Fite, E., Administrator, Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission, (2002). Author's interview. Talequah, OK.

Freese, B. (2001). Making Moves in Mexico. Successful Farming.

OSU College of Business Administration (2000). Oklahoma Economic Outlook 2000 Forecast.

Strong, J.D., Director of Environmental Affairs, Office of the Secretary of the Environment, (2002). Author's interview. Oklahoma City.

Sun, L. and G. Escobar (1999). On Chicken's Front Line. The Washington Post. Washington, DC.

Warner, L. (2002). Key Economic/Social Trends Facing Oklahoma in the Next Decade, Oklahoma State University.

Wimberly, J. and H.L. Goodwin (2000). Alternative Poultry Litter Management in the Eucha/Spavinaw Watershed, Tulsa, OK, Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority.

1 | Kansas in fact has the nation�s lowest quality surface waters, with 100 percent of lakes listed by the EPA as impaired, and 68 percent of rivers. Environmental Working Group (2001). Farm Subsidy Report. Washington, DC. Environmental Working Group.

2 | That the term "Hispanic" is used in Oklahoma for first generation migrants, and that migrants themselves in Oklahoma self-identify frequently as "ispanos" or "hispanos" is worth noting because it indicates something subtle points about the identities migrant workers are now assuming in the rural Midwest. The term has a different meaning than in areas of the country with much longer histories of Spanish-speaking residents. In California, the term "Hispanic" is used mostly in electoral and census circles, and refers to persons of Latin American origin and/or with Spanish last names. Many are generations removed from original migrants, and large proportions speak English as a first language. In these regions, the term is also controversial. It is a racialized category that, many people point out, came into use in the Carter administration, and was imposed by non-Spanish surnamed people. In such contexts, many reject the use of the term, some still preferring a pan-Latin American identity as Latinos. Others favor identification with their countries of origin and refer to themselves as Salvaldoran, Colombian, Mexican or Mexican-American, etc. Significantly, the lack of strong self-identification as Mexicans by migrants themselves probably also indicates a very weak presence of union organizing in the area. Most organizing efforts stress the common country origin of workers and the circumstances under which people are forced to move from South to North.

3 | As a matter of company policy in some plants, migrants owe for passage over the border and bus fare from the border. If offered a job, immigrants are also forced to purchase boots, safety equipment, and butcher knives from the company at inflated prices. They are also generally billed by the company for housing in shared apartments or trailers. The combination of immigrants� debt, desperation, frequent occupational injury, disregard by local residents, and criminal gangs produces a noxious mixture. In Texas County, Oklahoma, for example, violent crime rose 378 percent after the arrival of the Seaboard corporation�s pork processing plant, according to one study (North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. 1999).

4 | Senator Muegge was named Public Official of the Year in 1998 by Governing Magazine, the premier publication reporting on state politics around the nation.

5 | A mid-sized operation of 4 houses would cost a grower no less than $600 thousand to start, and might require tens of thousands of dollars in updated equipment each year.

6 | A 1992 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on the Illinois River stated that states with adequate evidence of damages may compel polluters in neighboring states to meet water emissions standards.

7 | When the Oklahoma Water Resources Board asked Arkansas to help purify scenic streams on this side of the border, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee threatened to retaliate with a crackdown on chlorides in the Arkansas River as it leaves Oklahoma. Authorities in Oklahoma decried this threat, countering that there was no comparison between the massive, slow-flowing Arkansas river and the fast, clear-flowing streams feeding Oklahoma�s eastern lakes. (2002). Stream Dispute Runs off into Silliness. The Daily Oklahoman.

8 | According to a report by Larkin Warner, all but one of the 36 counties east of I-35 grew in the 1990s, whereas 19 of the 27 predominantly rural counties in the west declined in population. Warner, L. (2002). Key Economic/Social Trends Facing Oklahoma in the Next Decade, Oklahoma State University.

9 | There are those who might point out that by juxtaposing environment and industry in this manner that the pollsters themselves, in Heisenberg-principle fashion, perform an editorial rather than investigative feat.

10 | Interestingly, it is often assumed that overseas production of meat and vegetables presents the greatest hazard to consumers because phytosanitary standards are less strict or less well enforced by authorities, this is probably a secondary concern. Vertically integrated corporations moving production abroad have been quite successful in standardizing manufacturing in a manner that ensures a uniform product.

11 | One attorney filing suit against poultry corporations maintained that cleanup would mean digging out phosphorus-saturated soils on river banks, placing it in lined basins, and transporting it out of state. Of course, this would likely entail considerable erosion, disruption of riparian areas, and deforestation, so whether this might well constitute a greater victory for the legal community than for the environment.