One note about raising chickens prior to their arrival at a processing plant' Chicken feed often con

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Fowler Foods
Throughout the South and Eastern Shore of the
U.S., in California and Canada, 60,000 of us work
in poultry plants, cleaning, cutting up,
de-boning and packaging chicken and turkey meat
for millions of consumers here and abroad. We
make everything from Thanksgiving turkeys to
whole fryer chickens to chicken filet sandwiches.
Cooked and marinated chicken products are also
produce to help save time for busy supermarket
shoppers. Like the meat packing and food
processing industries workers face some very
dangerous working conditions in poultry plants.
Through the union, they are working to improve
job quality by rotating job assignments and
learning safer methods of cutting to avoid
repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel
syndrome.
One note about raising chickens prior to their
arrival at a processing plant. Chicken feed
often contains arsenic in organic compounds, but
more toxic, inorganic forms may accumulate in the
animals' meat. Inorganic arsenic is a
carcinogen organic formscompounds containing
carbon and arsenicare less toxic and combat
animal diseases and accelerate growth. Therefore,
organic arsenic is an approved ingredient in
roxarsone, a feed additive used in poultry and
swine. About 70 percent of chickens grown for
meat receive roxarsone. They excrete most of the
arsenic but retain some in their tissues,
particularly the liver, in both organic and
inorganic forms. The excrement is decayed and
processed into fertilizer. The arsenic can
therefore be transferred on to croplands and the
crops themselves. The local chicken waste is
being used by the Ludlow Brothers Family Farm.