Oklahoma AG’s Expert Witnesses Push Chicken Waste Ban Amid Federal Lawsuit

The only way to significantly reduce phosphorus levels in Oklahoma’s eastern waterways is to ban the use of chicken litter as fertilizer, a soil scientist testified last month in a nearly 20-year lawsuit against Tyson Foods and several other poultry companies.

“To help reverse the phosphorus pollution in the waters of the (Illinois River Watershed), we have to stop making the problem worse. That means we need to stop the land application of poultry waste,” wrote Gregory Scott, a scientist with the Oklahoma Conservation Commission, in testimony presented by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond to a federal court judge. “Nothing else will begin to clean up the problem until the land application of poultry waste stops.”

Decades ago, as industrial poultry production increased in eastern Oklahoma, chicken litter was increasingly used as fertilizer on area crop farms. Rain washed waste into nearby waterways, elevating phosphorus levels that depleted oxygen, turned water cloudy and strained the nearly 20 utility systems that rely on the Illinois River Watershed for drinking water.