AS HE TRUDGED through the mud of poultry grower Arthur Holley's Parsonsburg farm last week, Rep. Wayne T. Gil-chrest symbolically crossed into new territory. He and several other members of Congress had journeyed from Washington to take a closer look at something that until recently had gone largely unnoticed -- the demotion of the chicken farmer from ruler of his roost to land-owning serf.
In doing so, Gilchrest, a Republican who represents the Eastern Shore, and the others joined a small but growing movement that hopes to change the relationship between the roughly 30,000 U.S. chicken growers and the large corporations that process and market poultry.
Escorted by activists such as Episcopal priest Jim Lewis and his Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance, the representatives also got lessons in the woes of poultry factory workers, chicken catchers and immigrant labor, and a hint of assembly line sanitary practices that are anything but finger-lickin' good.
Malone's 1996 fight is one of many that poultry growers have waged in the past eight years. Like most of the others, it wasn't successful.
As far back as the 1960s, Tyson was threatening to send company representatives to grower meetings. According to the sworn testimony of another poultry executive, Tyson said that growers who attended the meetings "would find they would have a little hard way to go."
For reasons like that, grower organizations never got off the ground before 1990, when a federal appeals court in Florida ordered Cargill Inc. to rehire Arthur Gaskins, whose contract was canceled because he headed a growers group. The next year, farmers in nine states met in Arkansas to form the National Contract Poultry Growers Association.
Four months after that meeting, a memo arrived at Tyson processing plants. "The drive to organize poultry growers is being funded and led by a network of shady characters and organizations who have a much broader agenda," wrote human resources manager Bill Jaycox.
Several companies have since forbidden growers from sharing information in their contracts - a practice federal investigators say violates growers' right to associate.
In 1994, Wayne Farms chief executive Tom Smith tried a different approach, meeting in secret with some national leaders of the growers association. Both sides felt they made headway even though they didn't always agree. Then word leaked out, and when Smith showed up for the next annual meeting of the National Broiler Council, his fellow executives let him have it.
Though the industry hasn't killed grower organizations, it usually pushes back and wins, often by threatening to leave.
In Maryland, Lewis R. Riley, a longtime politician and chicken grower from Parsonsburg, recalled that growers once asked him to sponsor a bill that would ban companies from dropping growers who had built new chicken houses for them. Riley refused. "Had Maryland passed legislation like that, we would have run the industry out of the state then," he said.
In Oklahoma, where growers have tried to pass a bill strengthening bargaining rights, a Tyson serviceman ranted to a farmer he supervised that "this new legislation is going to cause trouble." Growers complained to U.S. Department of Agriculture investigators that comments like his constituted unfair pressure, but investigators found no violations of the law.
When USDA sought comments nationally on whether to regulate how growers are paid, several companies encouraged their farmers to say no.
"Tell the USDA you don't want good producers to subsidize poor producers," said an "information sheet" that an Alabama grower for Perdue sent to USDA, writing that the company had sent it to him.
The poultry growers association similarly encouraged its members to support new regulations. In the end, the government got 3,400 letters with a range of opinions - including many letters in which growers poured out their anguish at the hands of their companies.
James R. Baker, chief of the USDA's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, said he will propose a new regulation to "add integrity" to the feed-weighing system. But there is no plan to regulate pay.
"We heard so many comments from growers that the contracts are fair," Baker said.
In Mississippi, Fordice set up a committee of players in the debate who worked out a 10-point "agreement" for how to resolve problems. After three years, some growers believe problems remain, though poultry companies and state officials say the agreement has helped relationships.
"Our business in this industry is booming," said Phillip Davis, president of a People's Bank branch in Magee, Miss., which handles many poultry loans.
"Certainly, had the bill passed, it would have hurt the climate in Mississippi."