BERLIN -- A group of five congressmen pledged their support yesterday for strengthening protections for chicken growers after listening to them describe financial hardship and fear at the hands of the nation's large poultry companies.

The group, led by Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican, listened for several hours to the stories of Delmarva farmers, poultry plant workers, chicken catchers and environmental activists. They donned plastic boots to wade through ankle-deep mud at the Parsonsburg farm of Arthur Holley, passing a front-end loader full of bloated chicken carcasses, as Holley explained that his contract with the Mountaire Farms poultry company sometimes doesn't pay enough to meet his $350,000 mortgage on four chicken houses.

"They tell you it's only a part-time job, but it is a 24-hour, around-the-clock job. I enjoy the work, but there are a lot of problems," he said.

Chicken growers like Holley typically contract with poultry companies such as Mountaire, Tyson Foods or Perdue Farms, to raise tens of thousands of chickens a year. But they don't own the chickens, and their farms are often heavily mortgaged.

The members of Congress also met with representatives of the powerful Delmarva poultry industry, who told them that workers and growers are treated fairly and that poultry farming was never intended to be a quick-payoff business.

Yesterday's tour, though long in the planning, followed a three-part series in The Sun that described the plight of America's 30,000 contract chicken farmers, who increasingly find themselves trapped in debt and in constant threat of having their contracts with the poultry companies canceled.

Less than two weeks ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials cited the series before a congressional subcommittee as evidence that they need more enforcement authority and money to police the industry's dealings with its farmers. The department's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration can act to stop abuses in the selling of hogs, beef and lamb, but it must ask the Department of Justice to pursue farmers' complaints against the poultry companies. That process can take years.

Gilchrest said yesterday that The Sun series and the USDA's request had convinced him that growers need more help from government, be it from the USDA or from the Department of Labor. But he said he and the other congressional visitors -- Democrats David E. Bonior of Michigan, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and John Lewis of Georgia, and Republican Amo Houghton of New York -- were just beginning their education about an industry that Gilchrest termed a "labyrinth."

"We obviously support a change in the Packers and Stockyards authority, and more money," Gilchrest said. "We hope to generate enough interest in both houses of Congress to make sure the change is substantial."

Sorely needed change

Growers like Tom Greene, an Enterprise, Ala., farmer who lost his farm to foreclosure after refusing to sign a ConAgra poultry contract that took away his right to sue the company, told the delegation that change is sorely needed.

"This is the most threatening form of concentration -- the concentration of power," he said.

After hearing the stories from poultry farmers and workers at Stevenson United Methodist Church in Berlin, Houghton said: "This has been an enormous emotional, meaningful, educational session. I hope we can play our part."

The forum was sponsored by the Faith and Politics Institute of Washington, D.C., and by the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance, a group that seeks to unite workers from every aspect of poultry production against what it sees as the industry's economic, human rights and environmental sins.

The meeting took place not far from where the chicken industry began in 1923, in Ocean View, Del. Now, the Delmarva peninsula is home to 2,600 growers, who produced more than 3 billion pounds of chicken last year.

Poultry growers increasingly find themselves under fire for that production -- with new environmental rules poised to make them responsible for manure generated by the birds they grow, even though the chickens are owned by the processing companies.

And poultry plant workers say they are under constant pressure to process the birds faster.

Maria Martinez, a line worker at Mountaire's Selbyville, Del., plant told the group that after five years of working for the poultry processor, she still makes so little money that she qualifies for food stamps and Medicare.

Tyson Foods plant worker Sharon Mitchell, who came to the meeting from Vienna, Ga., asked the members of Congress to mimic her in making a repetitive chopping motion with one hand. This, she told them, is what she does 50 times a minute in her job as a line worker, and it explains why so many of the workers develop repetitive stress injuries.

On Delmarva tour

In their tour of Holley's farm, between Salisbury and Berlin in the heart of the Delmarva chicken growing area, several of the congressmen and their staff members held scarves and handkerchiefs over their mouths as the acrid smell of ammonia rose from the floor of a house crowded with more than 20,000 nearly grown chickens.

Kaptur, who has sponsored legislation to increase the bargaining power of farmers and plans to do so again this session, asked grower David Barnes: "What's the best thing Congress can do to help?"

"Give us a different kind of contract," Barnes said. "We don't want to shut down this industry but we need cooperation."

Before visiting Holley's farm, the members of Congress met at the Ramada Inn in Salisbury with company executives, growers and officials of the Delmarva Poultry Industry, a trade group. The meeting was closed to the press.

"We have no secrets," said DPI President Kenneth Bounds. "Most of the growers are doing very well. They are the silent majority."

Tom Moyers, vice president of corporate affairs for Salisbury-based Perdue Farms, said he encouraged the members of Congress to visit the company's plants, and that he was eager to continue a dialogue. "There are two sides to every story," he said.

But the tension between the two sides throughout the day showed how hard it may be for them to come together.

DPI executive director William Satterfield tried to attend the poultry growers' forum earlier in the day -- and was turned away by the Rev. Jim Lewis, an Episcopal priest who is president of the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance in Georgetown, Del.

Satterfield said he was attending as "an environmentalist" who wanted to see "what the congressmen had to say."

"Can we come to your meeting?" Perdue grower Carole Morison asked Satterfield.

"No," he answered.

"Then you can't come to ours," Morison said, showing him the door.

Sun staff writer Dan Fesperman contributed to this article.

Pub Date: 3/16/99