Researcher says data on contaminants linked to chicken barn litter was misinterpreted

LINCOLN — The researcher whose report on contamination of eastern Nebraska streams associated with litter removed from huge chicken barns that supply poultry to Costco says his findings were misinterpreted by supporters of the barns.

Matt Sutton, a Des Moines-based geologist, said three years of research provided an indication that the manure-laced litter, applied to crop fields next to waterways, was the cause of “spikes” of contaminants such as phosphorous.

Spikes associated with poultry pathogens

The most recent spikes, his 38-page report stated, coincided with rises in pathogens associated with poultry litter, which suggested that the source of the added contaminants was litter from poultry barns built to supply chickens to Costco.

Sutton said that additional testing, including DNA tests, can pinpoint the source of contaminants and determine how widespread it might be.

“The local communities are definitely concerned,” he said. 

Most of the seven sites tested in Burt, Butler, Dodge, Seward and Washington Counties involved waterways that flow into the Platte River, a river basin where the cities of Omaha and Lincoln pump drinking water via wells.

Chicken barn supporters questioned data

Representatives of Lincoln Premium Poultry, which operates the chicken-processing plant at Fremont that supplies chickens to Costco, and a pro-agriculture group criticized Sutton’s study as missing the mark and unable to track whether the litter was being overapplied, or applied at all.

An official with the Alliance for the Future of Agriculture in Nebraska (AFAN) said the data found contaminant levels just as high upstream of where litter was spread as it was downstream, so it didn’t show a link to recent spreading of the litter/fertilizer.

Jessica Kolterman of Lincoln Premium Poultry said that farmers use precision equipment to apply the appropriate levels of the litter and that the new report acknowledged that “without knowing the quantity and frequency with which poultry litter is being applied … contaminant fluctuations cannot be meaningfully estimated.”

Sutton said that quote came from the “recommendations” portion of the report and was misread as a “result” of his studies.

Several recommendations

That recommendation was that the state should require updates of nutrient management plans of the chicken barns so that it can accurately track any changes in locations of litter deposits and the rates at which it is deposited.

The report also recommended, among several suggestions, stepped up monitoring of contaminants in streams, the use of buffer strips to prevent runoff of contaminants and a review of the level of phosphorous being deposited on fields.

The purpose of the report, which was initiated by the sustainable agriculture group GC Resolve and aided by the Nebraska Farmers Union Foundation, was to track the impact of the hundreds of chicken barns built in the past three years to supply Costco with its popular rotisserie chickens.

Lincoln Premium Poultry opened its $280-million chicken processing plant in Fremont in 2019. It is designed to slaughter up to 2 million birds a week for Costco.

While the plant was hailed by state leaders for its estimated $1.2 billion yearly economic impact, critics have worried about the potential risk to the environment due to the millions of pounds of chicken manure generated.

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