Ag Committee plans look at poultry farm issues Wednesday

Green Country Guardians, a group concerned about poultry industry impacts, requested an interim study on the subject in June and House Agriculture and Rural Development Committee Chairman Dell Kerbs, R-Dale, accepted and sponsored the request along with Rep. Meloyde Blancett, D-Tulsa. The meeting is set for 1:30-3:30 p.m. Wednesday in State Capitol Room 206.

“We just followed the House press release on interim studies and put together a letter in June. We really didn’t know what we were doing but we put together some word spaghetti and threw it at the wall to see if it would stick,” said group founder Pam Kingfisher.

Grant Hall, a supporter of the group, said he has been invited to present information at the meeting but that he was a last-minute add-on.

Representatives of the state Department of Agriculture, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, and the Oklahoma Conservation Commission also are on the docket.

“We were concerned that we asked for the study but then there was no citizen representation,” Kingfisher said.

“I’m not there to be anti-poultry,” Hall said. “I’m there to talk from the citizen’s standpoint about what is a broken regulatory system that has been unresponsive to citizens and residents of these areas.”

Hall said the ongoing issue since the summer of 2018 has been that residents have no idea what is coming when land next to them is approved to house thousands of chickens. When people seek help they are lost in a shuffle between the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, he said.

With different departments in those agencies dealing with regulations and notifications around wells, water quality, the building of the farms and operations of the farms, it is a jumble that leaves residents lost, he said.

“Citizens just have a very hard time having any kind of input and we have a regulation system in place that is disjointed and unable to change with the times so people are left out and have no place to turn,” Hall said.

Wednesday’s meeting is part of a day with a list of meetings for the agriculture committee that begins at 9:30 a.m. with discussion of cottage industry and consumer food issues and continues into the afternoon with the poultry issue and meat inspections.

Audio and video feeds of the poultry meeting will be available on the state Legislature website at okhouse.gov/video.

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