A case pitting the Chesapeake Bay Waterkeeper’s Alliance against an Eastern Shore chicken farm and Perdue Farms is slated to begin today in a Baltimore federal courtroom. The The Waterkeeper Alliance filed a suit three years ago against farmers Alan Kristin Hudson and Perdue Farms, for whom the Hudsons raised chickens, accusing them of polluting a stream that ultimately flows to the Chesapeake Bay, reports the Baltimore Sun.
The legal struggle is being tracked by environmentalists, farmers and the poultry industry, as the Waterkeeper group tries to hold a poultry company legally responsible for the first time for pollution caused by one of its contract growers.