Food & Water Watch has launched a new legal advocacy project, Food & Water Justice.  Food & Water Justice will bring a new, complementary approach to our already very successful community organizing, policy and legislative work, seeking to more actively engage the judiciary as a vehicle for positive change. The project will begin by designing and implementing litigation and regulatory strategies for the work done by Food & Water Watch on the harms of industrial agriculture and hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Read more in our press release: Food & Water Watch Announces New Legal Advocacy Project

The Case Against Perdue

 

“Defendant Perdue argues that, as a matter of law, it cannot be a Defendant in this case because it is a poultry integrator and not required to obtain a NPDES CAFO discharge permit…Defendant Perdue’s motion that the Court dismiss it as a Defendant will be denied.”

Read more of the Perdue/Hudson case files.

One of the most important environmental cases in the United States is now playing out in federal court in Maryland. Two years ago environmentalists, represented by an attorney now with Food & Water Watch, brought a Clean Water Act case against Perdue and one of its contract poultry operations for polluting waterways that empty out into the threatened Chesapeake Bay. The case was brought for two reasons. First, to force a dirty factory farm to clean up its act and stop polluting and second, to make the poultry giant Perdue finally take legal responsibility for the mountains of waste they dump onto the backs of their contract growers and out into our polluted waterways.

Perdue fought hard to try and make sure none of the legal filings in this case would ever see the light of day — they’re used to operating in the dark and wanted to keep it that way. Last month, Perdue launched a massive campaign of misinformation to try and convince the public that they were victim of an unjust prosecution. The last thing they wanted was for the public to see the real facts of the case and the documented level of day-to-day control Perdue exerts over their contract growers. But just recently a federal judge declared the filings to be public and, for the first time, they are available for you to see. Read the case filings and see for yourself why this case was brought and why Perdue is so afraid. (For the latest filing, read the WKA Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment).

See all of the case files.

Learn More

Fact Sheet: Six Myths and Facts About Perdue’s Savefarmfamilies.org

Press Release: Consumer Group Calls Perdue PR Effort Regarding Chesapeake Bay Pollution Run-Off Lawsuit “Astroturfing”