The Iowa Environmental Council, the Des Moines Water Works and 18 central Iowa businesses have joined a coalition urging Tyson Foods to adopt new land-use rules for producers who supply livestock to Tyson slaughtering plants. Elise Peterson-Trujillo is a Des Moines-based organizer for Mighty Earth, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental group. “Unfortunately, the meat industry is currently driving production practices of feed grains that pollute our waterways with excess fertilizer pollutants,” she said. “Tyson Foods is the company most responsible for driving these polluting practices.” Tyson is the country’s largest meat company, producing about one out of every five pounds of meat purchased by American consumers. Susan Heathcote is the water program director for the Iowa Environmental Council. She says if Tyson required producers to plant oats or other cover crops on harvested corn and soybean fields, nitrate run-off could be reduced by as much as 40 percent.

“We really want to continue to make sure that we have a productive agricultural landscape,” Heathcote says. “It’s a big part of our economy, but we need to do that in a way that doesn’t add to the water quality problems, especially nitrate in our drinking water is a big issue in Iowa.” Heathcote spoke Wednesday morning during a news conference in Des Moines that was organized by the “Mighty Earth” group. Des Moines Water Works C-E-O Bill Stowe also spoke at the event, which was held on a Des Moines River bank. “Look out at that water,” Stowe said. “It looks more like cappuccino than it does drinking water. That’s because it has suspended solids. A lot of soils and a lot of nutrients associated with the soils are coming into our water because of land practices, but it’s also full of bacteria and the bacteria, to a large extent, is coming from livestock rearing.”

A spokeswoman for Tyson says Mighty Earth “is making misleading claims about” Tyson and overlooking “the many ways crops are used including human consumption and biofuel.” Tyson’s spokeswoman says “real change” requires a broad coalition, not just the actions of a single company, and Tyson is collaborating with a wide variety of stakeholders and groups “to promote continuous improvement.”r improving Tyson’s “environmental footprint.” Tyson has meat processing facilities in Council Bluffs, Waterloo, Storm Lake, Perry and Columbus Junction.

(Radio Iowa)