Fighting to Protect Residents From an Industrial Animal Agriculture Giant’s Wasteful Water Use
Cristina Stella, Managing Attorney, Animal Legal Defense Fund
In rural Livingston, California, the community’s predominantly Latino and disproportionately low-income population has been made to take a backseat to its biggest business, Foster Farms.
While residents face water shortages that adversely impact their quality of life, Foster Farms’ Livingston chicken slaughterhouse and processing plant use vast amounts of water for a particularly wasteful and inhumane method of slaughter that also results in diminished water quality in the region.
The Impact Fund is standing up for Livingston residents by providing critical funding to the Animal Legal Defense Fund in support of its groundbreaking lawsuit challenging Foster Farms’ excessive water use. The lawsuit seeks to enjoin the company from using its current water-wasting slaughter method, based on a provision in the California Constitution that states that the right to water “shall not extend to the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use.”
In December, the court rejected Foster Farms’ request for dismissal, allowing the case to proceed.
In Merced County, where Livingston is located, 60 percent of residents identify as “Hispanic,” and the percentage of residents living at or below the poverty line is 50 percent higher than the national rate. The region is prone to prolonged drought, and the lawsuit seeks to provide environmental justice for vulnerable community members by protecting their access to clean, drinkable water.
Situated in California’s Central Valley, Livingston depends on groundwater from the critically overdrafted Merced Subbasin to supply its municipal water system. Foster Farms is not only Livingston’s largest employer, but also far and away its biggest water consumer — using as much as four million gallons of drinkable water per day in the process of slaughtering and processing chickens for human consumption. It then returns a lesser amount of wastewater, now in a polluted and undrinkable form, to the subbasin. All told, Foster Farms accounts for more than 60 percent of Livingston’s total water use — while many municipalities in the area are rationing water, wells are running dry, and trees are dying at an alarming rate.
It’s not the only way in which Foster Farms has disregarded the needs of community members. Notably, the company’s inadequate response to the COVID-19 crisis has led to multiple outbreaks at its Livingston facility, resulting in more than 400 cases among workers — nine of whom have died to date. And workers who have been exposed to COVID-19 do not live in a vacuum: They can and do unintentionally expose family members and neighbors when they return home from an unsafe workplace.
Foster Farms’ Livingston chicken plant employs a “live-hang” method of slaughter that includes a process called “electric immobilization.” In this method, workers must shackle and hang each individual chicken by the legs while the bird is still conscious, after which the birds are run through a pool of electrified water. The process is highly distressing to the chickens — who often struggle, defecate, and vomit, including on the workers — and exposes employees to a chaotic, hazardous work environment. Meat-industry workers are disproportionately likely to be members of Black, Indigenous, or communities of color, immigrants, or refugees, and may have fewer employment options than other workers.
A suggested alternate method of slaughter, known as “controlled atmosphere killing,” does not require workers to handle birds while they’re still conscious and is less labor-intensive, allowing workers to more easily maintain proper social distancing. Switching to this method would minimize danger to workers, reduce stress to the birds, and use vastly less water.
Already, the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s lawsuit has passed an important hurdle: In December, the court rejected Foster Farms’ request for dismissal, allowing the case to proceed. It now has the potential to make a real, tangible difference in the lives of vulnerable Livingston residents and Foster Farms workers, as well as the often-abused birds for whom few protections exist under the law.