Picture a community waking up one morning and discovering a rash of crimes having taken place overnight. People hear that houses have been broken into, men and women across the entire town have been assaulted, numerous fires have been set, property all over the community has been vandalized. Dozens of crimes have been committed while the people of the community have been sleeping.

What at first appears to be many random and individual crimes, upon closer examination, turns out to be a crime wave committed by one person. All the damage, in other words, has been done by one lone culprit. Instead of looking for an army of criminals, the community now realizes that it must organize itself to track down the lone offender so that justice can be served.

That's what the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance is all about – community citizens and organizations coming together to track down the lone culprit. The lone culprit in this case is the poultry industry.

The Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance was started four years ago to bring together all the people who are in any way connected to a piece of chicken; we like to say, anybody with a fingerprint on a piece of chicken. We came from all over the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia), that part of the Eastern Shore where poultry processing was invented by Frank Perdue.

The modern industrial model of food production, being like an assembly line, depends on lots of people working to bring food to the table. Not only that, those who work to bring us the food we eat are separated from one another, kept that way by food producers who do not want the various parties along the production line getting to know one another, talk with one another or organize together for change.

What we know is that the production line that brings chicken to our plates comes to the consumer as the result of a large workforce that is taken advantage of by the poultry companies.

The Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance decided to bring together as many parties as we possibly could who are connected along that production and consumption line. Gathered around the table are hatchery workers, poultry growers, chicken catchers, process plant workers, union organizers, consumers, community people and organizations concerned about the environment, folks from the religious community, animal rights people, and just about anyone who is concerned about the production, distribution and consumption of chicken.

We are black, Latino and white. We come from as far away as Guatemala and Mexico (process plant workers). We bring with us different cultural backgrounds. When we hear one another's stories, we realize that the problems that exist all along the chicken production line are the result of one common culprit -- the poultry industry.

We know now that the grower who contracts with the companies, the chicken catchers who are sub-contracted out by the companies, and the process plant workers who work without a contract (if they are non-union) are all victimized by a vertically integrated system which is abusive and unjust to all parties concerned.

We know also that the industry is polluting the streams, exposing workers and growers to hazardous chemicals and substances added to the feed, jeopardizing the health of the consumers by pumping the birds full of antibiotics, and ruthlessly manipulating and destroying the very animals being bred to feed us.

We know that the poultry companies control the scales, the wages, the work atmosphere and the work conditions of all who work for them.

Most of all we have discovered that we must organize together in order to bring change to this industry. The injustices surrounding the poultry industry are not random acts of violence, they are systematic acts perpetrated out of the greed of a runaway industry.

The Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance is using all of the tools at our disposal. We are taking the poultry companies to court over wage and hour violations; we are organizing around grower legislation both nationally and locally which address the contract issues at stake; we are using governmental regulations to bring an end to the environmental problems rampant in the poultry industry; we are joining forces with consumer groups across the country to address the health issues swirling around chicken; we are helping folks in other chicken producing parts of the country as they form poultry justice alliances.

What the poultry industry is doing (and we could add hogs and other agricultural commodities to that as well) is a dirty shame, and things will only change as we organize across the lines that divide us, educate the public about the culprit lose in the agricultural community, and demand from "big chicken" what is just and right.

Reverend Jim Lewis is an Episcopal minister who works for the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware. He is the chair of the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance. His work and the work of the Alliance was featured last year on 60 Minutes.

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