'We're tired of chicken; can we have some beans and 'taters?'

'We're tired of chicken; can we have some beans and 'taters?'

One of our last front page stories about the "chicken house" controversy had the headline 'There are chicken houses, and their are chicken houses.'

To explain the obvious, what we meant was that the quality and maintenance, the odor or cleanliness of a chicken operation depends on the quality and diligence of the operators.

There have been "chicken houses" in Macon County since 1998. The complaints we've heard about dead chickens in ditches, foul, fowl air, declining property values etcetra, have generally come from the west side of our county.

But there is another entrepreneur who entered the broiler chicken raising business in Macon County in 1998, and his farm is in the central, eastern part of our county. We have heard no complaints about this operation, know that the farmer lives near the large chicken houses himself, and also know a number of people in his neighborhood. They have no complaints.

The idea that if Cobb-Vantress locates a hatchery in the Lafayette industrial park, and convinces farmers to invest $750,000 to $1-million in pullet and hen operations to produce birds that will provide the eggs for the hatchery (a possible $14-million investment in our community)--the idea that this will open-up the county to a virtual takeover by Tyson Foods, well that is a stretcher.

If individual farmers who own 40 acres that are not in profitable production want to invest as much as a million dollars into a pullet-raising operation, then we agree with the free enterprise Republicans: it is their own durn business!

The old, odd notion of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard!) has taken over this "chicken business." Most people eat chickens; most people eat eggs. Few people keep hens and a rooster in their backyard these days.

Where do all the people opposed to a hatchery, and pullet and hen production facilities locating in our county get the raw material for their own chicken strips or scrambled eggs?

We seriously doubt that all these people are vegans.