Machipongo, VA - United Poultry Concerns President Karen Davis, PhD, will be a panelist at the Sierra Club's upcoming 3rd Annual Old MacDonald Conference, October 25-26, at the Kentucky State University Farm in Frankfort. This conference addresses issues of sustainable agriculture, animal and environmental welfare problems linked to industrial agriculture, public health problems, environmental justice issues, and the role of consumers.

Karen Davis will speak on the Saturday afternoon, October 26, panel, "Caring for Animals, Caring for the Environment." Her talk, "Awash in Misery and Manure," will focus on the link between the suffering and sickness of birds in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and the environmental destructiveness of these operations.

Each year, millions of chickens, turkeys, and ducks suffer and die from excretory ammonia fumes, heat suffocation, drug reactions, crowding, stress and diseases. The bloated, decomposing bodies and skeletal remains of these birds are stuffed in trashcans, buried, burned, dropped down feed shoots, and dumped in unlined pits that become cesspools of bacteria seeping into groundwater and local streams.

According to poultry researcher Donald Bell, "a one-million hen complex produces 125 tons of wet manure a day."

To supplement her talk, Karen Davis will hand out UPC's documented Fact Sheets, "Intensive Poultry Production: Fouling The Environment" and "Chicken For Dinner: It's Enough to Make You Sick."

United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. For more information visit www.UPC-online.org