Read the full article by Matti Gellman (The Baltimore Banner)
“Judy Hearn was 4 years old when Perdue came to town.
She remembers her father, one of the poultry plant’s first employees, being forced to change his clothes on the back porch to keep the stench of chicken feed outside their Salisbury home. Frank Perdue, the soon-to-be multimillion-dollar chicken magnate who would lead the company for the next 30 years, was just another coworker. It was 1958. The business had one feeding mill.
Now, Perdue Foods is one of the largest poultry producers in the country and contributes $1.6 billion to the Maryland economy each year. At 70, Hearn has never known a world without the company. She’s grown used to the soybean dust that kicks up her allergies in the fall, the food trucks barreling down Zion Road and the tanks of grain towering over her property. She’s been proud to be a small part of Perdue’s presence.
She never imagined that one day she’d grow to fear it.”…