In 2010, I introduced legislation to prohibit poultry companies from adding arsenic-based compounds to their poultry feed. Not only does this practice hurt Marylanders, and especially children, but much of it also leaks into the Bay, further destroying its fragile ecosystem.

In 2011, I reintroduced this legislation, HB 754, with Senator Paul Pinsky. Together with Food & Water Watch, the Chesapeake Bay Fund, the Maryland NAACP, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future, the Maryland Sierra Club, the Maryland Nurses Association, Environment Maryland, Baltimore’s Woodberry Kitchen, and others, we held two strong hearings speaking to the numerous, lethal consequences of the estimated 15 metric tons of arsenic introduced into our environment from harmful feed additives. The bill was assigned to be studied in the interim, and I am sure that the study results will help convince my colleagues of the important health effects to be gained from banning these compounds.

Please watch my testimony to the Environmental Matters Committee below, and contact my office if you can help us this spring and summer to pass this critical consumer safety legislation.