Environmental Justice and the Mississippi Poultry Farming Industry

Mississippi's growing poultry business, including industrialized farms and meatpacking plants, raises a number of concerns regarding public health and environmental justice. Using hot spot analysis, we analyzed the totality of Mississippi's industrial poultry farms and meatpacking plants to assess whether these types of facilities were disproportionately sited in communities of color and/or low socioeconomic status communities at the census tract level. We used zero-inflated regression modeling to determine the strength of the associations between environmental justice variables and the location of industrial poultry farms and meatpacking facilities at the state level. This study produced mixed results but indicated that tracts featuring industrial poultry farms had higher percentages of people in poverty than tracts determined to be coldspots or insignificant for industrial poultry farms. Higher percentages of people in poverty and without health insurance reside in census tracts featuring meatpacking facilities. Our analysis found no obvious correlation between communities of color and industrial poultry farms, demonstrating that the Mississippi poultry industry is more closely correlated with class-based inequalities than with racial/ethnic inequalities. The unequal distribution of industrial poultry production across the state of Mississippi has the potential to produce inequitable health outcomes for the state's low-wealth communities.