NASHVILLE — The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) recently filed a lawsuit alleging a federal loan program intended for “family farms” is instead being used to finance industrial poultry operations.

In a press release, SELC named an operation that is “nearly completely controlled by Tyson Foods” as an example of misuse of program funding. The Henderson County, Tenn., operation features 16 poultry facilities that are 30,000 square feet and raise millions of chickens for Tyson each year.

The Henderson County facilities received over $3.5 million from the Farm Service Agency program, which supports family farms with start-up and operational costs.

“It is clear that these industrial animal operations — including the poultry facilities in Henderson County — are neither small nor family run,” said George Nolan, SELC Senior Attorney in a press release. “The Farm Service Agency’s abuse of loan programs meant to help small, family farmers is a blatant violation of federal law and of the agency’s own regulations. FSA leaders should stop using lending programs meant for family farms to subsidize massive, multi-billion-dollar corporations like Tyson Foods.”

SELC filed the suit on behalf of a local group, Concerned Citizens of West Tennessee.

 “The Farm Service Agency should be helping real family farms, not subsidizing massive corporations and rubberstamping dangerous industrial operations that can destroy our communities,” said James Lavel, member of Concerned Citizens of West Tennessee.

Through the lawsuit, the groups are hoping to relinquish the loans previously awarded to the Henderson County facilities. They also are asking the court to prevent further distribution of funding that is meant for family farms to operations acting as extensions to large corporations. To ensure this prevention, the groups want federal officials to conduct environmental reviews before granting loans and place safeguards that protect community members from negative impacts of poultry operations.

Tyson Foods officials did not provide a comment to MEAT+POULTRY at the time of publication.