Letter from Scott Sechler:
In my opinion, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is about to support their second biggest mistake in just a few years — the Perdue Hexane Extraction Soybean Processing Plant in Lancaster County. The first was the Ethanol plant in Clearfield County that went bankrupt.
Hexane extraction soybean processing was studied and turned down in Pennsylvania several times over the last 40 years. This old short cut is dangerous technology for producing soybean meal and consumer groups agree this meal should not be consumed by humans or animals, any more than the “junk” called DDGS which is the by-product of the Ethanol industry. Hexane is a chemical by-product of the oil industry that is explosive, smells like model airplane glue and is very dangerous, in fact it is considered a Hazardous Air Pollutant by the EPA. In my opinion, products derived from Hexane extraction or Ethanol by-product should be considered inhumane for humans or animals to consume.
Over 25 years ago, I realized what Hexane extraction soybean meal was and I quit using this junk in our Bell & Evans chicken diets as soon as possible. We have a fast growing soybean processing industry in PA using extruders and presses without chemicals. This industry produces both great quality consumer and great quality animal grade products.
At Bell & Evans we produce over 50,000,000 happy, healthy chickens each year using over 60,000 tons of extruded and expeller pressed soybean meal. There are more than a dozen extruding processing plants in PA who are happy to buy your soybeans and these plants were not built with state money.
Can you imagine an out-of-state company, like Perdue, trying to buy up all of the PA crops of soybeans and asking farmers to abandon organic crops, corn, wheat, vegetables and other food crops to plant more soybeans? What about the rest of us in PA? We already have a soybean shortage in PA.
Let’s rethink this deal and do the right thing for all of us, including the animals and the environment.
Please contact your local Representative, Senator, DEP, EPA or the Governor directly and let them know that you do not support this dangerous project.