A week after losing a legal round in the U.S. Supreme Court, poultry industry officials met with lawmakers and treated them to a lunch of chicken, beef and pork products as they spread the message that Oklahoma's lawsuit jeopardizes the future of their industry.

"My biggest concern is that the industry is going to be run out of northeast Oklahoma," said Bev Saunders, a Delaware County poultry grower who produces between 500,000 and 600,000 broilers a year in five poultry houses near Colcord for Arkansas-based Peterson Farms.

"We have a lot at stake here, a huge amount at stake," Saunders said. "We are small family farmers and we're just trying to feed the world. It's important that we survive. We do not want to rely on foreign markets for our food as we do with energy."

Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who sued Arkansas-based poultry growers in federal court in June, characterized the concerns as "bull litter" and said the industry has made no overtures to him about resuming failed negotiations to reach an out-of-court solution.

"If they were serious about mediating a solution they'd be talking to me and not the press," Edmondson said. "I would welcome such a request. It will have to come to me directly and not through a PR (public relations) campaign."

Edmondson filed the lawsuit in Tulsa following 3 1/2 years of negotiations over allegations that the poultry industry was legally responsible for polluting the Illinois River watershed.

The lawsuit alleges state and federal laws are being violated by improper disposal of chicken litter containing dangerous metals, bacteria and high levels of nutrients.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state of Arkansas' attempt to sue Oklahoma over the dispute. Arkansas officials said the federal lawsuit would hurt the state's $2 billion poultry industry.

Janet Wilkerson, vice president of human resources for Peterson Farms, said neither Peterson nor other poultry producers have broken state law in the application of chicken litter as fertilizer on pastures and fields.

The lawsuit alleges that high phosphorous levels in the waste cause excessive algae growth and can eventually cause high levels of cancer-causing chemicals in drinking water.

Wilkerson said Peterson and other producers are eager to end the lawsuit and find a solution, including trucking the waste out of the watershed to nutrient depleted areas of western Oklahoma and other states.

"If the law's not right then we need to change them. But it should not be changed in a courtroom," Wilkerson said. "The only people that win would be the attorneys. We would much better be spending that money on solutions."

She said complying with a federal court order to clean up pollution caused by chicken litter "would be very difficult on our little company" and could cost millions of dollars.

"We would much rather be focusing on solutions," she said.