EINNEWS, November 18—The nation’s largest egg producer and distributor is operating a facility that is both cruel to the chickens and unsafe for humans, according to an undercover video released by the Humane Society of the United States.
The five-minute video was produced after a Humane Society’s investigator gained access to the facility in Waelder, Texas, operated by Cal-Maine Foods, a Mississippi company. The Texas facility includes 18 barns with more than 180,000 cages and 1,000,000 million hens.
Cal-Maine recently was ordered to recall of 1.7 million eggs after the Food and Drug Administration notified the company of positive tests for Salmonella Enteritidis, the form of the Salmonella bacteria that sickens humans, at an Ohio company that supplies eggs to Cal-Maine.
A massive salmonella outbreak over the summer connected to other large-scale producers’ operations, resulted in the recall of over a half-billion eggs.
The Food and Drug Administration found “significant deficiencies” at the Iowa farms implicated in the massive recall. Agency inspectors found the presence of large piles of manure, fly and rodent infestations, and cited significant problems in the producers efforts to mitigate cross-contamination.
For more food safety news, visit Food Safety News Today (http://foodsafety.einnews.com), a food safety media monitoring service from EIN News.
