TURNER, Maine — While one of the country’s leading egg suppliers has announced a plan to transition to “cage-free” systems, the company won’t be making changes to its facility in Maine — the same facility that was the focus of an undercover filming operation alleging animal cruelty there.
According to the announcement released earlier this month by Pennsylvania-based Hillandale Farms, the company is shifting its focus from traditional to cage-free systems in reaction to consumer demands. Construction is currently underway at Hillandale’s Ohio and Connecticut egg-production facilities on the new, cage-free housing and is expected to be complete sometime in 2017.
However, the facility in Turner, Maine, which Hillandale operates and leases from Austin “Jack” DeCoster, has no immediate plans to also convert to cage-free housing.
“Any expansion at any Hillandale facilities must be cage-free,” Hillandale spokesperson Melanie Wilt said. “But because we lease the facility [in Maine] we don’t have the full ability to make those changes there now.”
However, should any future expansion take place in Turner, it would include construction of cage-free housing for the chickens, she said.
“Consumers are asking for [eggs from] cage-free raised chickens,” Wilt said. “In response to the marketplace, Hillandale wants to supply that product, so it makes sense for us to do this.”
On Monday a company spokesperson said it has nothing to do with the video released last month by the Humane Society of the United States. For four weeks in May a whistleblower secretly videoed conditions in the 70-building Turner egg production facility.
That video, according to Paul Shapiro, HSUS vice president, showed chickens “crammed into cages, dead birds rotting in cages with live birds actually laying eggs on the dead birds, massive piles of dead chickens, birds with their heads stuck in cages dying from dehydration inches away from water, massive amounts of rodents [and] numerous other horrors.”
Since taking over operations at the facility a year ago, Hillandale has made improvements to the chickens’ cages, updated the barns on the premises and expanded employee training, Wilt said.
Both the HSUS and Hillandale called for state and federal investigations into the video’s allegations.
The state’s investigation is ongoing. On Tuesday, John Bott, director of communications with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, said his department does not comment on open investigations.
At the federal level, on July 19 the HSUS received a letter from the United States Food and Drug Administration saying the FDA had last inspected the Turner facility in 2010, when it found the company — then operated by DeCoster — failed to take steps to prevent the transfer or introduction of Salmonella enteritidis among the poultry houses and insufficient documentation of biosecurity measures and pest control.
In October 2010, according to Sheehan, the FDA received a letter from the poultry facility’s management listing its responses and corrective actions in response to the FDA’s findings.
In his most recent letter to the HSUS, Sheehan did not reference the animal rights’ groups’ most recent allegations directly, but wrote, “FDA’s enforcement of the egg rule is ongoing and a return visit to the Hillandale facility is planned.”
There was no indication when that visit may take place, and calls to Sheehan and the FDA were not returned.
Meanwhile, Shapiro this week said he is less than pleased Hillandale is not moving to cage-free in Turner.
“The Maine facility we investigated was rife with filth and animal cruelty,” he said. “The very first thing the operators should be doing is planning their conversions to a higher welfare, better food safety [and] cage-free system.”
That’s not going to happen anytime soon, according to Wilt.
“‘Cage-free’ means construction of new buildings,” she said. “The barns that are there now were built for caged birds and it would be a big undertaking to transform them into cage-free housing [and] that is not likely.”
She also stressed any move Hillandale is making to go cage-free elsewhere was in no way prompted by the HSUS video.
“Those plans were already underway,” Wilt said. “That video may have made us be a little more open about our plans [but] cage-free is the direction the whole industry is going and Hillandale is a leader in the egg industry.”
Shapiro disagrees.
“Of course I think there is a connection,” he said. “At the same time, there is a broader trend in the egg industry to go cage-free because every major egg buyer in the country — like Costco and Walmart — have announced they are only going to be buying cage-free produced eggs [and] I suspect our expose accelerated Hillandale’s announcement of their own plans.”
This is not the first time Jack DeCoster’s facilities have come under fire.
In 2010, more than 1,900 people across the country reported getting sick from Salmonella enteritidis linked to tainted eggs supplied by the Alden, Iowa, company Quality Egg, doing business as Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, an operation also managed by the DeCosters.
Austin DeCoster and his son Peter DeCoster were convicted of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce after eggs from their Iowa farms were linked to the 2010 national salmonella outbreak.
According to The Gazette online, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett sentenced the DeCosters April 13, 2015, to three months in prison. He also required the men to complete a year of probation and pay $100,000 each. Quality Egg was fined almost $6.8 million.
Earlier this month, according to The Gazette, the U.S. District Court of Appeals 8th Circuit affirmed on a 2-1 vote the three-month sentences for the DeCosters, who have each paid their fines.
On Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan said the two men are expected to file individual petitions appealing their sentences.
For his part, Shapiro remains optimistic industrywide changes and improvements are coming.
“Cage-free is a substantial improvement,” he said. “There are more improvements that can be made [and] we are making progress that begets progress.”
