(Beth Clifton collage)
Hurricane Helene poultry deaths were due to disaster. Pure Prairie Poultry just didn’t pay bills.
NORFOLK, Virginia––People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] twice warned the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety & Inspection Service that the heavily federally subsidized Pure Prairie Poultry company was inhumanely starving chickens in the month before Pure Prairie Poultry collapsed, leaving as many as 1.6 million chickens without feed and dozens of farmers on the verge of bankruptcy.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Feds held the bag
Pure Prairie Poultry, headquartered in Fairfax, Minnesota, in November 2022 received a $38.7 million USDA loan guarantee and a $6.9 million grant.
“The money was used to reopen a previously closed broiler chicken processing facility in Charles City, Iowa,” reported Chris Clayton, agricultural policy editor for DTN Progressive Farmer.
Pure Prairie Poultry on September 20, 2024 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Minnesota, reporting debts of between $100 million and $500 million owed to more than 900 creditors, against assets of $50 million to $100 million.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Allegedly did not feed birds for days before slaughter
The filing appears to have taken the USDA, banks, state farm agencies, and farmers contracted to supply birds to Pure Prairie Poultry almost entirely by surprise.
On September 16, 2024, however, PETA public relations coordinator Nicole Perreira disclosed that PETA “received two calls last week from whistleblowers at the Charles City chicken processing plant who allege that workers have confined chickens for multiple days—without any food or water—before killing them.
“They also claim caged birds were left to bake in the hot sun on trucks and workers haven’t stunned chickens before killing them. PETA says that means “the birds are conscious and able to feel pain when their throats are slit.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Claimed to “make animal welfare a priority”
Perreira said PETA contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety & Inspection Service district office in Des Moines about the situation on September 10, 2024, but was reassured “that FSIS was aware of the issues and leadership was meeting with the company’s management.”
Claiming to “continue to make animal welfare a priority,” and making no mention of the cash flow crisis that came to public light just nine days later, Pure Prairie Poultry responded to a direct complaint from PETA that, “While it is our intention to process chickens the same day they arrive at the plant, in recent weeks, due to unforeseen downtime (including from area power outages), this was not always possible.”
(Beth Clifton photo)
“No longer providing food”
Updated PETA spokesperson Sara Groves on October 11, 2024, “PETA received an account from whistleblowers with ties to the floundering company Pure Prairie Poultry on October 8, 2024, reporting that chickens in Wisconsin sheds have gone unfed for more than a week—and had resorted to cannibalism,” with “neither food nor relief from their suffering in sight.
“Pure Prairie Poultry is no longer providing food and apparently refusing to respond to inquiries about when the birds will be picked up,” Groves said.
“PETA is urging the thus-far silent Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade & Consumer Protection to intervene finally to spare the birds from impending starvation,” Groves added, “as the Departments of Agriculture in Iowa and Minnesota started doing last week following PETA’s pleas to them.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Chickens killed at Fountain City
“The whistleblowers also detailed to PETA,” Groves said, “that a truck filled with chickens recently entered a rural property outside Fountain City and returned empty, leading the source to suspect that the birds may have been cruelly killed. PETA alerted Buffalo County Sheriff Mike Osmond to the assertion, and he responded to us today that he had visited the site and confirmed that birds were being killed there.”
Also on October 8, 2024, the same day that PETA received the whistleblower complaints, Des Moines Register business writer Donnelle Eller reported, “After receiving an emergency court order, the Iowa Department of Agriculture has taken over the care of 1.3 million chickens owned by Pure Prairie Poultry.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Out of feed or close to it”
“Pure Prairie Poultry notified Iowa agriculture officials on September 30, 2024 that it could no longer buy feed for chickens on 14 farms, mostly in northwest Iowa’s Sioux County,” Eller said. “Under contract with Pure Prairie Poultry, the farmers feed, house and care for the chickens destined for the company’s processing plant in Charles City.
“In an October 2, 2024 affidavit,” Eller added, state veterinarian Jeff Kaisand said he or other state ag officials visited all contract chicken operators and found they were either out of feed or close to it. He also contacted local feed mills and found they hadn’t been paid and couldn’t provide additional feed to the operations.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Minnesota “moved to euthanize”
Wrote Chris Clayton for DTN Progressive Farmer, “The Minnesota Department of Agriculture reported there are five farms in the state,” also left without feed, housing “approximately 300,000 chickens.
“Minnesota also fed the chickens,” confirmed Clayton, “but with no facility to process the birds, the department moved to euthanize the flocks.”
In Wisconsin, reported Jeremy Landgrebe for WQOW television of Eau Claire three days later, “The lives of hundreds of thousands of chickens are in limbo,” with unpaid bills for chicken feed running as high as $20,000 a week.
(Pure Prairie Poultry logo)
Pure Prairie asked Wisconsin to buy feed
“On September 30,” Landgrebe said, Pure Prairie Poultry chief financial officer George Peichel “contacted the Department of Agriculture, Trade, & Consumer Protection about the situation, asking if Wisconsin has any programs to pay for feed for the birds since the company lacks the resources to do so.
But the department responded that it “does not have statutory authority to assume control of the birds in a situation unrelated to animal disease response, nor any funding resources to provide feed or other resources to the flocks,” Landgrebe summarized.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Wisconsin said, “Bump ’em off”
Instead, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, & Consumer Protection “asked Pure Prairie Poultry to consider humanely euthanizing birds who do not have food or are unable to be processed in order to alleviate animal suffering.”
An appeal from the Wisconsin Farm Bureau received the same response, reported Steven Walker for WLAX/WSEUX in Eau Claire on October 14, 2024.
“We’re here holding the bag with some 60,000 birds in our barn,” chicken farmer Terry Filla told Walker.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“The sky is falling!”
“The sky is falling!” Chicken Little cried as a deluge began, a more than understandable mistake in context.
The full magnitude of the disasters befalling the 25 million chickens slaughtered per day in the U.S. are far beyond any one little chicken’s comprehension, even without both economic and natural disasters to make matters worse.
Even as the Pure Prairie Poultry debacle unfolded in the upper Midwest, the Environmental Working Group on October 10, 2024 published an assessment of the impact of Hurricane Helene on the poultry industry in North Carolina.
(Beth Clifton collage)
21.6 million birds hit by Helene
“Precipitation from Hurricane Helene, hitting the Carolinas two weeks earlier, “inundated 1,021 poultry barns in western North Carolina that house almost 21.6 million birds,” the Environmental Working Group assessment began.
But the Environmental Working Group was not concerned about Chicken Little, the suffering of any one individual chicken, or even the suffering of all the 21.6 million chickens hit by more than 20 inches of rain between September 26 and 28, 2024, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.
Neither was the Environmental Working Group visibly worried about the suffering of all 357 million poultry remaining on North Carolina farms.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Enviros most concerned about chickenshit
Rather, the Environmental Working Group fretted, “The torrent increases the risk of poultry manure contaminating private drinking water wells” in the 23-county area hit by Hurricane Helene.
Of those 23 counties, the Environmental Working Group said, “as of 2022, Wilkes County had the most poultry – almost 15.2 million birds, producing an estimated 121,000 tons of manure. During Hurricane Helene, parts of the county received as much as 14 inches of rain in three days.”
Merritt & Beth Clifton with Henry the rooster.
Translation: chickenshit is of concern, but not the chickens who make it, or would make it if fed.
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