XPost: rec.sport.football.college, mn.politics

A Minnesota contract egg farmer said 61,000 of his chickens were
euthanized amid falling demand for eggs.

Closures of schools, restaurants and caterers has trickled down
to farming, affecting egg producers as well as demand for milk
and ripe lettuce. Kerry Mergen, who works near Albany Minn.,
told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Daybreak Foods, which
owned and paid to feed the chickens, made the decision after a
fluid egg plant in Big Lake temporarily shut down last week and
laid off 300 workers.

Mergen told the Star-Tribune a crew of about 15 workers arrived
in the early hours of April 9 with carbon dioxide to euthanize
the birds.

"They come in with carts, put them all in carts, wheel them up
to the end, put a hose in that cart and gas them, then dump them
over the edge into a conveyor and convey them up into semis and
the semis haul them out," he said.

"I was in there for quite a while and the longer I was there the
more disgusted and disappointed I was knowing that I'm not going
to see anything put back in my checkbook again, so after a while
I just simply left,” he added.

"It is important to note that food-service orders have not
stopped, but with the decline in food-service orders, Cargill
and its egg suppliers are working diligently to rebalance supply
to match these consumer and customer shifts," Cargill said in a
statement, according to the newspaper.

Mergen said four other egg farms saw chickens euthanized in the
state in recent weeks, saying the other four were larger than
his. An official at the state Board of Animal Health told the
newspaper livestock producers are not required to report
euthanizing animals in large numbers.

Mergen’s wife Barb, a food service worker in St. Cloud, said the
income represented by the chickens would hurt more than the
killings.

"Don't sugarcoat it. It is what it is," she told the Star-
Tribune. "It's painless for the birds. I don't have a thing
against that, but it's just that someone can come in so quickly
and when they euthanized the birds, that was our paycheck
euthanized."

The Hill has reached out to Daybreak for comment.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/494027-farmer- says-his-61000-chickens-were-euthanized-as-demand-for
 

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