Blue state farmer says his 61,000 chickens were euthanized as demand for eggs during pandemic drops

[CNN Swirling Down The Toilet]

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

[BeamMeUpScotty]

They didn't work very hard to get a paycheck if all they could do was
watch the BIRDS die.

>
> 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

And why didn't they either sell the eggs to different buyers, or BUY a
commercial FREEZE drying set up and FREEZE DRY the eggs and then sell
them to nations that are starving because their Ag has fallen apart.

Or sell it as an ingredient for dog food or fish food.... the dumbest
thing I've ever heard was to kill 60,000 birds with no way to use them
and, for no reason other than you can't sell the eggs as first quality
human food to a long term contract. If you can sell the Birds to a
chicken processor then maybe... but?

I can see culling the older or the sick birds and anything that you
might were going to cull over the next 2 or three months but to just
wholesale kill 60,000 just seems lazy and stupid. Could they NOT get
chicken feed or do they NOT have a months worth of food on hand to keep
them fed?

Milk producers can sell the milk to the powdered milk producers or buy a
freeze DRYER and do it themselves as a back up and sell it for feeding
calves that are bottle fed.... or as a feed additive, possibly to
their own NON milking heifers and calves...

It's time to think out of the BOX, those that do will survive and those
that don't will be out of business.


--
That's Karma