Chicken Catastrophe -What Happens When NO ONE Can Afford To Step Up

DISASTER AFTER DISASTER

Pure Praire Poultry, Inc. filed for bankruptcy in September, as you'll recall from our previous story, which left 1.3 million chickens' fate up in the air. On October 2nd, Pure Prairie Poultry which is headquartered in Minnesota, closed operations at the Charles City processing plant and laid off all of the workers.

According to an article, plans had initially been made for Iowa's Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to take over the care, custody and control of the birds through an emergency court order.

PLANS FALL THROUGH

Unfortunately, the tentative agreement they had, which was to care for the birds until the birds reached 'market weight' for resale, fell through. The buyer had to back out because of financial concerns of their own.

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The department continued to pursue other buyers and even thought that maybe the birds could be donated to help people facing food insecurity. I don't know the reasoning behind why this didn't happen, but it didn't.

What is so incredibly unfortunate, is that it all comes down to these companies not making being able to make enough money to operate. No purchase offers came in;  because NONE OF THEM can afford it.; thus leaving the court with no other option than to put the birds down.

MASS EUTHANIZATION 

The process of euthanizing the birds began on October 17th. The article said that 'humane methods and guidelines approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association were used.'

The birds were all killed by October 25th. Farms used composting to dispose of the birds.

What a disaster. I feel terrible for the farmers who cared for these animals; the producers who can't make enough money to operate the plants. I feel like there needs to be a shift in where most of the money goes when we are talking about living animals as a food supply, and feeding our population. Will anything be learned from this disaster?