Sparboe Farms feels customer backlash

Egg producer loses large customers after video report shows inhumane conditions



Controversy raised by video shot at a Midwest-based egg company has caused a customer backlash and led several major customers to quit buying eggs from the company.

The videos, shot last summer at Sparboe Farms - the nation's fifth largest egg producer - show hens housed in cramped dirty cages with broken wires that allowed the birds to be injured and impaled. Dead hens were left to decompose in cages with live hens and workers were shown mistreating live birds.

The video was shot at Sparboe operations in Minnesota, Iowa and Colorado by a member of the animal rights group Mercy for Animals who had taken a job with the company in order to investigate the farms. The group gave the video to ABC News, which used it in broadcast reports Nov. 18.

The Chicago-based animal rights group, which advocates for vegetarianism as well as animal welfare, has conducted other undercover investigations at livestock and poultry farms.

Immediately in the wake of the video being broadcast, McDonalds and Target dropped Sparboe as a supplier. Last week, a major Wisconsin grocery chain said it would no longer sell Sparboe Farms eggs.

Woodman's Foods decided, after the video went public, that it would no longer sell Sparboe eggs at its Wisconsin and Illinois locations. Vice President Clint Woodman told Wisconsin Public Radio that Woodman's was considering dropping the company's eggs anyway so it could bring in eggs from a Wisconsin producer. This controversy helped speed that decision, he said.

"A lot of the customers have heard about the publicity and it's not positive for the Sparboe company you know, it's a shame. They supplied a lot of eggs to a lot of people," he said in a WPR interview.

McDonald's vice president for sustainability Bob Langert called the farm workers behavior on the tape, "disturbing and completely unacceptable," as the fast food giant announced it would sever its relationship with the egg producer.

Sparboe's egg production facility in Vincent, Iowa was not implicated in the video investigation but Langert said McDonalds had to assure its customers that it was committed to systems that produced eggs with hen health and welfare as well as food safety in mind. Sparboe's farm in Vincent had supplied eggs to all McDonald's restaurants west of the Mississippi River.

The Target Corporation, which markets groceries at its Super Target stores across the country, put out a news release calling the conditions shown in the video "unacceptable." Company officials notified their store managers to pull Sparboe eggs from their shelves. Lund's and Byerly's supermarkets quickly followed, dropping the company's eggs from their product line.

Sparboe Farms released a statement saying that the behavior of the employees on the video doesn't represent how company workers treat animals, adding that the four employees shown in the video mistreating chickens have been fired, along with one manager.

Sparboe is the egg production division of Sparboe Companies LLC headquartered in Litchfield, Minn. The company was started in 1954 by Bob Sparboe and is now being managed by Beth Sparboe Schnell. It serves retail, wholesale and food service customers in 26 states.

When ABC News notified her of the video investigation, Sparboe Schnell said everyone at her company was "shocked and deeply disturbed when we saw the video."

She expressed dismay and disappointment that the "wrongful acts" of a few workers would raise questions about her company's reputation, and overshadow the "good work of the vast majority of our employees who strive to do the right thing every day."

Sparboe is the only large U.S. egg producer to come out against a proposed United Egg Producer and Humane Society bill to set a federally mandated minimum level of housing conditions for laying hens. Sparboe has dropped its membership in the United Egg Producers and is not part of that association's certified animal welfare program.

The bill, which is set to be introduced in Congress soon, would move egg production facilities away from conventional battery cages to what are called "enriched colonies" as the standard of housing for laying hens.

There has not been any allegation of food safety risk from Sparboe eggs.

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) was quick to react to the video report on ABC's 20/20 program, saying it "condemns the unacceptable handling of hens and their housing," which was uncovered in the report and "applauded" the move by McDonald's to quit buying Sparboe eggs.

"Holding suppliers responsible for the care they give animals is essential to ensuring that livestock are treated humanely in production and processing facilities," said Dr. Gail Golab, director of the AVMA's Animal Welfare Division. "The AVMA applauds McDonald's for ensuring that their suppliers meet reasonable guidelines for animal welfare."

Golab said the AVMA had carefully examined the pros and cons of various housing systems - from cages to free range and has established clear policy based on that analysis. The association has conveyed that information to industry and humane organizations to ensure that animals are cared for humanely no matter which housing system is used. "That makes incidents like this all the more frustrating and heartbreaking. What we observed on today's video isn't about whether hens should be kept in cages or on pasture; it's about poor human behavior - period."

It was pointed out in a Feedstuffs magazine report that videos like this are generally edited heavily to show only the worst housing and worker behavior and thus are likely not to be honest portrayals of the environments in which the animals are raised. Still, the behavior of the workers in this video cannot be ignored.

Sparboe Farms said it was creating a task force to investigate all of the companies operations. This "sustainability task force," made up of three Sparboe employees and three outside advisors - will review all current practices in the areas of food safety, animal care and sustainability.