Posted: November 18th, 2010 - 1:02pm
Source: ABC

A new undercover video investigation by a national animal welfare group claims to show disturbing conditions at a Texas farm operated by the country's largest egg producer and distributor.
The Humane Society of the United States says that one of their investigators documented a range of filthy, unsanitary conditions while working at a Cal-Maine Foods operation in Texas over a five-week period this fall. A five-minute video produced by the group shows hens confined in overcrowded cages with rotting corpses, dead and injured birds trapped in cages, eggs covered in feces, and escaped hens floating in manure pits.
The images are a stark contrast to the clean white birds and eggs featured in the video on the Cal-Maine corporate website.
"A lot of these conditions seem to be pretty uniform throughout the industry," said Paul Shapiro, the director of the Humane Society's Factory Farm program. "It's not a matter of just a few rotten eggs."
Battery cage systems allow for large-scale egg operators to house tens of thousands of hens in one barn. The Cal-Maine facility in Waelder, Texas includes 18 barns with more than 180,000 cages and 1,000,000 million hens, according to the Humane Society.
The release of the Humane Society video comes on the heels of Cal-Maine's recent recalls of 1.7 million eggs after the Food and Drug Administration notified the company of positive tests for Salmonella Enteritidis, the form of the Salmonella bacteria that sickens humans, at an Ohio company that supplies eggs to Cal-Maine.
In a statement, Cal-Maine Foods said, "All of the company's facilities are operated in full compliance with existing environmental, health and safety laws and regulations and permits." In addition, the company stated that "all of [its] eggs are produced in accordance with United Egg Producers (UEP) animal care guidelines."