From the Iowa salmonella outbreak that triggered the recall of 500 million eggs, a stomach-turning picture emerged: of heaps of manure overrun with maggots, dead vermin littered about, and obvious disregard for the health consequences of the filthy conditions.
But there are egg farms and there are egg farms, as a New York Times profile of an Indiana producer points out.
At the Hi-Grade Egg Farm in North Manchester, visitors must wear coveralls to keep out outside pathogens. Workers closely track the number of rodents captured in mousetraps to be on the lookout for a rise in numbers. Hens come only from hatcheries that certify chicks as salmonella-free, and are vaccinated against the bacteria while young.
But the jewel of the system is manure control. The droppings are carried along a network of conveyor belts with powerful fans blowing across. As The Times reports:
The excrement takes three days to travel more than a mile back and forth, and when it is finally deposited on a gray, 20-foot-high mountain of manure, it has been thoroughly dried out, making it of little interest to the flies and rodents that can spread diseases like salmonella poisoning.
Robert Krouse, the president of the company that owns Hi-Grade, says that times have changed, and the industry must change with them.
“Thirty years ago, farms had flies and farms had mice, everything was exposed to everything else,” he said. “They just all happily lived together. You can’t work that way anymore.”
