Egg recall - there's gold in them thar hen houses!

[Javamama]

Was your sister dropped on the head as a baby?

That's what I'm thinking. She has this law degree though...OK, I'm not going any farther

 

[me&thegals]

My husband had salmonella infection as a 2 year old in the early 70s, but maybe this particular strain is different. In fact, it probably is.

Bee--I'm not about to stop selling my eggs. We love our eggs, we trust our system, and we believe them to be healthy and know them to be more nutrient dense than factory eggs.

Again, I'm just making this point about proof because there's a lot of talk on this thread that we are all safe and know ours to be infection free, but how do you know this?

I think it's dishonest to tell people that one's eggs are safe unless you absolutely know they are disease free. I don't know enough about salmonella (I need to read some of these links) to know how common it is in backyard flocks. I know we all feel proud about the way we live lifen and convicted that it is a better way, but when sales are involved I would be super duper careful on what you actually state. Let customers do their own research and simply tell them how the hens live, in my opinion.

Oddly enough, my Google searches stated that hens don't show signs of salmonella infection. I didn't spend much time searching, though, but I couldn't find anything showing how a flock manager would be able to tell...

 

[Beekissed]

From everything I've read Salmonella, like E.coli and Shigella and many other nasties that inhabit our's and animal's bowels~ these pathogens are only a danger when they are able to thrive in larger colonies.

When we do a labs in the medical world on people's tissues and fluids for determining the presence of bacteria, we go by how much colonization is present. Say, 100,000 colonies of pseudomonas is significant and will be treated. Ten thousand, on the other hand, is not something we would treat unless someone is immunocompromised.

This may give you an idea about how many potential bacteria are present in our bodies at any given time that are and can become serious and even fatal. We~and our animals~spend a lifetime being exposed to and developing antibodies to all these myriad pathogens.

A healthy, thriving immune system has already developed antibodies to environmental invaders of all kinds if we have been exposed properly.

If you have a bird that is heavily colonized with salmonella to the point that it is systemic~which is the only way it can be inside the egg~this is a bird that has a compromised immune system.

How does a bird that has spent its entire life in a biosecurity enforced environment have such a weakened immune system? First off, they are fed thiamine inhibiting amprollium in their chick feed. Thiamine is important for health...this is why we add it to some foods, vitamins, etc.

Then they are kept in an environment that would prevent normal exposure to low level pathogens during the time they should be developing antibodies. They seen no sunlight, air is not fresh, temperatures are controlled.

By the time they are bigger and exposed to the bacteria that is inevitable in a commercial operation~do you even know how many rats are there????? TONS. I know this because I converse with a commercial grower every week and she regails me with the stories about their rat and bat nightmare in their chicken houses~they have little antibodies to protect their systems.

When they are exposed as young pullet, they have no defenses against disease. Battery houses pull out just as many dead birds as the broiler houses....for two years of production these birds are kept in a small cage~three to a cage~ on bare wire, fed a formulated feed, and cannibalize each other despite the disfiguring debeaking they have been subject to. The air is a miasma of dust, feces, feathers and grain dust.

They are fed low levels of broad spectrum antibiotics that only hinder their own systems and help the stronger, more resistant bacteria to thrive. How nice.

Its no wonder that the pathogens can then go systemic....its called sepsis and it can be fatal in humans. I'm sure that it eventually kills the birds also. A chicken can be a carrier of salmonella and it still not be bad enough to be in the ovaries and then in the eggs.

So...no you cannot assure your customers that your chickens do not have salmonella and a myriad of other bacteria present in their bodies. As do your customers, I can assure you.

All you can do is raise them to develop healthy immune systems and have faith that this is enough.

If you need to give your customers some level of reassurance, print off some good info and let them read it. Then let them take their chances on store bought eggs if they are not satisfied....after all, those eggs are USDA approved.

 

[Farmfresh]

Oddly enough, my Google searches stated that hens don't show signs of salmonella infection. I didn't spend much time searching, though, but I couldn't find anything showing how a flock manager would be able to tell...

The symptoms that I posted above came from a commercial poultry disease guide. There are four different strains of Salmonella that a chicken can get. I posted the outward symptoms of two strains above the others have similar symptoms.

Chickens definitely DO show symptoms of infection, but it does not surprise me that the information is very difficult to find on a Google search.

 

[Mackay]

That could be an indication.... but salmonella is not an antibiotic created disease...it has been around for a very long time and who can say for sure just where it lingers..

Really? Everything I am reading says that this particular disease has only been around since the 80s.

Yet another disease gifted to us by industrial agriculture.

salmonella has been an issue in pet stores and especially with birds and turtles before the 80's. It may not have been an issue with agriculture till the 80's though.

Bee is right about the colonization thing. Many microbes around us all the time could be dangerous if their colonies were not kept in check my a healthy immune system.

Not to gross you out but about 20% of surgeons in California are colonized with MRSA. They are not sick but they are carriers.. and their patients may be at risk.

e-coli has never been a bacteria that made people very ill and the most common infection it causes is UTI. But since the advent of antibioitcs e-coli now has mutant variations and some are quite deadly, and these are the kinds that get into spinach. ... being a pediatric nurse for quite a while at one point in my working days, I came across a numer of little kids who ate their poop. Now you would think that would be a pretty hefty dose of e-coli but they did not get sick.... yet some e-coli on spinach and people drop like flies.... it is the type of e-coli that makes the difference. All the use of antibiotics has brought us to this state.

I suspect that some kinds of salmonella are more virulent than others, thats just the standard fare of how these mutations go. We cannot adapt as fast as the germs do.

 

[pioneergirl]

Anyone remember the girl that did the science fair project about germs in our daily life and she found e-Coli on the nozzle of the soda despenser, but barely found anything in the toilet? The water in the potty was cleaner than the ice used to put in the drink cups? Just thinkin out loud again.....

 

[me&thegals]

Awesome post, Bee!

My customers are totally happy. They trust me and the food I sell them. So do I Even my conventional hubby is turning against all industrial food.

Again, one final time, we need to be careful in what we claim when we are actually selling food to people.

These are good eye opening situatins (but so awful for those infected!) that get people thinking about the gigantic system that produces their food.

 

[Wifezilla]

Two Iowa farms that together recalled more than half a billion potentially tainted eggs in connection with a nationwide salmonella outbreak share close ties, including suppliers of chickens and feed.

Both farms are linked to businessman Austin "Jack" DeCoster, who has been cited for numerous health, safety and employment violations over the last 20 years.

DeCoster owns Wright County Egg, the original farm that recalled 380 million eggs after they were linked to more than 1,000 reported cases of salmonella poisoning.

He also owns the company Quality Egg, which supplies young chickens and feed to a second farm that recalled another 170 million eggs.

Public records show that the DeCoster operation, one of the 10 largest egg producers in the country, has withstood a string of reprimands, penalties and complaints about its performance in several states, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Allegation range from concerns about maintaining a "sexually hostile work environment" to citations involving abusing the hens that lay the eggs, The Post reported.

The source of the salmonella outbreak, which has already sickened more than 1,000 people still remains a mystery that the Food and Drug Administration is working to unravel in a national investigation.

The egg recall expanded on Friday from just Wright County Egg to include Iowas Hillandale Farms. While the companies did not initially say whether their recalls were related, FDA spokeswoman Pat El-Hinnawy said the strain of salmonella bacteria causing the poisoning is the same in both cases, salmonella enteritidis.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,599962,00.html?test=latestnews

 

[Wifezilla]

The egg-and-chicken producer DeCoster Farms, of Turner, Maine, was fined $46,250 in June 1988 for 184 labor standards violations of federal labor--and was then caught, in September 1992, keeping as many as 100 workers from Mexico, Texas, and Central America in virtual slavery. Confined to company housing when not on the job, the Spanish-speaking workers were threatened with deportation if they left without authorization, and were not allowed visitors. Priests, social workers, and truant officers were barred. Fined $15,000 for those offenses in January 1993, DeCoster took the case to the Maine Supreme Court, which ruled against the company in January 1995.

That was just the start of a drama now running for more than 28 months. Trying to enforce the court verdict, U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich on July 12, 1996 announced that DeCoster would be fined $3.6 million for continuing noncompliance with health and safety standards. Violations recorded by OSHA included failures to install required guards on equipment, 10 months after a worker lost parts of three fingers because the guards were missing; workers not paid overtime despite logging from 80 to 100 hours a week on the job; workers paid below the minimum wage or not at all; hiring children as young as nine; preventing workers from attending Catholic services; and allowing supervisors to physically intimidate staff.

Owner Austin "Jack" DeCoster appealed the fine and appointed a blue-ribbon panel of prominent Maine business people to oversee improvements. Within three months they all quit in frustration. In the interim, DeCoster was fined by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for building an unauthorized wastewater treatment system; OSHA testing found fecal contamination in workers' drinking water; and DeCoster replaced an allegedly abusive manager with John William Glessner Jr., 34, who held a similar post at one of the 30 DeCoster hog operations in Iowa until shortly after he and another DeCoster hog plant manager were convicted in July 1996 of the 1995 beating of worker Lucas Ortega. Ortega, 19, was allegedly pulled from his apartment and down a flight of stairs by his hair, tied hand and foot with duct tape, then slapped and punched.

After the blue-ribbon panel quit, DeCoster evicted employees from substandard company housing two weeks before Christmas. Another OSHA fine followed, this time $117,000 for alleged serious mishandling of pesticides. Still resisting federal directives, DeCoster in January 1997 paid for a newspaper ad defending his practices, signed by 75 workers, many of whom later told media they had not known what they were signing.

As result of the appeal, DeCoster on May 20 won a reduction in the biggest fine to $2 million, barely half the original amount, with the remainder suspended on condition that at least 90% of the allegedly abusive conditions are corrected within one more year.

About 100 workers will divide $21,000 in settlement of unpaid wage claims.

According to Susan Rayfield of the Portland Press Herald, DeCoster announced the deal with a "free" chicken banquet for workers, then docked them for the time they spent eating it, canceled overtime, and speeded up the production lines.

DeCoster's Iowa egg plant was meanwhile fined $489,950 on October 24, 1996, for 15 serious safety violations.

http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-themeatmob-decoster.html

 

[reinbeau]

That Turner, Maine operation has been a horror show for years and years, I believe it has finally been shut down.