Thousands of hens euthanized by firm as egg demand falls

The practice is not uncommon, particularly with hens whose egglaying productivity is up after about two years. But the decision to kill animals while they are still productive is rare.

Kerry Mergen, a contract egg farmer near Albany, Minn., got word on a recent Wednesday the chickens in his barn would be euthanized. A crew showed up the next morning and started gassing the birds with carbon dioxide.

The sudden drop in demand for food at restaurants, school cafeterias and caterers shut down by the pandemic has ripped through farming. Milk has been dumped, eggs smashed and ripe lettuce plowed under.

Mergen said he initially couldn’t believe it when a field manager from Daybreak Foods, the Lake Mills, Wis.-based firm that owned and paid to feed the flock of 61,000 birds, said they might be killed early. His contract called for the flock to produce eggs until fall.

“I was wrong and the company decided to do it anyway,” Mergen said.

A primary destination for eggs from the flock — a Cargill Inc. fluid egg plant in Big Lake, Minn. — temporarily shut down last week and laid off 300 employees. The company cited declining demand for the decision to idle the facility, which handles 800 million eggs a year and sends containers of liquefied egg to food-service companies across North America.

“It is important to note that food service orders have not stopped, but with the decline in food service orders, Cargill and its egg suppliers are working diligently to rebalance supply to match these consumer and customer shifts,” Cargill said in a statement.

Mergen said his was one of five egg farms where chickens were killed in Minnesota in recent weeks, and that the other four were larger than his farm.

That figure couldn’t be independently confirmed, and an official at the Minnesota Board of Animal Health said livestock producers do not have to report euthanizing large numbers of animals.

The practice is not uncommon, particularly with hens whose egg-laying productivity is up after about two years. But the decision to kill animals while they are still productive is rare.

“It’s a very challenging time. It’s very stressful on farmers,” said Kevin Stiles of the Chicken & Egg Association of Minnesota.

Information for this article was contributed by Evan Ramstad of the Star Tribune.