Workers at one of the world’s largest egg factories arrived at a factory in Rembrandt, Iowa, early one March morning to find they were about to lose their jobs.
As they gathered in the huge barns that housed piles of caged hens, the workers were told to forget about their usual routine of collecting eggs and feeding the birds. During the night, the factory began slaughtering more than 5 million chickens using a horrific method of killing after discovering a single case of avian influenza. Even regulators were tasked with the task of removing dead chickens from full-fledged cages as Rembrandt Enterprises raced to control the spread of the virus amid the largest bird flu epidemic in the United States in seven years.
The killing was repeated on chicken and turkey farms in Iowa and 28 other states from Maine to Utah. More than 22 million birds have been killed in an attempt to control the outbreak – most in Iowa, the largest egg producer in the United States. The slaughter of 5.3 million hens in Rembrandt is the largest killing on any factory farm in the country.
The workers spent nearly a month pulling the dead poultry out of the cages and dumping them in carts before piling them high in nearby fields and then burying them in huge pits. The killing is over, about 250 people have been fired, leaving only a few dozen skeletal staff.
In the weeks that followed, animal rights protesters targeted Rembrandt’s billionaire owner, Glenn Taylor, for killing, including disrupting, a game played by a professional basketball team he owns, the Minnesota Timberwolves. But few votes were raised in support of Rembrandt workers, some of whom are undocumented migrants.
Others fired from the plant oppose the seriousness with which the outbreak of bird flu was taken by Rembrandt’s leadership, with what they describe as the company’s loose approach to the threat to Covid-19 workers as it passed through factory farms and slaughterhouses in Iowa and elsewhere.
“So now everyone is worried about the chickens,” said Oscar Garcia, a former factory supervisor. “It simply came to our notice then. The way they killed them was really inhumane. But chickens are chickens, right? People worked in these barns, taking out dead birds in terrible conditions, feces everywhere, working 12 or 14 hours a day. They could not protest, because then they would be fired and lose their salaries. Then they are fired and no one speaks for them. “
External criticism of Rembrandt focuses on the method of murder. Chicken farms have previously slaughtered chickens en masse by steaming them with foam or pumping barns full of carbon dioxide, methods that have been criticized as inhumane.
Oscar Garcia, former plant manager at Rembrandt Foods. Photo: Dan Bruylett / Guardian
But Tom Cullen of Iowa’s The Storm Lake Times revealed that the birds in Rembrandt were destroyed using a system known as Ventilation Shutdown Plus (VSD +), which closes the air to barns and pumps heat as the temperature rises. above 104F (40C). ).
“They cooked these birds alive,” said one of Rembrandt’s workers involved in the killing.
Animal rights group Animal Outlook is using freedom of information laws to obtain recordings of experiments at North Carolina State University that show that VSD + causes “extreme suffering” to chickens as they “wriggle, sigh.” , suffocate, stagger, and even throw themselves against the walls of their detention in a desperate attempt to escape.
“Eventually the birds collapsed and eventually died of heat and suffocation,” the group said.
Members of another group, Direct Action Everywhere, have suspended Timberwolves games in recent weeks wearing T-shirts with the words “Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive”.
James Roth, director of the Center for Food Security and Public Health at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University and adviser to the federal government on biosafety, acknowledged that VSD + causes more suffering than other forms of destruction, but said it was the most -the effective means of limiting the spread of bird flu because it is relatively fast.
“No one wants to see it used, but sometimes it’s a last resort. The rationale is that if the flu virus spreads so fast that it will pass through a poultry house really fast, all of these birds produce huge amounts of the virus in the air. Then you have a large plume of virus coming from this house that is spreading to other poultry farms. “It is extremely important that birds are euthanized before the virus becomes a huge strain of virus to spread,” he said.
USDA workers in the area where millions of chickens were dumped in a pit owned by Rembrandt Foods. Photo: Dan Brouillette / The Guardian Rembrandt Foods Factory. Photo: Dan Bruylett / Guardian
Roth said authorities seem to have learned important lessons from 2015, when the bird flu epidemic led to what the U.S. Department of Agriculture called “the biggest poultry health disaster in U.S. history” with the massacre of about 50 million chickens and turkeys.
This time, federal regulators have taken swift action to control the outbreak by halting the movement of workers among flocks of poultry, a significant cause of the spread of bird flu in 2015. But Roth said the virus appears to have arrived in the United States this year. waterfowl from Europe and be better adapted for distribution by wild birds, which are more difficult to limit.
This prompted the USDA to insist on rapid destruction of infected poultry farms. On March 17, Rembrandt informed his supervisors that bird flu had been found at the scene.
“They sent an email at 10.30pm to let us know they had a confirmed case,” said a former Rembrandt employee who was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement to receive redundancy payments.
When the worker arrived the next day, he found that the company had already started slaughtering millions of chickens.
“After they were dead, we had to take them out by hand one by one, put them in a cart. This is really intensive manual labor. They are not very large cells. There are 12 chickens stuffed there. Terrible conditions, “he said.
After the birds were killed and buried, the company fired most of the workers. Photo: Dan Bruylett / Guardian
“After it was over, we were told to attend a meeting. We entered. There was a large pile of yellow envelopes. It’s like showing a knife to a chicken. You know what will happen next. We worked alone without work. I’ve seen people who have had years and years of experience, just let them go. It was completely unexpected. “
Some workers thought the layoffs could be temporary, as was the case during the 2015 epidemic. But they were paid layoffs and told to find another job, suggesting the relocation is permanent and raises questions about the future. factory.
Some of the skilled former workers had no problem finding another job. Others have fought. “I’m just in a hurry to find a job to support my family,” said a former Rembrandt employee with several years at the company.
Those fighting include undocumented workers who, Garcia said, were hired indirectly through third-party contractors.
In February, the Storm Lake Times reported that a lawsuit from the family of a Guatemalan migrant worker who was crushed to death when cells collapsed on him revealed that he had worked under a false name through a subcontractor.
Garcia also contrasts with the seriousness with which Rembrandt takes bird flu to the company’s attitude toward Covid-19 as it grew in Iowa, especially among workers working closely together on factories and slaughterhouses. He said Rembrandt seems to be more interested in bird flu epidemics than Covid. He criticized the management for not obliging the workers to wear a mask or be vaccinated.
“They actually liked the fact that we didn’t ask our employees to be vaccinated because they hoped to get employees from the surrounding areas who demanded that their employees be vaccinated. They use it almost as a recruitment tool, “he said.
Other workers said that when they contracted Covid, they were required to use the weekends they earned as holidays instead of being given sick days.
“It’s a company that makes millions of dollars. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he doesn’t care about people, “Garcia said.
Rembrandt Enterprises was asked to comment.
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