McDonald’s Corp. said Friday it has dropped a Minnesota-based egg supplier after an animal-rights group released an undercover video of operations at the egg producer’s farms in three states.
The video by Mercy for Animals shows what the group calls animal cruelty at five Sparboe Farms facilities in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado. The company has a location in Hudson.
Other clients of Sparboe Cos. LLC have also dropped the company as a result of the videos, Sparboe spokesman Ken Klippen said. He labeled the ensuing fallout “devastating” and said the firm was simply trying to “do damage control.”
The video images include a worker swinging a bird around by its feet, hens packed into cramped cages, male chicks being tossed into plastic bags to suffocate, and workers burning off the tips of chick’s beaks.
Klippen said the acts were attributed to a roving crew of Sparboe employees who travel the country delivering chickens and pullets to various facilities. A Mercy for Animals employee had obtained a job with Sparboe, made the videos undercover, then disappeared, he said.
Though the video does not specify which acts of cruelty occur in which facility, Klippen said it convened managers from each location to view the film and identify the locations.
Most of the videos show facilities in Iowa, Klippen said, but one scene is from the Hudson location. It’s unclear which, and Klippen would not say.
The company issued a statement calling the video “shocking” and saying an internal investigation identified four employees “who were complicit in this disturbing activity” and were fired this month, but did not specify the location.
“I was deeply saddened to see the story because this isn’t who Sparboe Farms is,” owner and president Beth Sparboe Schnell said in a statement posted on a company website. “Acts depicted in the footage are totally unacceptable and completely at odds with our values as egg farmers. In fact, they are in direct violation of our animal care code of conduct, which all of our employees read, sign and follow each day.”
An official with McDonald’s called the behavior shown on the video “disturbing and completely unacceptable.”
“McDonald’s wants to assure our customers that we demand humane treatment of animals by our suppliers,” Bob Langert, McDonald’s vice president for sustainability, said in a statement.
McDonald’s said it got Sparboe eggs via Cargill Inc., which said it was suspending Sparboe as a supplier. McDonald’s also said the “most alarming actions on video” didn’t happen at Sparboe’s facility in Vincent, Iowa, which supplied its restaurants, but they still violated standards the company sets for its suppliers.
McDonald’s move followed a warning letter to Sparboe Farms dated Wednesday from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that said inspectors at five Sparboe facilities found “serious violations” of federal regulations meant to prevent salmonella.
David Migoya of The Denver Post and Steve Karnowski of The Associated Press contributed to this report.
