The FDA has just issued its inspection reports of Hillandale Farms and Quality Egg LLC d/b/a Wright County Egg, the two Iowa egg farms linked to contaminated eggs that have caused the nationwide outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis that has sickened over 1500 people in the United States.

You can view the reports on the FDA website by clicking here – but below is a brief summary of the FDA’s findings.

They are not pretty.

Quality Egg LLC d/b/a Wright County Egg – FDA Findings

• Chicken manure piles 4 to 8 feet high in the chicken houses (you must be kidding, right?)
• Live wild birds (non-chickens) flying above chicken cages in hen houses
• Rodent burrows along the baseboards of the chicken houses
• Dark liquid manure seeping through the concrete foundation
• Standing water 3 inches deep at he southeast corner of the manure pit
• Employees working within houses not wearing protective clothing
• Un-caged (loose) chickens walking through manure piles to access egg laying areas
• 31 live mice observed inside the egg laying houses
• “Live and dead flies too numerous to count” observed inside the egg laying houses
• No documentation of washing and disinfecting the “dead hen” trucks and manure equipment
• No documentation of washing and disinfection of the chicken trailers
• 3 environmental samples tested positive for Salmonella Enteritidis

Quality Egg LLC Feed Mill – FDA Findings

• Live wild birds (non-chickens) roosting and flying inside the storage and milling facility
• Bird feces on the feed sensors inside the mill
• 3 environmental samples tested positive for Salmonella Enteritidis

Hillandale Farms – FDA Findings

• 65 unsealed rodent holes in the walls of the henhouses
• Standing water 3/4″ deep on the floor next to the manure pit at the “foot bath” (nasty)
• Liquid manure leaking onto the east section of the first floor
• Liquid manure “streaming out” of a six inch gap of the east door of the manure pit
• 49 un-caged chickens tracking manure into the upper levels of the henhouses
• An environmental sample tested positive for Salmonella Enteritidis

Live rodents, manure piles, wild birds, rodent burrows, un-caged hens, dirty “dead hen trucks”, bird feces, “live and dead flies too numerous to count” – is this acceptable in 2010 in the United States?

Seriously.  Somebody needs to go to jail for this.