KSFY News - Sioux Falls, SD News, Weather, SportsLocal producer discusses recent bad egg news

Local producer discusses recent bad egg news

This has been a tough week for egg production in the United States.  Earlier this week, McDonald's and Target both announced they would stop carrying eggs from Sparboe Farms.  This is after ABC News uncovered alleged animal cruelty, as well as unsanitary conditions at the nation's 5th largest egg producer.

A day later entrepreneur Jack Decoster and his son Peter announced they've given up control of their egg production in Iowa, Maine and Ohio.  All this comes more than a year after their farms put out salmonella-tainted eggs that sickened almost 2,000 people.

But one area egg producer says most producers do their best to avoid these problems and abide by strict rules and regulations.

At Dakota Layers in Flandreau about one million hens are at work laying a few eggs.  President Scott Ramsdell says, "we put out 700,000 eggs a day."

Ramsdell says his operation is actually, relatively small.  He says seeing larger producers dropping the ball with safety recently makes him want to hold his standards that much higher.   He says, "make sure that we can document and prove that we've got a good, safe egg."

Ramsdell says one benefit of the smaller farm is their barns are less than ten years old.  He says, "so they were built to the new standards where the manure is moved out daily."

Ramsdell says this helps prevent disease from developing.  He says his employees also check daily for dead birds, sick birds and rodents, all of which pose health risks.  We weren't even allowed inside a barn because Ramsdell says the risk of for bringing in disease is too high.  The company president says it's all in compliance with FDA and USDA standards.  He says, "we have a USDA person on sight, watching, doing quality control of our stuff, we also hired our own SQF, safety quality person."

In addition, the eggs are never touched by human hands.  Once they're laid they are all moved through the washing and packing process by conveyor belts and computers.  Ramsdell says, "the industry continues to do what they can to ensure that we have a safe egg, but also a low-cost egg."

But Ramsdell says the safety of his hens is important too.  He says he complies with all United Egg Producers' standards of cruelty prevention.  He says seeing video of a Sparboe Farms worker allegedly swinging a chicken by it's legs is disturbing, saying, "those are your livelihood, you don't treat them that way.  You treat them the way you need to."

Ramsdell says treating the animals the right way just helps make a better product.

Dakota Layers is in the process of building a new barn.  This one will allow more room for the hens and more room for nesting.