McDonalds Dumps Egg Supplier
New undercover video shows factory farm horror
Last week, it was the McRib scandal. This week, it’s the Egg McMuffin. McDonalds has announced that it is dropping the factory where its eggs are produced after an undercover investigation revealed “significant and serious violations” at one of the country’s biggest egg companies, Sparboe Farms.
Sparboe became the subject of one of ABC’s 20/20 investigations and was cited on Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration after they found at least 13 violations across five locations. The report will air on Friday evening.
This announcement comes on the heels of last week’s horror, in which we saw video of pigs with open pressure sores, ulcers and other wounds caused by living in crates where they can’t even turn around or lie down. The video of the Smithfield Foods factory farm was captured by the Humane Society of the U.S.
This week’s video of the shocking conditions at the Sparboe Egg Farms was taken by Mercy for Animals. Here’s some of it, as shown on ABC’s 20/20:
The FDA has now issued a company-wide warning letter to Sparboe Farms, which is the country’s fifth largest egg producer.
“This is a warning that there is a systemic problem, not just at one barn or one location,” former FDA food safety chief David Acheson told ABC.
Footage taken by a hidden camera over the summer inside several Sparboe facilities by animal rights group Mercy for Animals shows unsanitary conditions – including dead rats, insects and bodies of dead chickens – and repeated acts of animal cruelty.
McDonalds released a statement after seeing the footage saying: “McDonald’s expects all of our suppliers to meet our stringent requirements for delivering high quality food prepared in a humane and responsible manner.”
If that’s the case, you’d imagine they might have gone to inspect the egg factory themselves.
What do you say? Do you eat at McDonalds? What would you need to know in order to stop going there? Let us know in a comment or on Facebook.