Mother Nature Exposes the Cruelty Inside Factory Farms

By Wendy Swann

Who does not like to think that the food we eat is from the idyllic farms portrayed in children’s books? Unfortunately, the reality is that the majority of animals used for food are raised using intensive husbandry practices. Of the more than 8 billion animals killed for food in the US in 1997, 300 million were laying hens, and when a tornado ripped through Croton, Ohio on September 20, the public received a unique opportunity to see firsthand the intensive and cruel practices of industrial egg production. The tornado struck Buckeye Egg Farm, one of the world’s largest egg factories. The company’s 15 million hens produce over 2.4 billion eggs a year.

Twelve of the company’s 150 warehouse-type buildings, some as long as two football fields, were damaged. Each building holds 80,000–100,000 hens packed into battery cages. Each cage is half the size of a newspaper and holds six hens. Hens in factories cannot express their natural repertoire of behaviors, and as if the painful debeaking, eye and foot trauma, ammonia fumes, light deprivation and other atrocities of the factory farm are not cruel enough, after the tornado hit Buckeye over one million birds were either crushed in the wreckage or trapped and suffered slow deaths from starvation, dehydration or exposure to the elements.

More than 600,000 hens trapped in the destruction were dumped alive into containers. Many suffocated or were crushed to death when load after load of chickens were piled on top of each other. Those that survived the initial dump were euthanized with carbon dioxide. Eventually they were all sent to rendering plants. The remaining mix of twisted metal, building debris and close to 300,000 bird carcasses was discarded at a county landfill.

Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm, a farm animal sanctuary near Pittsburgh, and Protect Our Earth’s Treasures (POET), in Columbus, Ohio, were instrumental in the intensive rescue and relocation of over 3,000 hens. Cayce Mell, Jason Tracy, along with their six-month-old son Aidan, and other Ooh-Mah-Nee staff repeatedly drove to Ohio. Aidan peacefully supervised the rescue and allowed his parents to save as many birds as possible. Cayce negotiated with Buckeye executives on behalf of the hens, and now Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm is the permanent home for 1,500 of the “liberated ladies.”

Convicted of cruelty to animals in Germany, the owner of Buckeye Egg Farm, Anton Pohlmann, is banned for life from owning animals and operating there. With the purchase of Ohio farmland in 1980, Pohlmann brought his deplorable record of inhumane treatment of animals and environmental degradation to the US. In Ohio, Buckeye’s environmental violations include contamination of waterways with manure and fuel oil resulting in fish kills. Legal violations include exceeding the allowed number of hens and constructing facilities without authorization. The company was fined for poor worker conditions, and a federal raid revealed 36 undocumented workers. In January 2001, Buckeye was fined $1 million—to be paid over six years—by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for pollution and fly-infestation problems.

Pohlmann plans to rebuild the structures destroyed by the tornado, sell or lease his factories in Ohio and start a new operation in Eastern Europe. His son Stefan is starting a poultry operation in the Czech Republic.

Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm is completing a documentary on the rescue which will be available to interested parties. To contact Ooh-Mah-Nee, call 724-925-2241 or e-mail oohmahneefarm@aol.com.
Top Photo: Over a million hens trapped inside tiny wire cages in what was left of tornado damaged buildings. (Mercy for Animals)

Bottom Photo: Free at last! The rescued hens enjoy the pasture at Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm. At night they go into the straw bedded barns for warmth and safety. (Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm)