As you might imagine, the past few days have been very taxing for all of us at Sparboe Farms ever since we learned of the existence of undercover video footage depicting animal mistreatment at one of our facilities.
This terrible and unacceptable incident should never have happened—but it did because we were not as vigilant as we should have been in enforcing our animal care code of conduct. However, we want to assure everyone that we have been working very hard around the clock to take corrective measures and strengthen our animal welfare policies and procedures.
Immediately upon learning of the video we launched a comprehensive investigation which identified four employees who were complicit in the disturbing activity. Because we have zero tolerance for animal abuse, the four have been terminated. A production manager also has been relieved of his duties.
Our investigation is ongoing and any additional employees involved will be held accountable. We still have not received all of the video footage that was taken at our facility and until we do, our investigation will not be completed.
Because we are intent on ensuring this never happens again, we have immediately engaged in the following:
1.) We have created a Sustainability Task Force that I personally charged with reviewing and improving all current company practices for production and processing facilities in the areas of food safety, animal care and sustainability. We will look to the three employees and three outside experts appointed to this team to lead us in making our company better.
2.) We have begun the process of hiring additional employees for our animal care, food safety and compliance staffs to ensure that we do everything possible to enhance and strengthen our procedures in these areas.
3.) All bird-handling employees have been re-trained, and will receive additional training over time as we enhance our procedures and continually reinforce our uncompromising expectations for animal care.
4.) Last week, Sparboe Farms participated in and passed four third-party animal welfare audits. This week, we have engaged several additional experts to conduct further audits of our farms’ food safety compliance.
Regarding the warning letter from the FDA last Thursday, we are working closely with the FDA to rectify the form 483 violations. The FDA’s inspection of our facilities was the first egg production inspection the FDA had ever conducted on our farms since becoming responsible under the Egg Safety Rule last year.
Because we had responded with corrective actions within 15 days and had not heard any response since then, we incorrectly assumed that we had sufficiently responded to the 483s. We have since discovered that we had not supplied the detail that the FDA wanted. I want to assure you that we are working 24/7 to provide them with the detail needed.
We understand that animal care and food safety are paramount to our customers and consumers. We focus on continuous improvement in every area of our business because we want to be an egg farmer that is truly “best in class.”
Finally, I want to assure you that you can continue to have every confidence in the safety and integrity of our products. At Sparboe Farms we are proud of our long, and unbroken, tradition of offering the highest quality egg products. And we are committed to always doing what’s right and conducting business in a socially responsible manner.
Beth Sparboe Schnell
Owner & President