Hundreds of Thousands of Hens Reportedly Baked to Death at Top Ohio Egg Farm

Whistleblower Called PETA to Report Disease Outbreak, Mass Killing of Chickens Through ‘Heat Suffocation’

For Immediate Release:
February 27, 2020

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

PETA has obtained public records from the Ohio Department of Agriculture corroborating a concerned insider’s tip that a Trillium Farm Holdings, LLC, egg farm near Mount Victory killed approximately 260,000 hens afflicted with a severe infectious respiratory disease—and disposed of their bodies in a potentially hazardous manner.

The distressed whistleblower reported to PETA that the hens were killed by the exceedingly cruel method of “heat suffocation”—by closing off the ventilation in the sheds and using large heaters to raise the temperature to at least 104 degrees. According to state records, Trillium then dumped their bodies into a manure pit. After a few days, the dead, manure-coated hens were to be piled onto a concrete pad, which was designed to allow fluids to pass through or off it, as little as 50 feet from a waterway. A federal government veterinarian wrote that he thought this disposal method would kill the bacteria that infected the hens, “but that is a bit of an assumption.”

“The disease and death at this Trillium egg farm speak volumes about the industry, which treats sensitive birds like expendable egg machines,” says PETA Vice President Daniel Paden. “PETA urges anyone horrified by the thought of a quarter of a million caged hens suffocating to go vegan.”

Trillium is based in Johnstown, with additional locations in La Rue and Marseilles. It produces about a third of all eggs in Ohio and is part of Versova, the third-largest producer of eggs in the country.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.