BY VICTORIA CRAIG

 

ANCHOR VICTORIA CRAIG

 

 

You're watching multisource video news analysis from Newsy. 

 

McDonald’s has announced it will no longer accept eggs from one of the country’s largest suppliers, all because of an ABC News investigation into the company-- Sparboe Farms.

“A rare look inside Sparboe provided by the animal rights activist group Mercy for Animals showing unsanitary conditions and animal cruelty too graphic to be broadcast. ‘Why do they leave all these dead birds in here?’ Of greatest concern to health experts: Insects, rodents, cage after cage with dead birds. The very factors that can spread deadly salmonella.”

New York Daily News reports-- the allegations were significant enough that the Food and Drug Administration stepped in on Thursday.

“The FDA issued a warning letter to Sparboe...citing the company for 13 violations of an egg rule meant to prevent salmonella.”

But Sparboe Farms insists-- it’s done nothing wrong. Pennsylvania's  WHTM has more.

“Sparboe produces millions of eggs each year and says it never had a single case of salmonella. Still McDonald's saw the video and immediately canceled its contact with the farm.”

This isn’t McDonald’s only run-in with animal rights activists. As the International Business Times reports, the Humane Society of the United States has filed legal notice against McDonald’s biggest supplier of pork for products like the McRib.

“The issue at hand is [the supplier] Smithfield's use of gestation crates to confine its pigs. Smithfield said in 2007 that it would phase out use of gestation crates over a 10-year period, but in 2009 the company backed off from that timeline.”

A gestation crate is a very small metal cage the pigs can hardly move around in. In a statement, McDonalds says it supports Smithfield’s plan to phase out those stalls. But a representative for the Humane Society tells Salt Lake City’s KTVX, he doesn’t buy Smithfield’s claims.

“It’s trying to keep Americans in the dark about the deplorable cruelty that they’re perpetrating against huge numbers of animals.”

As The Atlantic reports, Smithfield has opted to replace its gestation crates with “group housing” for its pigs.