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Organic farmer fears impacts of proposed animal welfare rule

eggsAn organic poultry farmer says USDA’s proposed animal welfare standards are extreme.

“The proposed rule would drastically reduce our flock capacities and basically render our tens of millions of dollars of investments obsolete.”

Third-generation Western Michigan egg farmer Greg Herbruck tells Brownfield some of the requirements in the proposed standard could compromise hen health and food safety.  “Birds in some of this new standard we fear would put food safety more at risk in the way of more bacterial challenge to the hen’s environment, and then they are very good about translating that into the egg and that’s a fear of ours.”

The USDA says it’s proposed regulations are meant to provide consistency to animal welfare standards for certified organic farms including year-round access to the outdoors in poultry production.  Herbruck estimates more than 70 percent of the organic egg industry would be greatly impacted, reducing flock capacities by 50 to 85 percent.  He says the standards also threaten organic grain farmers.

The farm produces both conventional and organic eggs, something Herbruck says has grown to meet the demands from the marketplace.  “We started in 1998 with 1,800 organic hens and it rapidly grew in a contract basis with some of our neighbors and friends to a few hundred thousand and now we’re approaching close to two million organic hens as the marketplace has exploded.”

Herbruck says in the last four years, organic egg farmers have seen 25-percent growth each year and rapidly increasing consumer demand is NOT slowing down.

AUDIO: Interview with Greg Herbruck

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