USDA Ignored Complaints About Safety, Two Former Egg Farm Workers Say

Sept. 9, 2010 — -- There are new allegations that federal officials working at one of the Iowa egg farms blamed for August's nationwide recall and salmonella outbreak ignored complaints of unsanitary conditions.

Two former workers at Wright County Egg Farm, which recalled the majority of the 480 million eggs, say that for years they tried to sound the alarm to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Robert Arnold and his wife, Deanna Arnold, worked at Wright County's Galt facilities for several years. The Arnolds said they shared their concerns with USDA workers perhaps a dozen times.

"I seen junk coming in on the belts where the eggs come from the barns, food wrappers, tools, a cat, mice," Robert Arnold said. "I complained. Nothing got done."

"They just let the chickens run loose and they weren't feeding them or watering them," Deanna Arnold said. "They were freezing to death. When the spring came, there was hundreds of birds laying between each of the barns where they dropped dead from freezing all winter."

Though USDA employees worked at the farms full time, Deanna Arnold said they did nothing when she tried to report such conditions to them.

"I reported it to the USDA worker that was there. She seen it and she knows. They weren't doing anything about it. They would just let it go," Deanna Arnold said.