A pair of animal rights groups are seeking more than two dozen criminal charges against Pure Prairie Poultry (PPP).
Animal Partisan and the Humane Farming Association have announced the filing of a criminal complaint in Buffalo County District Court in Wisconsin against the former Charles City chicken processing plant, seeking 30 criminal charges and a $300,000 penalty. The group says the goal is to hold PPP criminally liable under Wisconsin law for abandoning thousands of chickens to starve following the company’s sudden bankruptcy and to highlight the harm caused to both animals and contract farmers.
The complaint details the ordeal of a pair of Wisconsin farmers who were allegedly abandoned by PPP and left with empty feed bins for weeks, no financial or contractual way to obtain feed, and thousands of starving, dying, or dead chickens. After nearly two years under contract, the Wisconsin farmers saw signs of PPP’s financial instability, including missed payments and a skipped pickup of 24,000 chickens in September 2024.
The group claims that, unbeknownst to the farmers, PPP had filed for bankruptcy and, without any official notification, the chickens ran out of feed. Despite desperate daily contact with PPP, no feed or pickup materialized by early October as promised. In all, chickens endured 19 days without food, with 24-50 dying daily, primarily from starvation.
They note that PPP’s abandonment and starvation of chickens was widespread, impacting almost a half-million birds in Wisconsin and the euthanasia of 1.3 million chickens in Iowa.
The group adds that Congressman Derrick Van Orden wrote a letter to the USDA to question how a company with a $38.7 million USDA loan could abandon over 2 million chickens and 50 farmers across three states. More than nine months later, this devastating situation remains largely unresolved, and PPP remains unaccountable for its criminal conduct.
Animal Partisan and the Humane Farming Association seek prosecution of PPP under Wisconsin statutes prohibiting depriving animals of food and animal abandonment, statutes that affirm PPP’s duty to provide feed, a responsibility not negated by bankruptcy or financial mismanagement.
The 30 charges symbolize each chicken found dead on September 29, 2024, the day after feed bins emptied.
The complaint comes less than a month after it was announced that the PPP facility had been sold to Community Bank and Trust and former Pure Prairie board member, Michael Helgeson. The sale involved “credit bids,” meaning they traded the right to extract $27.8 million in debt from the chicken plant, in exchange for the plant itself, with CB&T allegedly offering $25.7 million and Helgeson $2.1 million.
