As we reported last year, dozens of food processing plants were destroyed by ‘accidental fires,’ with the first major one being reported in 2023 as a commercial egg farm in Bozrah, Connecticut.
Firefighters spent hours trying to put out the blaze engulfing the 50-foot-by-400-foot chicken coop, which contained about 100,000 chickens.
Crews were faced with heavy fire from a barn housing chickens and manure as multiple departments were called to help tackle the blaze, the Epoch Times reported.
John Way, a safety officer for the Bozrah Volunteer Fire Co., said the building that caught fire was large — about 300 to 400 feet long and two stories high — and housed an unknown number of chickens, the Associated Press reported.
A video posted online showed flames shooting from the commercial egg farm building late Saturday night.
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Hillandale Farms is one of the largest suppliers of chicken eggs in the United States.
The fire comes as the US suffers from a major egg shortage due to bird flu wiping out tens of millions of hens.
The shortages have caused the prices of a dozen Grade A eggs at the supermarket to jump to unprecedented levels.
The fire comes amid a string of suspicious fires at food plants which became almost an epidemic in 2022. According to Bloomberg data, “food plant fire” reports jumped the most in a decade last year.
READ MORE: World Facing Unprecedented Food Crisis, ‘Multiple Famines’ Predicted by UN
