Christopher Leonard/Bloomberg
Hoang Son Nguyen, who is a chicken farmer in South Carolina, is the victim of sabotage from a disgruntled fellow farmer by the name of James Lowry. In February, Nguyen received a call from an employee saying something was wrong.
In total, 8 farms were attacked. (Photo by Joel Page/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)
He went to the farm and found his warehouse with over 20,000 chickens cooked to death – someone had turned the temperature control to 122F and disabled the alarms that would notify farmers something was amiss. That same week, three other farmers in Clarendon County lost over 320,000 chickens from similar attacks. The sophistication in the way the chickens were killed were specific and pointed to someone who knew the business intimately.
For Nguyen, the loss was devastating. As a contract farmer, he owes the bank $2 million dollars for his farm, and lives paycheck to paycheck, or “flock-to-flock.” He doesn’t even make enough money to buy health insurance.
Nguyen works for Pilgrim’s Pride, a processing company that has more than 4,000 farmers raising chickens for them. Local authorities set up armed deputies at night for several farmers and Nguyen said he kept a gun in case something happened again. Deputies finally got a break when they found phone records put disgruntled chicken farmer James Lowery at the site of every attack, even in remote areas.
Hoang Son Nguyen lost tens of thousands of chickens when someone turned the temperature controls in his warehouse up to 122F. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)
He was arrested but the charges were thrown out because the judge said there was not enough evidence. Authorities are taking the case to a local grand jury to see if the evidence against Lowery is strong enough to support an indictment.
Federal investigators are looking into the case and could charge him with tampering with the food supply, a felony that carries 20 years per count.
Nguyen said the loss has been tough on him and it caused him to develop an eye condition that the optometrist told him was stress related. Each chicken house that was attacked was worth roughly $10,000 to the farmers and Pilgrim’s Pride lost over $1.7 million from all eight attacks.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-02/who-s-murdering-thousands-of-chickens-in-south-carolina
