According to the Associated Press and other reports , one of the largest egg factory farms in Ohio has been exploiting underage, immigrant children as slave labor. Federal authorities have indicted four people on charges of labor-trafficking conspiracy, forced labor, harboring illegal aliens, witness tampering, and giving false information.





A total of 10 people, including at least eight teenagers as young as 14, were forced to live in dilapidated trailers without heat, beds, or working toilets, and to work grueling manual labor jobs up to 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week at Trillium Farms—formerly known as Ohio Fresh Eggs.









In 2009, Ohio Fresh Eggs pled guilty in court and was fined $300,000 for clean water violations. In 2011, the company was ordered to pay a civil penalty of $635,000 to settle 71 allegations of violations of Ohio Department of Agriculture and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency laws.





The facility even has ties with Austin "Jack" DeCoster, the infamous businessman behind Quality Egg of New England , the facility raided by state officials following an MFA undercover investigation in Maine. MFA’s investigator documented birds suffering from broken bones and bloody open wounds, workers throwing live birds into the trash, and other horrific abuses.





In 2010, more than a quarter million salmonella-contaminated eggs were recalled from Ohio Fresh Eggs’ central Ohio facility, representing the largest egg recall in U.S. history. Earlier this year, Jack DeCoster and his son Peter were convicted and sentenced to jail for sickening up to 56,000 people by knowingly selling contaminated eggs prior to the recall.





The company was also the subject of a 2004 MFA undercover investigation , which revealed hundreds of thousands of egg-laying hens with broken, damaged, and feces-covered feathers packed into battery cages so small they couldn't spread their wings, and chicken corpses left to rot in cages with birds still producing eggs for human consumption.



