Huge flocks of chickens in Delaware and Maryland are set to be slaughtered and not sent to market as a result of coronavirus staffing issues, according to reports.

A letter from Allen Harim Foods to growers that was originally obtained by radio host Dan Gaffney appeared to explain how the company will need to start “depopulating flocks in the field”.

This kind of depopulation is an industry term used to describe the slaughtering of the birds without them being sent to market.

The Delaware News Journal confirmed with Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc that one company has announced a need to depopulate due to staffing shortages amidst the coronavirus outbreak.

The 8 April letter outlined that the organisation is “no longer able to harvest the amount of birds needed daily or weekly to maintain target weights and ages”.

Michele V Minton, Allen Harim’s director of live operations, who appears to have signed off the document, promises farmers will be fairly compensated.

Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc told The Journal that this could mean about 2 million chickens owned by one of those companies may be killed.

Delaware Poultry Industry Executive Director Holly Porter told the newspaper: “The impact of Covid-19 on the US chicken industry is becoming more apparent as the disease continues to spread throughout the United States.”

Only one Delmarva poultry company has announced the need to turn to a last resort of “depopulating flocks” due to Covid-19, Ms Porter told the outlet.

The company would usually process chickens from these individual farms for distribution at market. In these circumstances, it did not specify in the letter how flocks would be slaughtered.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has urged Allen Harim to kill the flocks humanely.

“In addition to legal and veterinary requirements, common decency demands that you give these chickens — who have suffered day and night in severely crowded, ammonia-ridden sheds and to whom you owe your livelihood — the quickest, most painless, and most humane death possible,” Dan Paden, PETA’s vice president of evidence analysis, said in a letter shared with the media Monday.