This 95-item list doesn’t prove there are ongoing plans to create food shortages

It’s a frighteningly specific list of 95 agricultural incidents involving fires and "destroyed" poultry — and it’s all over social media.

It begins:

"1 — 4/30/21 Monmouth Smithfield Foods pork processing plant

"2 — 7/25/21 Memphis Kellogg plant

"3 — 8/13/21 JBS beef plant"

And it ends:

"93 — 5/29/22 200,000 Chickens killed in fire in Minnesota

"94 — 5/31/22 3,000,000 chickens destroyed at Forsman egg farm facility in Stockholm Township, Minnesota

"95 — 6/2/22 30,000 ducks destroyed at Duck farm Berks Pennsylvania."

"You are duped if you think they aren’t planning a food shortage," read a version we found posted June 7 on Facebook. "Far too many reasons to make sure you are stocked up for when things get much tighter."

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

PolitiFact wondered if there was anything to this lengthy claim, so we reviewed each of the incidents cited and found no merit to the suggestion that anything nefarious is afoot.

More than half are the result of a raging poultry epidemic. Seven incidents on the list were duplicates — sometimes repeated within a few lines of each other.

And out of roughly 30 fires listed, PolitiFact found only one was determined to have been intentionally set. 

Others didn’t happen when the list said they did. The post said a fire destroyed a meat plant in Fayetteville, Illinois, in February, for example. But that fire actually happened on Jan. 11, 2021, and officials said it was not considered suspicious. Similarly, in April 2020, a chicken processing plant in Delaware killed nearly 2 million chickens as a result of COVID-19 related staff shortages. The post wrongly claimed those chickens were killed in April 2022.

We were unable to find evidence that two incidents — 76,400 turkeys being destroyed in Osceola County, Iowa, in March and 2 million chickens being destroyed at an egg laying farm in Minnesota in April — happened at all.

Here’s what we learned about the other 84 incidents listed in the post: 

Fifty of the incidents listed involved birds such as chickens, turkeys or ducks being killed to contain an ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza. It is very contagious and often fatal among birds.

Using local news reports and a U.S. Department of Agriculture database that tracks confirmed detections of highly pathogenic avian influenza, PolitiFact verified that 50 of the items on the list refer to incidents where the virus was detected, which resulted in — or will result in — the impacted flocks being killed.

Rick Coker, a spokesperson for the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said that the virus is currently spreading across the U.S. "primarily due to the migration of wild birds." 

Once the virus is detected, the goal is to humanely kill infected flocks within 24 hours of diagnosis to reduce the presence of the virus in the environment, he said. Avian flu doesn’t usually spread to humans but there have been some rare cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Nearly 38 million birds have died or been killed to contain the virus in the 2022 outbreak so far. Even so, Coker said, "there is no reason to believe that this or any other (highly pathogenic avian influenza) outbreak was suspicious or that any entity is targeting the U.S. poultry supply." 

"Avian influenza is ubiquitous in the environment and when conditions are favorable the virus can spread quickly unchecked," he said, adding that the virus detected in the United States closely matches genetically with the virus that has been circulating in wild bird populations in Europe since 2021.

The post included 30 additional fires at places such as farms, food processing plants and storage facilities. 

As of June 14, PolitiFact found only one fire that investigators said was set intentionally — and the fire destroyed a food pantry, not a "food plant" as the post claimed.

Garrard County Food Pantry in Kentucky was destroyed by a fire on Nov. 14, 2021, and law enforcement officials arrested a woman and charged her with second degree arson and first degree criminal mischief, according to news reports.

A majority of the fires listed — 18 — weren’t suspicious and were instead accidental or caused by typical malfunctions you might expect at farms and food manufacturing facilities, according to local officials.

For example, a fire caused significant damage to a building at the Shadow Brook Farm and Dutch Girl Creamery in Lancaster County, Nebraska on Feb. 28. The state fire marshal said it was an accidental electrical fire.

Nine fires remained under investigation as of June 14, but some early reports indicated that officials did not suspect foul play. Two fires had unknown causes, and it was not clear based on news reports whether they were being investigated.

Birgitte Messerschmidt, the director of research for the National Fire Protection Association, said fires are more common than most people realize. 

"It can sound like a lot when you hear about several of these fires," Messerschmidt said. "But it really is nothing out of the ordinary." She said she’s researched fires in food manufacturing and food storage for years and "they’ve been happening around the globe, regularly."

Messerschmidt said she has not noticed a notable uptick in fires at food production sites in 2022. After looking into the recent fires, she said she has found nothing to indicate there is a link between the fires or that a group might be trying to intentionally create food shortages.

In addition, we found that the post relayed incorrect information about some of the fires. The post claimed a "barn full" of cows burned in March, implying the animals died, for example, but local farmers actually rescued 42 cows from a Pennsylvania dairy farm blaze on March 13. 

The post also included a few other incidents, most of which remain under investigation as of June 14. It is unclear what impact, if any, some of these incidents had on food production.

• People were exposed to an ammonia leak at Lincoln Premium Poultry in Fremont, Nebraska, on Feb. 19. Plant operations were put on hold.

• A pilot delivering packages for UPS died on April 13 after her plane crashed into a Gem State Processing Plant. Officials are investigating the crash. The plant did not appear significantly damaged, photos of the scene show.

• On April 21, a plane crashed into an isolated area of a General Mills cereal plant, killing two aboard. No one on the ground was injured. The cause of the crash had not yet been determined, and the investigation could take up to two years.

• A Florida East Coast Railway cargo train carrying limestone derailed on May 19. Officials said the derailed cars were empty and the cause of the derailment had not been determined.

Facebook posts sharing a 95-item list of alleged food-destroying incidents said the list demonstrates that "you are duped if you think they aren’t planning a food shortage."

Most of the incidents listed involved chickens or turkeys being killed because they were exposed to a highly contagious avian influenza and many referenced fires that officials said weren’t suspicious. The post relayed incorrect information about some of the incidents, and we found no evidence that two incidents happened at all.

Experts in fire research and avian influenza said the list’s legitimate incidents do not demonstrate that there is an ongoing effort to create food shortages.

We rate this post False.

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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