Iowa lab warned egg company of hens infected with salmonella months before outbreak, recall

IOWA CITY, Iowa - An Iowa State University scientist found evidence that sick hens at farms owned by an Iowa egg producer were "almost certainly" laying eggs contaminated with salmonella months before one of the nation's largest outbreaks of food-borne illness came to light, newly released records show. ISU's Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory found salmonella in manure at several Iowa egg-laying plants and in the internal organs of their birds, which were dying at unusually high rates, about four months before the August 2010 recall of 550 million eggs linked to the outbreak, records show.