Wabash County Council grants Midwest Poultry abatement

By Josh Sigler and David Fenker | The Paper of Wabash County

The Wabash County Council approved several measures at its monthly meeting Monday, March 26.

The meeting kicked off with the approval of a tax abatement for Midwest Poultry as they begin to rebuild from a fire back in the fall.

“This was a no-brainer situation,” council chairman Randy Curless said. “We have a company that has supported Wabash for many years. And, I think altogether they have 400-some employees. I believe that passing this abatement has something to do with the $25 million they are going to invest.”

Midwest Poultry Services' Hi-Grade Egg Producers location lost five henhouses and more than one million hens in a fire Monday, Oct. 2.

The blaze that destroyed Hi-Grade's oldest henhouses took at least 23 emergency response agencies several house to extinguish, but the company avoided layoffs during the insurance investigation.

Construction recently began on three new henhouses to replace the lost buildings. Two of the three will be cage-free, bringing the farm's total of cage-free facilities up to five. Each building will hold about 274,000 birds. The third facility will hold about 540,000 birds.

Most eggs from the new houses will be sold to Kroger stores, either under the Kroger or Simple Truth brand, MPS General Manager Dan Krouse told the North Manchester News-Journal.

Krouse said solar panels will be mounted on the roofs of the cage-free buildings, which will provide up to 85 percent of their energy needs and about 1/6 of the farm's total power needs.