U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack responded to criticism about how the United States Department of Agriculture provided about $45.6 million in grants and loans to Pure Prairie Poultry (PPP), which went on to file for bankruptcy.
PPP filed for bankruptcy in September, then went on to cease operations at its plant in Charles City, Iowa. Ultimately, the company stated that it no longer had the resources to feed the more than 2 million chickens that about 50 contract growers in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin were raising for PPP.
Critics of Vilsack and the USDA -- including Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig, U.S. Sens Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst and John Boozman; and Reps. Ashley Hinson, Randy Feenstra, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Derrick Van Orden and Glenn “GT” Thompson – have said the USDA should have had more oversight in the situation.
Vilsack, according to a report from the Iowa Capital Dispatch, told a crowd in Des Moines that he considered the bankruptcy an “unusual” and “very unfortunate” circumstance. But he indicated that rather than to get angry over the failure of a USDA-funded company, attention should be paid to the successes. The PPP plant was one of more than 400 projects approved to help meat and poultry processors in the United States, in which a total of about $1.4 billion was invested.
“You can compare and contrast our portfolio and its performance to any commercial bank in the country … the default rate is very, very low,” he said.
PPP, headquartered in Charles City, Iowa, has been in business since 2021, when it purchased a shuttered poultry plant that was previously operated by Simply Essentials before it closed it in 2019.
