Poland’s Packed ‘Ghost Farms’ Present Threat Of Undetected Disease

Almost 1,000 industrial-scale poultry farms may be operating outside EU rules – and shipping chicken around the continent.

This article was written by Agata Skrzypczyk and Andrew Wasley, and originally published by The Bureau Of Investigative Journalism.

By the time 11-month-old Janek* was finally taken to hospital, his body was on the verge of collapse. He was dehydrated, barely conscious and his kidneys were failing.

“The doctor initially reassured us that it was just a sore throat, that antibiotics would help and that everything would return to normal after a few days,” his mother told us. But despite treatment, Janek grew weaker and weaker. He had stopped eating, had a fever, and was jaundiced and vomiting.

Janek’s was one of a spate of unexplained illnesses among local children in the small town of Czepielin, eastern Poland, around two years ago. Residents suspected the town’s drinking water supply, which was polluted with coliform bacteria, enterococci and E. coli for eight prolonged periods between 2022 and 2025. So they checked out the area near the public groundwater intake and noted a large turkey farm a quarter-mile away. They reported seeing brown liquid and bird feathers discarded in a wooded area behind the farm.

No one officially established the source of the contamination. But Czepielin’s residents found out that the farm in question didn’t have the right permit for controlling pollution. It had been operating for years without one. And it’s not alone.

We have found that almost half of Poland’s 2,000 large-scale poultry farms appear to be running without such a permit, despite it being required under EU law.

This could have repercussions across the continent: Poland is the largest poultry producer in the EU, accounting for around one-fifth of Europe’s chicken and turkey meat. And roughly 60% of it is exported – including to the UK, where multiple supermarkets have sold frozen and other processed meat products.

But there are serious worries about environmental standards on Polish farms and the sector has been dogged by food safety concerns in recent years. Notoriously, this includes the supply of chicken contaminated with antibiotic-resistant salmonella, which poisoned thousands of UK consumers and led to several deaths.

‘Ghost’ farms

How many chicken megafarms are there in Poland? Worryingly, it depends on who you ask. Take the Mazowieckie region, a poultry-producing hotbed where Czepielin is situated. Poland’s General Veterinary Inspectorate suggests there may be more than 600 poultry farms with more than 40,000 birds each in the region, but the Ministry of Climate and Environment’s records say there are only 261.

Nor is it clear who’s responsible for ensuring that farms hold the permits they need. The pollution control permits are handed out by regional political authorities known as marshals – but they don’t make it their business to identify unregistered sites, according to an inspector. Facilities are then monitored by environmental inspectors, but only then once a site has been registered on the system. Identifying unregistered farms is “not in their job description”, one official said.

And another source familiar with the system told us that regional vet inspectorates, which conduct on-site inspections, don’t monitor EU permitting compliance either.

Though it’s an administrative loophole, it comes with real-world effects. It has meant that hundreds of “ghost” megafarms do not appear on official lists. These intensive chicken farms are then able to evade proper enforcement. One senior official, who requested anonymity, said the loophole encourages farmers to simply cheat the system until they get caught.

And since regional inspectors don’t routinely check unpermitted farms, dangerous pollution can go undetected and unreported for years – leaving people like Janek to suffer the consequences.

Turkey stuffing

After Czepielin residents raised the alarm, inspectors visited the turkey farm nearby. The farm had a permit for 70,000 birds but we understand that at times it housed up to 120,000.

According to the inspection report, the farm lacked not only the pollution control permit but also a water law permit and an approved fertilisation plan, both required by law.

The report also indicated that the farm had no authorised private water intake and birds were fed from the municipal supply – including during periods when that supply was contaminated with E. coli. The Veterinary Inspectorate confirmed that neither the poultry meat nor the water used on the farm are routinely tested for E. coli, some strains of which can be fatal. Wastewater from cleaning turkey sheds was discharged onto nearby land in breach of regulations.

No agency has identified the original source of the bacterial contamination in Czepielin.

The farm is understood to supply a meat company that has sold to high-profile supermarkets in Poland and exported to numerous countries around the world. That company’s turkey products have been sold in the UK.

Ongoing fears

Another major cause for concern in Poland’s poultry sector is the overuse of antibiotics on farms, which accelerates the rate at which common bacteria can become resistant to the drugs. When these bugs no longer respond as expected to medicine, bacterial infections become difficult or even impossible to treat. It’s hard to overstate how serious an issue this is: the World Health Organization has called it one of the top health threats facing humanity.

A recent report from the European Medicines Agency placed Poland second in the EU in total sales of antibiotics for vet use. According to our calculations, that means the average bird raised for meat in Poland undergoes 3 to 4 courses of antibiotic treatment – meaning a chicken is on antibiotics for almost half of its six-week life. Authorities confirmed these numbers when they were put to them.

To reduce the risk of superbug outbreaks, EU legislation tightened the use of antibiotics on farms in 2022. Yet in 2023 we found soaring use of drugs critical for human health on farms in Poland.

The Siedlce Veterinary Inspectorate, which governs Czepielin, told us antibiotic use on farms is indeed high. They say that packing in birds at high density means disease can spread fast and when that happens, the entire flock has to be treated. And if a farm is exceeding its legal limit of birds by three times, like in Czepielin, it’s clear how the problem would be compounded.

One bacterium that can develop resistance to antibiotics is salmonella, and a series of recent EU audits have underlined concerns about the controls that are meant to prevent salmonella contamination. The most recent, published earlier this year, flagged major failures in the monitoring and control of the disease in Poland.

It said government figures for salmonella detection were several times higher than the same numbers taken from “self-monitoring” data provided by food producers, raising the possibility that the full extent of the problem was not being reported.

Polish officials have promised improvements in monitoring diseases. But measures to detect and control outbreaks have not kept pace with the rapid upsurge in production. On top of that, officials face staffing shortages and budget constraints. One source told us that inspectors lacked basic equipment and sometimes had to use sterilised mayonnaise jars to collect samples on site.

Packing more and more birds into farms doesn’t just cause antibiotic resistance to rise, but other diseases to spread. Between 2021 and 2023, there were 193 outbreaks of bird flu recorded in Poland. In one case, four tonnes of infected turkey meat was exported as kebabs to other EU countries before it was detected. The meat originated in Golice Kolonia, a town just 10 minutes from Czepielin.

Sam Faulkner, deputy director of trade at the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) said: “Consumer safety is our highest priority, and the FSA takes all necessary steps to protect public health.” He said controls introduced by the agency in 2024 have helped ensure high food safety standards and that the FSA has worked with the Polish authorities on these issues. “If we see any information of concern, we will take the necessary action,” he told us.

DEFRA didn’t provide a response to our questions.

Picking up the pieces

Back in Czepielin, Janek was eventually diagnosed with a strain of drug-resistant E. coli that was not treatable with the usual first-line drug. “Those events left us with immense pain,” his mother said. “Not only emotional, but also financial: medical treatment, travel expenses and psychological care.”

The public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the possible contamination of the environment and the water intake in Czepielin by the owner of the poultry farm. The farmer has denied wrongdoing and the case is ongoing.

Despite these events, the farm appears to still be operating. It has held a pollution control permit since November. The Regional Environmental Inspectorate in Warsaw, which oversees Siedlce region, confirmed it is aware of farms operating without permits and said it has begun verifying some cases. But given the scale of the issue and limited control capacity, this process may take a long time. The farmer did not respond to any of our questions.

Janek’s mother says someone has to admit that this tragedy didn’t come from nowhere. “I don’t expect miracles,” she said, “but I do expect the truth and accountability.”