Two large egg producers have received warning letters from the Food and Drug Administration, which said they violated a two-year-old rule aimed at preventing salmonella contamination.
During inspections conducted last summer, the F.D.A. found failures to prevent pests and wildlife from entering barns housing laying hens, poor record-keeping and other infractions that amounted to what it called "serious violations" of the rule.
The failures meant that eggs the companies produced "may have become contaminated with filth," agency inspectors wrote in the letters, which were sent late last month and posted on the agency's Web site on Thursday.
The letters offer a window into the way new regulations the agency proposed last week to enhance food safety might work. The proposed regulations, like the rule cited in the letters, aim to prevent food from being tainted rather than addressing contamination after it has occurred.
Both producers, Midwest Poultry Services of Mentone, Ind., and SKS Enterprises Inc., in Lodi, Calif., failed to comply with plans they had submitted to the agency aimed at preventing salmonella enteritidis, one of the most common types of salmonella bacteria, the F.D.A. said. Such plans were required by a rule set out two years ago.
Officials noted the presence of more than 30 wild birds and their nests in three of the five SKS facilities they inspected between May and August, despite the company's plans for preventing wildlife from coming into contact with its chickens and eggs.
After the inspection, SKS told the agency it would use chicken wire to prevent wild birds from entering its barns, but the agency said it had not received any follow-up report on that correction.
The F.D.A. also said the company was missing pest control records and failed to conduct tests of its birds within time frames specified by the rule.
A woman who answered the phone at SKS's offices at about 1 p.m. Pacific time said everyone had gone home for the day.
In Midwest Poultry's facility in Fort Recovery, Ohio, the agency inspector found records of high levels of rodent activity — in one barn, 113 rodents were caught over a five-day period.
Midwest, which produces some 150 million dozen eggs a year, could not give inspectors any record of actions it had taken to correct the problem, and a subsequent response sent to the F.D.A. in August lacked any new strategy for dealing with rodents, the agency said.
The F.D.A. said Midwest failed to maintain records showing that it had refrigerated eggs within the required 36 hours of laying.
"They cited two violations, both of which were about documentation, and all of that documentation has been sent to them," said Robert L. Krouse, chief executive of Midwest Poultry. "Now we're waiting to see if they want any more."
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