Animal cruelty charges at a Turner-based egg farm prompted national egg seller Egg-land’s Best to break its contract with East Coast egg producer Radlo Brothers early Monday.

Hours later, Massachusetts-based Radlo Brothers pledged to stop distributing eggs from chickens kept in cages.

According to a statement issued by Egg-land’s Best, after “a thorough investigation, we have discovered that Radlo Foods violated the terms of our agreement by working with a farm that is not in compliance with our strict animal welfare standards.”

It continues: “As a result, we have also sent Radlo Foods a letter of termination that will affect the production and processing of our classic brown eggs.”

Egg-land’s decision led Radlo to change its company practices, Chief Executive Officer David Radlo said.

“We are proud to officially pledge to stop using cage confinement systems and implement a plan of becoming an exclusively cage-free company within 10 years,” Radlo said.

“We are one of the largest cage-free producers of eggs, and we strive to have a good record,” he said. “We want to have positive progress. We are listening to our customers now, and we are doing the best that we can.”

Radlo Brothers will be the first national egg producer to end confinement of hens in so-called battery cages, according to Paul Shapiro, senior director of the Factory Farming Campaign of the Humane Society of the United States.

“Radlo’s commitment to phase out battery cage confinement will help raise the bar when it comes to animal welfare in the egg industry,” Shapiro said, urging other egg producers to follow in the company’s footsteps.

U.S. consumers may be ready for such a change, Shapiro said.

In November, California voters approved Proposition 2, the so-called Treatment of Farm Animals statute, requiring in-state egg-laying factory farms to confine animals humanely, with space enough to allow them to “lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.” Failure to comply will bring a heavy fine and possible jail time.

That first-in-the-nation law is set to take effect in 2015, and is predicted to increase egg production costs by as much as 20 percent, according to a University of California study. The change could push large farmers out of the nation’s largest agricultural state, one of the top egg-producing states in the nation, the study found.

Shapiro disagrees, and predicted that consumers prefer knowing animals are humanely treated. He said the law is likely to spark similar moves in other states.

The European Union outlawed battery cages in 1999, phasing in cage-free operations by 2012.

The action by Egg-land’s Best and Radlo’s subsequent action follows a complaint filed by Mercy for Animals with the Maine Department of Agriculture. The complaint alleges abuse and mistreatment of hens at Quality Egg of New England and Maine Contract Farms, both located at 292 Plains Road in Turner. The operation has an estimated 4 million laying hens.

The farm issued a statement last week, saying the abuses documented in video and audio recordings by an undercover Mercy for Animals investigator were the actions of three of the plant’s “almost 95 employees.”

A call to A.J. DeCoster of Maine Contract Farms was not returned Monday.

Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy For Animals, applauded Radlo’s decision to phase out cages.

“We hope this will dramatically reduce the suffering of the birds and hope the entire egg industry will take notice and take similar measures,” Runkle said. “It’s an issue the egg companies and the distributors need to take very seriously,” he said, commending Radlo for “making this kind of unprecedented move.”

After animal abuse allegations came to light last week, Radlo said his company ceased working with Maine Contract Farms. The Turner operation had provided eggs to Radlo, an egg re-seller based in Watertown, Mass., which then provided eggs to the Philadelphia-based Egg-land’s Best.

Egg-land pledges on its egg cartons that its eggs are “produced in accordance with Egg-land’s Best patented, all vegetarian hen feeding program.”

Radlo, which already sells free-range, free-range organic and cage-free eggs, will continue supplying eggs through other Maine operations, as well as bringing eggs in from out-of-state.

“It’s Easter time, and this is the highest season demand we have, the busiest time of the year for supplying eggs,” Radlo said. “We want to tell our consumers we will do what we can to continue supplying eggs.”

Egg-land’s Best spokeswoman Katy Gray said her company would bolster its Maine sales with out-of-state eggs shipped from Florida, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Egg-land’s Best buys cage-free eggs from farms in Winthrop and in Pennsylvania, and its organic eggs from farms in Michigan.

Last week, the animal protection organization Mercy for Animals released photos, a video and a diary of observations made during a December through March undercover investigation by one of its members who claims to have witnessed evidence of animal cruelty at the former DeCoster Egg Farms operation. State agriculture officials spent Wednesday investigating the plant under a search warrant, and removing evidence that included live and dead chickens.

That plant, registered as plant 1183 according to the United States Department of Agriculture, is located on Plains Road in Turner and operated by Maine Contract Farms, producing eggs for Radlo Brothers.

A second plant serving Mountain Hollow Farms and registered as number 1181 is under a similar contract, Radlo said. The company plans to re-evaluate that operation after Easter.

“And then we have a third plant, plant 1182, which is 15 miles away in Leeds, and we manage the farm and the producing barns as well as the plant,” Radlo said. “We’ve operated that plant for well over a decade, and we have an impeccable record there.”

Radlo defended the company’s overall health, safety and animal rights record, saying he was surprised to learn of the allegations at the Turner operation.

According to State Veterinarian Dr. Donald Hoening, the complaint filed against the Turner operation is only the third complaint he has received regarding inhumane treatment of animals at a Maine egg farm since 2001, the most recent of which was in December 2008.

In that case, a couple in Belmont complained after seeing a truck loaded with cages that contained dead and live chickens, and also seeing a live bird sitting on top of the truck. Hoening said his office contacted the company and told it it was unacceptable to have a live bird on top the truck. The company explained that the dead birds were being transported with the live birds because there had been some deaths in its barn, and it had to put the birds in cages to dispose of them.

Copies of the reports on the complaints could not be produced by the Department of Agriculture on Monday. The department responded to a formal request for information under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act by saying information in the reports would have to be reviewed and redacted before being made public.

Hoening also said that the Turner operation, in defending the allegations against it, has exaggerated the amount of time state inspectors are at the facility and has unfairly portrayed a health inspector’s role at the farm.

According to Maine Contract Farming, a state inspector tours the barns without an escort on an “almost daily basis.” Hoening said that just isn’t the case. The state health inspector is employed only half-time to inspect poultry operations for disease.

“It is not true” that any state inspector is at the Turner plant 40 hours per week, Hoening said, although the state’s poultry health inspector has “not indicated he has grave concerns about any animal welfare issues over there” in the past.

Sun Journal managing editor for days Judith Meyer contributed to this report.