Skittles manufacturer Mars Inc. is investigating the intended destination of a load of the candy after a spill left a Wisconsin roadway “tasting the rainbow” instead of its potential consumers -- cattle.
Hundreds of thousands of red Skittles spilled out onto a Dodge County highway the night of Jan. 18, according to the Dodge County Sheriff's Office. Initially, investigators were unclear on how the massive amount of candy ended up on the road, but further investigation found that a cardboard box being trucked from a northern Illinois Mars factory was soaked by rain and broke open.
"It is reported that the Skittles were intended to be feed for cattle, as they did not make the cut for packaging at the company," the Sheriff's Office reported on its Facebook page. "In the end, these Skittles are actually for the birds!"
The intended use of the candy had some people who visited the Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page upset.
“As a dairy farmer, I find this appalling, (farmers) feeding their animals Skittles,” wrote Janeen Hall Cole, of Bancroft, Michigan. “It is giving decent farmers a bad name.”
Josh Albrecht, of Scotts Valley, California, pointed out that liquid feed manufacturers get the sugar and corn syrup they use in their feed from sources including candy.
“Of course, they don’t direct feed them Skittles, but they take the waste or non-sellable products (including candy) and process them into feed,” Albrecht wrote.
Mars confirmed to the Wisconsin State Journal that some of its unused product does get sold for use in feed, but said that the factory that made the candy spilled last week does not usually sell its unused inventory for that purpose. The Skittles in question were supposed to be destroyed after a power outage at the plant resulted in the candy's signature "S" imprint being left off of the individual pieces.
Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt told the newspaper, however, that he had spoken to the farmer the shipment of candy was intended for.
A Mars spokeswoman said that the company planned to contact both law enforcement and the farmer to learn more about what happened.
"We don't know how it ended up as it did, and we are investigating," the company said.
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