COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- The owner of Ohio's largest egg producer says he's pulling out of the business in Ohio within five years and will start a new venture in eastern Europe. "I am burned out working with the state and not getting anything accomplished," Buckeye Egg owner Anton Pohlmann said Friday.
Buckeye Egg's 15 million hens produce 4 percent of the nation's eggs. Since December, the company has faced a series of legal and environmental troubles.
A state lawsuit accused Buckeye Egg of dumping dead chickens in a field, polluting creeks, and causing infestations of flies, beetles and other insects.
The lawsuit was in response to complaints from neighbors of Buckeye Egg operations in Wyandot, Licking, Hardin and Marion counties. A trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 3 in Newark.
"I am frustrated in dealing with these people. I feel they did not treat me fair," Pohlmann said. "We are not perfect but we tried very hard for years here."
Pohlmann said he will sell 5.7 million laying hens and 2 million pullets at facilities in Mount Victory, Marseilles, Goshen and Larue, and lease the operations to other U.S. egg producers.
At Buckeye Egg's Croton facility, where a tornado destroyed a laying barn last month, he will concentrate on rebuilding that barn and remodeling other barns, then pull out of the operation within five years.
"I want to fix up Croton and then I'm going to leave," Pohlmann said.
Beginning in January, he will lease a hatchery and a breeding operation at Croton to an outside partnership, he said.
Pohlmann is also selling his home and horse barn. The central Ohio equestrian estate is listed for $10 million with R.K. Morris & Associates in New Albany, a Columbus suburb. An ad in The Wall Street Journal says the 2-year-old Hartford Farm has a 7,000-square-foot home with indoor pool and a 70-stall barn/stadium with arena, lounge and office.
Pohlmann said he built the horse farm -- which adjoins the egg farm -- for his daughter, a horse enthusiast. But she did not want to leave the family's home in Germany.
Pohlmann, 61, a German, said he plans to start a new operation in Eastern Europe but would not say where. He confirmed that his son Stefan is starting a poultry operation in the Czech Republic, but his new venture won't be there, Pohlmann said.
Pohlmann once owned Germany's biggest chicken-farming business but has been banned for life from owning any animals there.
A German court convicted him in 1996 of cruelty to animals, violating German drug laws and failing to provide aid to a former employee who was injured when he used an illegal nicotine-based spray to treat chickens for mites. Pohlmann was sentenced to two years on probation and fined $2 million.
A charge of failing to provide medical aid against Stefan Pohlmann was dropped on condition he pay a $65,000 fine.
Dan Perkins, a Buckeye Egg critic, says he doubts Pohlmann's departure will do much to improve the situation.
"It produces too much manure and too many flies," said Perkins, who has lived for 52 years on a farm next to Buckeye Egg and is suing the company.
Most of Buckeye Egg's difficulties complying with the state's environmental laws can be traced to the poor condition of its facilities in Licking County, said Jennifer Detwiler, spokeswoman for Ohio attorney general Betty Montgomery.
"The fact that we're suing him for violating environmental laws -- I don't think that would necessarily be considered unfair," Detwiler said Friday.:
