A poultry farm in northern England was subject to a horrific tragedy after a computer glitch caused tens of thousands of chickens to overheat and die. Hose Lodge Farm in Colston Bassett, Nottinghamshire, is being fined for the security error. According to the farm, there were roughly 50,000 chickens inside the shed when the building closed its doors for a scheduled rest period. Due to a computer malfunction in the process that regulated air flow to the shed, the tunnel ventilation system did not open and the shed became a sealed unit. The temperature inside rose rapidly.
By the time the farm’s staff realized the computer glitch, more than half of the chickens had died. An investigation into the incident by a local County Council found that the shed also contained a misconfiguration in its alarm system, which was set off to ring at 37°C (98.6°F) instead of 27°C (80.6°F). The incident is indicative of how a simple error in security processes or configurations can have disastrous consequences.
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