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Maine farmers have blamed recent changes at the U.S. Postal Service after receiving thousands of dead baby chicks due to shipping delays. The state’s postal workers blamed the slowdown on a bill championed by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that “weakened the Postal Service” — and faces a tough re-election battle this fall.

At least 4,800 chicks shipped to Maine farmers through the USPS have arrived dead in recent weeks, the Portland Press Herald reported.

“It’s one more of the consequences of this disorganization, this sort of chaos they’ve created at the post office and nobody thought through when they were thinking of slowing down the mail,” Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, told the newspaper. “This is a system that’s always worked before and it’s worked very well until these changes started being made.”

Operational changes made by recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a top donor to President Trump and the Republican Party, have been blamed for a mail slowdown that has impacted shipments of medication, government aid and other vital services. DeJoy has said the cash-strapped agency implemented the changes as cost-cutting measures.

“Shortly after or right at the same time that [DeJoy] came on board … the company line was that it was a cost-saving measure,” Kimberly Karol, president of the Iowa Postal Workers Union, told Salon. “But the reality is that it impacts service standards and, whether intentionally or not, this changes the time frames that our customers receive the mail.”

Postal workers say the agency would not be in a financial hole if not for the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), a bill co-sponsored by Collins back in 2005. The bill required the agency to pre-fund retirement health benefits 75 years in advance, something not required of any other federal entity.

Collins said on the Senate floor in 2006 that it was “not a perfect bill” but “I am convinced it will put the U.S. Postal Service on a sound financial footing for years to come.”

Instead, the agency’s financial troubles have largely been the result of the mandate in the law, which passed with bipartisan support in 2006 during a lame-duck session before Democrats took over the Senate.

“That kind of put us in a hole on paper and made it look like we were losing money,” Mark Seitz, president of the National Association Letter Carriers, Local 92 union, told the Maine Beacon.

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