Description
Tyson Workers Caught Torturing Birds, Urinating on Slaughter Line
Have you ever wondered about the ingredients in the Colonel's secret
recipe chicken? If the flesh came from Tyson Foods, a major KFC
supplier, there's a chance the big secret is that the bird was coated
in human waste before reaching the dinner plate.
PETA conducted an undercover investigation in 2004/2005 at a Heflin,
Alabama, Tyson slaughterhouse, but even that did not prepare us for the
disgusting acts that would be documented during two 2007
investigations. On nine separate days, PETA's investigator saw workers
urinating in the live-hang area, including on the conveyor belt that
moves birds to slaughter.
The investigator also documented sickening cruelty to animals in
both the Georgia and Tennessee slaughterhouses. Supervisors at both
facilities either were directly involved in the abuse or were made
aware of it by the investigator—but they did not stop it. In addition
to the cuts and broken limbs suffered by live chickens at nearly every
slaughterhouse, the investigator documented the following:
- One worker admitted that he broke a chicken's back by beating the
bird against a rail, a back-up killer stabbed birds in the neck area
with knives, and several birds were hung from shackles by their necks
instead of by their legs.
- PETA's investigator caught on videotape a supervisor telling him
that it was acceptable to rip the heads off live birds who had been
improperly shackled by the head.
- Workers—sometimes standing 4 to 6 feet away from the conveyor
belt—violently threw birds at the shackles. Some animals slammed into
the shackles and fell onto birds on the conveyor belt below, at which
point the worker sometimes repeated the abuse.
- Birds died when their heads and legs became trapped under a door at
the end of the conveyor belt that transported live birds to be hung. A
supervisor was aware of this problem but did nothing to stop it.
- The killing-machine blade often cut birds' bodies instead of their
throats. Although aware of this problem, a supervisor offered no
solution, instead blaming the problem on the "nature of the machine."
PETA has written to Tyson Foods and asked the company to fire all
the workers who were responsible for the abuse documented in these two
facilities, immediately install video cameras on all killing floors and
in all hang areas, and hire its own undercover investigators to look
for and report cruelty. We are also calling on Tyson and KFC to phase
in a far less cruel method of slaughter known as controlled-atmosphere
killing, which would eliminate worker contact with live animals.
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