The secret video of Tyson Foods workers committing animal abuse against chickens is getting a visceral reaction from some folks who have watched the shocking video. It’s inhumane to stand on a chicken’s head and let him suffocate, say the workers in the video who can be seen punching and cruelly killing chickens.
As reported by the Washington Post , the undercover video is full of behavior that shouldn’t go on in a chicken processing facility. The video shows the extremely cruel treatment of the chickens, some of whom are run over by trucks and placed in piles to die.
On Facebook, Tyson Foods called the video subjects’ actions disgusting and noted that the people in the video had been fired.
People are reacting on Twitter and Facebook to the torture and abuse seen in the video. There’s a process called “boning” that stabs chickens through their noses so the chickens can’t feed via certain machines. The process starves the young birds on purpose. Other chickens are genetically manipulated while some chickens are passed through a vaccinations assembly line where they are grabbed and poked with needles.
In the undercover video, one Tyson Foods worker comments that it’s enough to make a person not want to eat the chickens “with all that s*** going in them.” The Tyson Foods worker appears to be speaking about the substances that are injected into the chickens without specifying what types of hormones are being used.
The viral video does explain that some chickens are manipulated to grow unnaturally large. Meanwhile, on Thursday, August 11, Tyson Foods responded on Facebook to the upsetting video.
“This past week we were made aware of a video produced by an animal and vegetarian advocacy group that shows improper treatment of birds by some of our employees on chicken breeder farms in Virginia. We are disgusted by the actions of the individuals in the video. We do not tolerate this type of activity, and all of the employees in the video have been fired. It was an obvious decision given that the entire crew was trained in proper animal handling yet chose to ignore it and failed to alert management of the mistreatment.”
“In addition to firing these individuals, we are taking the following actions: Over the next few days, we will be meeting with everyone in poultry operations who handles live birds to aggressively re-emphasize the importance of proper animal handling and the consequences of not complying with the company’s animal welfare policies.”
“We have already reached out to local authorities who will decide whether to pursue criminal charges against these individuals, and we will fully cooperate with their investigation.”
Tyson Foods also went on to say that the boning procedure used for beak modification seen in the viral video is something that the chicken industry has used for years, but the company has been cutting out the process in all of their chicken facilities except for two of them. Perhaps as a result of the undercover video, Tyson now plans to immediately discontinue boning at the last two facilities as well.
“Compassion Over Killing” is the name of the animal advocacy group that exposed the behavior of Tyson Foods workers. In the video, the chickens appear to cry out in pain at some of the procedures used on the chickens.
Meanwhile, Perdue recently said they plan to kill chickens in a more humane way by using argon gas or carbon dioxide to kill the chickens. In the viral video, however, the animal rights group urged people to keep chicken off their plates to ensure food facilities won’t abuse chickens in the future.
[Photo by April L. Brown/AP Images]