I SOLEMNLY SWEAR I AM UP TO NO GOOD - EMAIL: CHRISTAYLOR2003@COMCAST.NET

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Kitchen Fresh Chicken
 
Why I'm a vegetarian, part 476:

An animal rights group involved in a long legal dispute with Kentucky Fried Chicken about the treatment of the 700 million chickens it buys each year was to release a videotape yesterday showing slaughterhouse workers for one of its suppliers jumping up and down on live chickens, drop-kicking them like footballs and slamming them into walls, apparently for fun.
 
Prominent veterinarians, including those on the company's animal-welfare advisory board, called for shutting down the plant and dismissing or prosecuting its managers. Ian Duncan, an animal and poultry science professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, who is a KFC adviser, said the tape "contains some of the worst scenes of animal cruelty that I have ever witnessed."

A Pilgrim's Pride spokesman said the company had an anonymous report about poultry mistreatment at the plant in April and had made it clear to its workers that "any such behavior would result in immediate termination." In light of the tape, the company said, it will reopen its investigation.

The undercover investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation and still does undercover work for the group, said he saw "hundreds" of acts of cruelty, including workers tearing beaks off, ripping a bird's head off to write graffiti in blood, spitting tobacco juice into birds' mouths, plucking feathers to "make it snow," suffocating a chicken by tying a latex glove over its head and squeezing them like balloons in order to spary feces at other birds.

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