Mercy for Animals (MFA) has just released an investigation exposing the unthinkable but all-too-common practice of live chicks being thrown, dumped, and ground alive at a hatchery owned by Maple Lodge Farms, which produces chickens for meat. Many chicks here are resigned to doom before they’re even born.

Machines separate newly-hatched chicks from their eggs. The chicks are then dropped onto crowded conveyor belts, where injury and death are common due to careless handling by workers.

Chicks deemed too ill- or injured-looking are thrown into a macerator, a machine used specifically for turning solids into small pieces – in other words, these poor babies are ground up alive.

A whistleblower at the hatchery witnessed the senseless slaughtering of 25,000 chicks, thrown into the macerator in a “business as usual” fashion – simply because an order for their meat was canceled.

When chicks aren’t tossed nonchalantly into the macerator, workers kill them in equally appalling ways: sometimes by snapping their necks manually or ripping off their heads. In the factory farming industry, these gruesome practices are considered par for the course.

The ugly truth about industrialized farming is difficult to face; however, it takes little effort to do your part. How easy is it? By simply refraining from eating the products made from these innocent victims, you’re taking a stand against these cruel practices.