Non-profit animal rights organization Mercy For Animals has released a shocking video detailing the horrifying processes used in high-speed poultry slaughterhouses. Innocent animals are subjected to agonizing torture and workers are put in danger due to the pace at which they’re required to work.
An undercover investigator captured the sobering hidden-camera footage at a Maryland poultry factory, where fully-conscious birds are shackled and hung upside-down, immersed in electrified water, and slit across the throat. At one point during the investigation, a facility-wide power outage forced helpless birds to spend over an hour dangling from their feet as they waited to die.
Under recently revised USDA standards, slaughter lines can move at hazardous pace, killing up to 175 chickens per minute. This forces employees to work at an unreasonable rate, jeopardizing their safety and increasing their risk of injury.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has drawn much-needed attention to the inevitable hazards of slaughterhouse and factory farm environments, where workers are required to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and frequently come into contact with live animals, giving dangerous zoonotic viruses potential opportunities to “make the jump” to human hosts.
This investigation makes it clear: high-speed slaughter has to go.
