Ten employees of a Tyson chicken farm in Accomack were fired Tuesday after Compassion Over Killing, a Washington-based animal rights advocacy group released graphic video that appeared to depict workers beating chickens to death.
The video shows workers stabbing, crushing and stomping on chicks at a Tyson Foods contractor in Temperanceville, Va.. In the video, sick or injured birds appear to be killed, run over by forklifts or impaled on nails stuck into pipes, while dying chickens are thrown into piles of dead ones.
“You need to kill him? Hit him on the head, then kill him,” one worker asks in the video.
In a statement, Tyson said it terminated its contract with the farm and removed its birds from the facility. Ten employees of the farm were fired, the statement said.
Tyson also said it would conduct a video conference with senior managers at poultry facilities to “stress our cultural commitment to proper animal handling.”
Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns in Machipongo told the Mirror, “This investigation reminds us of the fact, repeatedly documented, that the chicken industry fosters sadistic behavior in its employees. It’s the nature of the business. Decades of investigations in the U.S., Canada and Britain have shown the same human viciousness we see here. Don’t wait for this industry to improve – it won’t. The one good, kind, compassionate, productive thing each person can do, and should do, is to choose food that is animal-free. A mouthful of misery is not heart healthy.”
Compassion Over Killing, an animal rights group, released video that shows the abuse of sick or injured chickens at Atlantic Farms in Temperanceville, Va.(Compassion Over Killing)
Sad. I used to drive by here often. Try to buy local if you can from a real family farmer. Don’t trust the packaging.
Thank you very much for your article and for including my comment and the view of United Poultry Concerns in your coverage of the latest video investigation of a Tyson facility in which workers torture chickens as a routine part of their occupation. While it may seem like Tyson will take some sort of action (already saying the company fired 10 employees shown in the video), this is very unlikely. Where animals are concerned, and especially where farmed animals and especially birds are concerned, there is no oversight either by the industry or the government.
Regardless, this is a business whose very essence is violence and the killing of animals, and all for nothing, since nobody needs to eat an animal in order to be healthy. I hope the coverage of the Compassion Over Killing exposure will wean people away from the idea that it’s okay to kill animals just for “taste,” conformity, and convenience. Meanwhile, there is a growing wealth of animal-free foods at our local Food Lion stores here on the Eastern Shore. There’s no good reason to have the dripping dead body of a chicken, turkey, cow or any other creature in a shopping cart.
Karen Davis, President, United Poultry Concerns http://www.upc-online.org
If a Republican doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a Democrat doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a Republican is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.
If a Democrat is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a Republican is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a Democrat is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.
If a Republican is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A Democrat wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a Republican doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Democrats demand that those they don’t like be shut down.
If a Republican is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A Democrat non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.
If a Republican decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A Democrat demands that the rest of us pay for his.
If a Republican reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A Democrat will delete it because he’s “offended”.
Republicans respect the opposition opinion
Democrats will assault anyone who oppose them.
If Republicans have a rally, it’s peaceful and they leave the place cleaner then when they got there.
When Democrats have a rally, they loot and destroy the businesses in the area, and trash the place where they gather.