Butterball's House of Horrors

Butterball workers were documented punching and stomping on live turkeys, slamming them against walls, and worse during an undercover investigation at a Butterball slaughterhouse in Ozark, Arkansas.

One Butterball employee stomped on a bird's head until her skull exploded, another swung a turkey against a metal handrail so hard that her spine popped out, and another was seen inserting his finger into a turkey's cloaca (vagina).

One worker told an investigator: "If you jump on their stomachs right, they'll pop ... or their insides will come out of their [rectums]," and other Butterball workers frequently bragged about kicking and tormenting birds.

Read the investigators' log notes:

April 6: "Workers were cruelly slamming live birds in shackles, and one strangled a bird to death. One worker said he likes to kill birds for 'fun,' and pointed out one he had punched in the face."

April 13: "One worker was inserting his finger into a turkey's vagina [cloaca] for 'fun' during a break when the line was stopped. Another worker said he could paralyze birds by punching their necks in a certain way and demonstrated this on one bird."

April 26: "One of the more experienced and revered hangers told workers to violently slam birds into the shackles rather than just setting them in there, and did this multiple times to the same bird. He also threw birds across the room onto the concrete floor."

May 2: "One frustrated worker kicked a bird in the head and another broke a bird's neck so that her head was touching her back. He laughed about this. Another worker was slamming birds into the shackles."

May 3: "One worker swung a turkey like a baseball bat into the metal bar of the trailer. He did this again later, slamming a bird into a handrail. I could see the bird's spine and there was a lot of blood. He laughed about this."

May 8: "One worker took a live bird and stomped on her head, crushing her skull until her head exploded. He then laughed and wiped the blood from his leg. He also threw birds against the concrete and punched others."

May 16: "A worker threw birds at the concrete wall, and he and two other workers threw dead birds at the live ones."

June 5: "There was a live bird with only one leg and a bloody body in a shackle. A worker looked at her and started laughing-he had ripped her leg from her body when she became stuck between two coops."

June 8: "A worker slammed turkeys into the shackles with one hand-many missed and hit the wall."

July 13: "One worker grabbed a bird by her legs and jerked her back and forth toward another worker to tease him-the second worker grabbed her and punched her to push her back. Later, another worker grabbed the head of a live turkey poking through the coop, twisted the bird's head around and handed it to another worker, who pulled the head while the first worker punched and kicked her neck. They were trying to decapitate her."

July 25: "A worker violently threw birds into the shackles and grabbed one by her neck, and another worker humped a bird whose legs and head he had crammed into the shackle."

July 26: "One worker smashed birds into the shackles. A pool of water had collected at our ankles. The guys would throw the turkeys into the water and kick them to make them splash, then kill them to make them stop splashing."

PETA's investigators discovered these horrors between April and July, 2006, during an undercover investigation at a Butterball plant that slaughters approximately 50,000 birds each day.

Why Does This Abuse Happen?

Butterball turkeys are killed using a process that involves hanging live birds by their legs, shocking them in an electrified bath of water so that they become paralyzed (though they still feel pain), slitting their throats, and then running them through a tank of scalding-hot water for defeathering.

Because Butterball's current slaughter method gives workers access to live birds, the animals often suffer when workers become frustrated or bored and desensitized, as was the case at this Butterball plant and the other poultry plants that PETA has investigated.

Even though they constitute more than 98 percent of the land animals eaten in the United States, birds are excluded from coverage under the only federal law designed to protect animals during slaughter, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA).

What the Experts Say:

Animal Welfare Experts Comment on PETA’s Undercover Investigation of Butterball

Academic and professional experts in bird welfare, veterinary medicine, and slaughter systems reviewed the video footage from PETA’s undercover investigation of Butterball. Below are some of their statements:

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., P.A.S.

Dr. Grandin is perhaps the world’s leading expert on farmed-animal welfare. She is an associate professor of livestock behavior at Colorado State University and an animal welfare advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the meat industry. She has designed equipment and systems that are in use in numerous slaughter facilities nationwide. Dr. Grandin states:

• "There was definitely abusive handling [at this plant]."
• "The management of this plant is obviously not training and supervising [its] employees."
• "This plant has both severe animal welfare problems and a lack of management that needs correcting."

Donald M. Broom, Ph.D.

Dr. Broom is a world-renowned expert on farmed-animal behavior and welfare. He is a professor of animal welfare in the Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge. He has served as an animal welfare advisor to governments, including serving as chair of the European Union Scientific Veterinary Committee (Animal Welfare Section). Dr. Broom states

• "Some of the incidents shown in this video are of workers' moving turkeys on to or off shackling line[s] very quickly, whilst other sequences show deliberate abuse of turkeys."
• "Grabbing birds roughly, throwing birds, forcing birds into shackles, and moving birds in such a way that the head or other parts of the body hit equipment, as shown in [the video], are all grounds for prosecution for cruelty …."
• "In [the video], a turkey is swung and hit against equipment, so that [his or her] head or body impacts with a force that would be sufficient to cause bone breakage. … [A] worker sits on a turkey, causing [the animal] to struggle and probably breaking bones and damaging internal organs. … [A] worker appears to simulate copulation with a turkey and then forces [his or her] head into a shackle designed for the legs. … Each of the persons involved was causing very poor welfare with pain and distress that was unnecessary."

Lesley Rogers, Ph.D.

Dr. Rogers founded the Research Centre for Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour in the School of Biological, Biomedical, and Molecular Sciences at the University of New England, where she is a professor of neuroscience and animal behavior. She is also a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, serves on the Australian Vice Chancellors’ Committee (Animal Research Review Panel), and has served as president of the Australian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Dr. Rogers states:

• "[I]t is clear [from the video] that these birds are being handled inhumanely."
• "The behavior of the workers is unprofessional, violent, and very distressing …."
• "The birds are stressed severely and killed in a way that means they take a long time to die. Added to this, individual birds are bashed and killed in a rough and inefficient way. I was appalled to see what was going on."

Laurie Siperstein-Cook, D.V.M.

Dr. Siperstein-Cook is an avian veterinarian in Davis, California. She is an expert on bird welfare and has testified before the California Legislature on the subject. Dr. Siperstein-Cook states:

• "Workers at this plant are not following standard handling practices as part of their routine work unloading and shackling turkeys. Workers are seen violently throwing birds into shackles, including occasions where the birds miss the shackles entirely and strike the floor. One bird is grabbed by the neck and yanked into the air. This kind of treatment is likely to cause bruising and broken bones and is inconsistent with a basic regard for animal welfare. Either the plant has failed to train these workers in proper handling, or it allows such training to be completely ignored."
• "Repeated incidents of kicking and punching birds and slamming them against objects are clear incidents of cruelty to animals and do not constitute a normal or accepted agricultural practice."
• "The behavior documented at this plant is reprehensible. These individuals and anyone else responsible for allowing this behavior to continue should be prosecuted. They certainly should not be permitted to handle animals."
• "The slaughter plant apparently has created an atmosphere of tolerance for cruelty to animals. Workers openly boast about beating animals and making their eyes pop out. One worker advises the investigator to hit struggling turkeys. The workers shown abusing animals show no reluctance to mistreat animals in plain view of coworkers. A respectable facility would not tolerate a workplace culture of complete lack of regard for animal welfare as this one does. This facility has a serious animal welfare problem."

Lotta Berg, Ph.D.

Dr. Berg is a veterinary officer at the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency. She participates in expert groups on bird welfare for the European Union and is a member of the Working Group on Poultry Welfare of the European branch of the World Poultry Science Association. Dr. Berg states:

• "It is evident that the handling of the turkeys during unloading and shackling seen on the video shots provided by PETA is not in accordance with good practice."
• "Both rough handling in general … and cases of deliberate violence will cause unnecessary suffering in the birds, and it cannot be assumed that this suffering is mild or short-lasting."
• "At a very minimum, these acts of cruelty, negligence, or indifference appear to demonstrate unsatisfactory training and lack of oversight by the slaughter plant management regarding … good animal welfare practice."

Because no federal law protects chickens and turkeys slaughtered for food, no federal charges could be pursued for the cruelty to animals exposed by PETA and confirmed by the USDA's own findings. Even with overwhelming evidence, the local prosecutor declined to charge Butterball for cruelty to animals under Arkansas state law. Despite knowledge of this abuse, Butterball has failed to switch to a slaughter method that would prevent most of the abuse from happening: controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK). CAK is a process in which birds are killed with inert gas, which is far less cruel than Butterball's current killing method, which allows workers to sadistically abuse live animals and for birds to be scalded to death in defeathering tanks while they are still conscious.

Source: Peta