Appalled by what he observed for years at Perdue and Allen's Family Foods poultry slaughter plants in the Delmarva region, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) slaughterhouse inspector approached PETA to blow the whistle on the routine and systematic animal abuse that he observed while plant veterinarians looked the other way.
According to the inspector, trucks arrived at the plant piled high with birds who had died from exposure—many animals froze to death after spending hours in subzero temperatures during the winter or died from the heat in the summer. Among those who survived the trip, diseases from inhumane farm conditions and severe bruising from abusive handling were sometimes so rampant that nearly half the birds were condemned as unfit for human consumption.
The inspector described how workers forced birds into shackles so hard that many of their legs were obviously broken. Sometimes live birds were thrown in the condemned barrels to suffocate under the dead birds. Workers sometimes kicked birds who fell off the line. During frequent equipment failures, many birds died in their shackles while waiting for repairs to be made. Even when things were working, the electrical stunner was ineffective and birds would avoid the mechanical knife. Workers had to slit the throats of these conscious birds by hand; many still did not die and were scalded to death in defeathering tanks while they were still conscious.
According to the whistleblower, the USDA veterinarians he worked with at the plants were “completely useless” and showed absolutely no interest in animal welfare. Almost uniformly, they were hired from third-world countries and had dubious credentials and little knowledge with regard to veterinary care. One plant veterinarian slept in his office all day, and workers knew he was not to be disturbed.
Federal inspectors and veterinarians complain that those who are concerned about animal welfare face threats from their superiors if they try to do their job; inspectors have been sued for stopping slaughter lines and punished for refusing to falsify documents.
Birds froze to death or died of heatstroke while waiting to be unloaded from cramped transport cages.
Whistleblower Complaint: Statement of a Former USDA Inspector
I worked for a number of years as a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) slaughterhouse inspector. I inspected facilities that slaughtered cows, pigs, and goats, but most of the time, I worked at a Perdue poultry slaughter plant and an Allen's Family Foods poultry slaughter plant in the Delmarva region. During that time, I observed systematic and routine cruelty to animals. These abuses were not isolated incidents or restricted to a single facility—they were routine and accepted by the industry.
Chickens arrived at the slaughter plant already showing signs of mistreatment. As a result of inadequate conditions on the farms where the birds were raised, disease was rampant. Sometimes close to half of the birds coming in had to be condemned as unfit for human consumption because of air sacculitis or inflammatory process, which results from inhumane living conditions. Inspectors condemned many birds—it could be 100 or more in a night—because they were covered with severe bruises. Many other birds were not condemned but had body parts so bruised that they had to be cut off their carcasses. These bruises were probably inflicted by chicken gatherers' violently grabbing them and throwing them onto trucks or by slaughterhouse workers' forcing them into shackles. Walking around the plant, I'd see the piles of dead birds, including those who were mutilated or ripped apart by the machinery—I'd guess that about another 100 or so birds a night were condemned for such reasons even before they reached the inspection floor. Sometimes these birds are still alive when they're thrown in the condemned barrels, their wings are still flapping, and they just get dead birds thrown on top of them.
Chickens were transported to slaughter stuffed inside little cages on the back of flatbed trucks, completely exposed to the elements and without any food or water. They were often trucked in from farms several hours away and then sat for hours more on the trucks waiting to be unloaded. In the summer, birds regularly died from the extreme heat. On a really hot day, massive numbers of birds would arrive dead. I'd see 10 to 15 industrial-size barrels 5 feet high, each filled with dead birds. In the winter, birds had no protection while exposed for hours to below-freezing temperatures and extreme wind chill while traveling at 65 miles per hour. In many cases, by the time a truck was unloaded, birds had already frozen to death.
The chickens were dumped from their cages into the hanging area, where the mostly immigrant workers grabbed the birds and forced their legs into shackles as fast as they could. Workers would tell me about abusive treatment of birds in the hanging area, but no one seemed to care. I could see from the way the birds were hanging by their legs that many of their legs were broken. The birds are then dragged hanging upside-down by their legs through an electric trawl, which is supposed to stun them before a mechanical knife slits their throats. However, they did not look stunned to me, and many were pulling their heads away from the knife, so the plant had to place a worker there to cut their throats by hand while they were still conscious. The worker's face would be covered in chicken blood. Sometimes the machine was broken, so workers slit the throats of all the birds by hand while the birds were still conscious. Other times the machine was not working properly, and it missed maybe every fifth bird. In spite of the back-up killers, many birds were still alive when they were submerged in tanks of scalding-hot water used to loosen their feathers. They were dragged through the scalding-hot water for 15 to 20 feet, until they drowned. You could tell they were alive when they entered the tanks because they come out beet-red and full of blood. On an average night, about 150 birds died this way. On a bad night, it could easily be more than 1,000 birds. The inspectors condemned these birds.
Sometimes chickens fell off the kill line. Workers would often just ignore these birds and sometimes kick them. On a typical night there were 10 to 15 birds running around somewhere in the plant, often hiding in a dark corner. At the end of the day, workers used hoses and washed these live birds away with all the feces, blood, and dead carcasses and dumped them in barrels where they probably suffocated to death. In addition, equipment breakdowns were frequent, and when they occurred, chickens hanging on the line were sometimes left there for several hours. A lot of them died there while waiting for repairs. They had to be pulled off the line before equipment was started up again.
USDA veterinarians at the plants showed no interest in the welfare of the animals. I have never seen any of these veterinarians enforce any form of humane treatment. They simply do not care. [Editor's Note: The few who do care can be punished for doing their jobs.] It appears to me that they do not want to cause trouble when it could cause a loss of production or money at the plant. These veterinarians are mostly from third-world countries like Pakistan, India, and Egypt, and their training seems questionable, because they did not seem very knowledgeable. They were all completely useless. One USDA veterinarian would spend all day sleeping in his office. Everyone knew that he was never to be bothered. Once in a while he'd walk up and down the plant, and when people would come to him with problems, he would just tell them, "It's OK. Let it go."
I observed an enormous amount of abuse and suffering at these slaughter plants. On some days, after coming home from work, I'd grab my little dog and just cry. In the past couple of years, I've become a complete vegetarian.
Signed,
[Name withheld to protect the whistleblower]
Note about the Inspectors: Struggling to Do Their Jobs
Roughly 10 billion animals are killed in the US’s slaughterhouses each year, and many slaughterhouses now kill thousands of animals each day. The fast pace makes it difficult for inspectors to even keep up with the paperwork and the bacterial testing that are called for under HACCP, let alone go down the processing line and physically inspect carcasses. Inspector Paul D. Johnson explains: “Excessively high speed on slaughter lines is what causes contamination and introduces pathogens to the carcasses. Instead of maintaining or slowing line speeds, the government is approving higher speeds.”
Even if the government slowed down the lines to give inspectors enough time to do their jobs, the bureaucracy of the USDA often prevents them from taking any action to stop contaminated meat from entering our food supply. Felicia Nastor, food-safety director for the Government Accountability Project, describes her findings from a survey of meat inspectors this way: “Federal inspectors check paperwork, not food, and are prohibited from removing feces and other contaminants before products are stamped with the purple USDA seal of approval.” The USDA allows carcasses that are tainted with feces and other contaminants to be sold to the public if the offending substance is cut off by plant employees, but many times, the line is moving too fast for the workers to cut off all the contaminated parts before the animal enters the food supply. Since inspectors can’t remove the contaminants, and employees often don’t have time to do it, much of the meat that enters our food supply is tainted with substances that can make consumers sick.
Besides being barred from removing some contaminants from carcasses, inspectors in Kansas also received disturbing guidelines from USDA officials in 2002—they stated that if the inspectors stopped the line to inspect carcasses for feces or even to wash their hands, they would be held accountable for any money that the company lost because of the temporary slowdown. “YOU are accountable for this very serious responsibility of stopping the company’s production for the benefit of food safety,” warned the guidelines before going on to discuss what type of feces the inspectors are allowed to remove from meat. Paul Johnson, acting chair of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, said, “Inspectors know that a small smear of feces can have deadly consequences just as easily as an amount large enough to have ‘a fibrous nature,’ yet the [USDA] prohibits us from taking action that could protect consumers.
As a result of the fast line speeds and mandates from the USDA that prevent inspectors from doing their jobs, carcasses contaminated with feces, vomit, bone, hair, metal fragments, and other unwholesome substances are routinely stamped with the USDA seal of approval. Dr. Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian who worked for the USDA for 10 years before resigning in 1995, says: “USDA veterinarians are supposed to be protecting animals from harm and the public from contaminated meat, but in reality they are forced to be little more than [paper-pushers] for the meat industry. During my time as a USDA vet, I was often pressured to look the other way as animals who were so sick that they couldn’t even walk were dragged to the killing floor. I saw animals with pus dripping out of open wounds all over their bodies taken inside the slaughterhouse, where they would be cut apart and sold to consumers with the USDA stamp of approval.”
Punished for Doing Their Jobs
USDA inspectors are often pressured to keep quiet about problems in the slaughterhouses and processing plants that they monitor, and they are sometimes forced to lie to protect the farmed-animal industry if they want to keep their jobs. For instance, according to widely publicized testimony from USDA veterinarians, for the last two decades the USDA has routinely pressured its veterinarians to falsify food-safety documents. Dr. Lester Friedlander told reporters: “If I didn’t sign them, [plant employees would] call up Washington, D.C., and complain to higher management. Then I’d get a call from my supervisor urging me to sign the export certificates because the company is in a rush.” In 2004, two veterinarians who refused to sign food-safety documents they believed to be inaccurate were suspended for two weeks without pay.
When they actually do their jobs and punish slaughterhouses that are violating food-safety standards, inspectors may be sued individually by the slaughterhouses for any profits lost because of a closure. According to a recent article in USA Today, “The meat industry targets inspectors by suing them in civil court for massive damages under an obscure 1871 law that allows individuals, rather than a federal agency, to be held responsible for rights violations.”
Sometimes the consequences of enforcing food-safety standards can even be fatal. In 2000, a sausage factory owner shot and killed three inspectors after they showed up to inspect his unlicensed meat-processing facility. Whether their jobs or their lives are at stake, the current system makes it very difficult for inspectors to take action against slaughterhouses and processing plants that routinely violate food-safety standards.
Source: Peta
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