New Investigation Shows Live Chickens on Factory Farm Buried with the Dead; Others Barely Able to Stand, Living in Filth

June 26, 2014

As many of you know, the ASPCA has been fighting through our Truth About Chicken campaign to improve the lives of chickens raised for meat. We want to make sure that you’ve seen CNN®’s report airing new footage released by the animal advocacy group Compassion Over Killing® (COK) from their recent investigation* on a chicken factory farm that supplies Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation®—the second-largest chicken producer in the world. Below is an excerpt from COK’s footage:

This rare look inside an industrial chicken farm reveals common living conditions for chickens raised for meat. Tens of thousands of chickens are kept in lightless sheds and bred for growth rates that cause lameness and open sores, injuries which could pose potential food safety risks by acting as gateways to infection. Some chickens are shown with ammonia burns as a result of lying in their own waste. Other birds are too lame or deformed to walk. This investigation also exposed the suffering of sick and dying chickens who were thrown across the sheds and buried alive in pits under the carcasses of other chickens.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The ASPCA’s Truth About Chicken campaign is calling on the chicken industry to significantly improve the lives of these animals and potentially reduce the incidence of foodborne illness for consumers by raising slower-growing chickens in better living conditions. To learn more and take action to help chickens, visit TruthAboutChicken.org today.

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*The ASPCA provided grant funding for this investigation as part of our commitment to improving the lives of chickens raised for meat and in line with our belief that transparency on industrial farms will result in a shift toward more humane practices.