An animal rights group released a video of what they say is undercover footage of animal abuse at a Delaware farm.
The hidden-camera video, released by Mercy for Animals, shows chickens at McGinnis Farms in Dagsboro, Delaware, which is a contract farm with Tyson Foods.
An MFA spokesperson says the video shows workers breaking the animals’ necks and cramming hundreds of thousands of birds into “filthy, windowless sheds” where they are “forced to live for weeks in their own waste and toxic ammonia fumes.” The group also accuses the workers of throwing the chickens to the ground from transport crates causing them to suffer broken bones and other injuries.
“Tyson Foods is literally torturing chickens to death,” said MFA’s president, Nathan Runkle. “They are crammed into filthy, windowless sheds, thrown, kicked, and brutalized by careless workers, and bred to grow so fast they suffer from painful leg deformities and heart attacks. This is sickening animal abuse no company with morals should support. Tyson Foods has not only the power, but also the ethical responsibility to end the worst forms of cruelty to animals in its supply chain.”
The group says they want Tyson foods to “implement meaningful animal welfare requirements for all of its company-owned and contract farms and slaughterhouses.”
NBC10 reached out to a Tyson Foods official. He responded with the following statement:
Animal well-being is a top priority for us. We do not tolerate improper animal treatment and take claims of animal abuse very seriously.
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Proper animal handling is extremely important to us and is why we have programs and policies in place to protect the health and well-being of all our animals. This includes the Tyson FarmCheck™ program that involves third-party auditors who check on the farm for such things as animal access to food and water, human-animal interaction and worker training.
