On the slaughter line, birds are supposed to have their throats slit in order to kill them and drain their blood. Then they go through a tank of scalding-hot water to remove their feathers. But because the system is faulty and inefficient, many birds—millions each year, according to the USDA—miss the blades that are supposed to cut their throats and end up in the scalding tank while they are still conscious. Because their throats have not been cut, their blood is still inside them. When they emerge dead from the scalding tank, their flesh turns bright red. The birds are literally scalded to death.
If This Is the Best, What's the Worst?
During an undercover investigation at a KFC “Supplier of the Year” slaughterhouse in Butterfield, Missouri—owned by George's, Inc.—it was documented that live birds were being thrown by workers and crushed by metal dumping machines. Birds were often impaled by mangled transport cages, and workers were instructed to simply yank them out when this happened; PETA's investigator saw workers doing this and found dismembered limbs left behind in cages after the birds had been removed. Birds also got stuck in the spring-loaded doors of the cages, and workers whacked them with metal poles in order to push the doors open, sometimes impaling live birds. One morning, PETA's investigator saw roughly 50 “red birds”—the ones who are scalded to death in defeathering tanks while they're still conscious.
To find out more about the investigator and his experience working undercover in a slaughterhouse, click on the questions below and conduct your own “interview.”
This is the third time that a KFC “Supplier of the Year” has been exposed for horribly abusing birds. Read more about the other Eyewitness Investigations:
At a KFC “Supplier of the Year” in West Virginia, an undercover investigation documented that workers were spitting tobacco into live birds' eyes, spray-painting their faces, and kicking them like footballs.
The Sunday Mirror—one of the largest newspapers in the world—detailed a lengthy undercover investigation conducted at a KFC “Supplier of the Year” in the U.K. The headline said it all: “Distressed and Dying in a Cramped Shed … Nobody Does Chicken Like KFC.”
If this is the best KFC has to offer, it's hard to imagine the worst.
