Tyson Foods: Stop Crippling Birds with Rapid Growth!

Tyson Foods: Stop Crippling Birds with Rapid Growth!

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December 6, 2017
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This petition had 272,182 supporters

Why this petition matters

Started by Animal Outlook

Poultry industry titan Tyson Foods has long touted its “Commitment to Animal Well-Being” and claims to “understand the importance of the internationally-recognized Five Freedoms” for chickens. Yet from the moment I first set foot inside Atlantic Farm, a Tyson Foods contract facility in Temperanceville, Virginia, as an undercover investigator for Compassion Over Killing (now known as Animal Outlook), I witnessed a very different reality: Behind the closed doors of this factory farm’s filthy warehouses, packed with more than 225,000 chickens, I documented violent animal abuse as well as horrific suffering caused by Tyson’s genetic manipulation of birds for unnaturally fast growth.

At just days old, fragile baby birds are dumped into these sheds, where they live out their short lives—never to peck outside in the dirt or feel the sun’s warmth—before being shipped out to slaughter at just 6 weeks old. The hidden horrors I witnessed inside this massive Tyson factory farm still haunt me: birds run over and crushed to death by forklifts; live birds violently kicked, slammed, and thrown; and baby chicks impaled with a metal nail on the end of a pipe. Unwanted, sick, or injured birds were also piled on top of one another in buckets with the dead, left to languish and die.

But the suffering ran even deeper than this sickening abuse. Birds languished from a variety of illnesses and deformities, and many couldn’t walk because of debilitating leg injuries. At under two months old, these baby birds were already crippled—and trapped inside their own morbidly obese bodies—because Tyson genetically manipulates them to grow so unnaturally large, extremely quickly. If you or I grew at the rate of a factory farmed chicken, we’d weigh 660 pounds by the time we reached two months of age!

This is the second time in a year and a half that COK has exposed Tyson’s torture. In 2016, a COK investigation inside multiple Tyson Foods breeder farms in Virginia revealed similar violence: workers punching, kicking, and throwing live birds; birds crushed by forklifts; and more. The footage prompted the first-ever court trials for cruelty to chickens raised for meat, resulting in convictions on 24 counts of animal cruelty. And Tyson immediately ended the barbaric practice of stabbing a plastic nose “bone” through the nostrils of rapidly growing male breeder birds to restrict their feed intake.

Yet while Tyson pats itself on the back for its “commitment to serve as stewards of the animals,” this poultry giant has not addressed a major source of this immense suffering: the crippling fast-paced growth of birds.

Tyson publicly strives to “shape the future of food”—but it remains firmly entrenched in this tradition of torture to churn out cheap, cruelly produced meat. Meanwhile, millions of consumers are waking up to the suffering and flocking to plant-based dining. Even Tyson CEO Tom Hayes has acknowledged that consumer demand for plant proteins is outpacing that of meat, and the company has purchased a 5 percent stake in vegan company Beyond Meat.

But that first step isn’t enough. It’s way past time for Tyson to distance itself from these preventable atrocities once and for all.

Join me in urging Tyson to put an end to the genetic manipulation of birds for fast growth and to truly become a food industry leader by moving toward the real future of food: plant-based protein!

In solidarity,

“Alex” (Compassion Over Killing undercover investigator)

December 2017 UPDATE: Just a day after my investigation was publicly released and we asked you to urge Tyson to invest more in plant-based meat, the company announced that it's doing just that: The poultry giant is increasing its existing 5-percent stake in plant protein maker Beyond Meat. This is a promising step forward, but we still need your support to ensure the company keeps moving in this direction—and finally addresses the horrific suffering resulting from its genetic manipulation of birds for rapid growth.

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Decision Makers

  • Tyson Foods
  • Noel WhiteCEO, Tyson Foods
  • Justin WhitmoreExecutive Vice President, Alternative Protein
  • Doug RamseyPresident, McDonald's Global Business, Tyson Foods
  • Scott RouseChief Customer Officer, Tyson Foods