Animal Rights Group Pursues Complaint Against Perdue Farms

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The Associated Press
Posted on TheWBALChannel.com on October 28, 2004

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- An animal advocacy group is calling for prosecutors to press animal cruelty charges against Perdue Farms Inc., after an activist at a lower Eastern Shore plant secretly videotaped chickens flapping wildly after their throats were slit on a processing line.

An investigator for Takoma Park-based Compassion Over Killing worked from Sept. 16 to Oct. 1 at the processing plant in Showell, a complex that Perdue is closing next week to streamline operations. The animal rights group filed a complaint this week with the local sheriff and state's attorney's office.

"From the very first day our investigator worked, he saw animal cruelty on a regular basis," said Paul Shapiro, campaigns director for the nonprofit Compassion Over Killing.

The group says it will use the seven-minute tape to press KFC to require humane animal treatment by its suppliers, which include Salisbury-based Perdue. KFC officials said Thursday they purchase only 2 percent of their products from Perdue; both companies said none of Showell's chickens go to KFC.

KFC's parent company is Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands Inc.

After watching the seven-minute video, Perdue officials say they saw no "intentional cruelty" and that the workers on tape have since been shown how to handle the animals with more care.

The animal rights group believes footage and daily logs kept by its investigator show enough evidence of inhumane treatment to merit prosecution under Maryland's animal cruelty statute. The law exempts customary agricultural practices but requires necessary physical pain to be inflicted using "the most humane method reasonably available," the group says in a letter to Worcester County Sheriff Charles Martin and state's attorney Joel Todd.

The videotape shows piles of live chickens being shoved and thrown down a processing line. The birds' ankles are roughly slid onto shackles, leaving them hanging upside down as their throats are slit. Afterward, the cut birds flap wildly.

Birds are seen shackled incorrectly so that they miss the blade, leaving them to go through processing without losing consciousness. Dying birds are left lying on a conveyer belt and being piled onto each other in a bin while workers take lunch breaks.

Outside the plant, the worker filmed dying birds left stranded and stray birds that were left without food or water and died several hours later.

"There are some incidents in the video in which associates should have handled birds with greater care, and we have counseled those associates," said Bruce Stewart-Brown, a veterinarian who serves as Perdue's vice president of food safety and quality.

By not recording sound, the video was legal, according to Maryland law governing taping.

Perdue officials hadn't received a copy of the complaint but watched the video on Compassion Over Killing's Web site, Stewart-Brown said. The tape also was seen by Perdue's poultry welfare board, a council of nine members that includes chicken growers, university professors and poultry veterinarians. The panel met Thursday and concluded that the birds weren't handled cruelly or maliciously, Stewart-Brown said.

"We realize the very nature of meat processing is something some people are not comfortable viewing," he said, adding: "There's nothing in this video to support allegations of intentional animal cruelty."

Compassion Over Killing also alleges that its investigator received no training in animal care or handling before he went to work in the hanging room.

Stewart-Brown says the worker was hired through a temp agency, leaving him out of the formal training most workers receive.

The Showell plant processes 25.5 million chickens a year. Perdue, which bought the complex in 1995, employs 180,000 people and is the third-largest poultry producer in the United States.

West Virginia prosecutors are investigating claims of abuse at a plant owned by Pilgrim's Pride, a major supplier of KFC. In July, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released secretly recorded video of workers stomping, kicking and slamming chickens against walls, prompting the company to fire 11 employees, re-educate its work force at all 24 North American plants and add quality assurance monitors on both shifts in Moorefield.

© 2004 The Associated Press