Court to decide if poultry need legal protection
Published in The Prairie Star on November 19, 2007
San Francisco, Calif. — Today, federal district court judge Marilyn Hall Patel will hear arguments in a landmark case seeking legal protection for the approximately 10 billion turkeys, chickens, and other birds slaughtered for commercial food production each year in the United States.
A broad coalition of humane organizations, slaughterhouse workers’ advocacy groups, and individual consumers led by The Humane Society of the United States filed the case in 2005. It argues that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s policy of excluding chickens, turkeys, and other birds killed for human consumption from the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA) is irrational and contrary to the agency’s duty to protect farm animals from egregious abuse in commercial slaughter facilities.
“Turkeys and chickens raised for food at least deserve as humane a death as possible,” said Jonathan R. Lovvorn, vice president for Animal Protection Litigation for The HSUS. “By narrowly construing the federal humane slaughter law to exclude poultry, the USDA has abandoned billions of animals each year to face some of the worst slaughter abuses imaginable.”
According to the suit, current commercial slaughter methods allow approximately ten billion birds to be slaughtered each year without any federal protection from cruelty. The plaintiffs allege that the absence of federal oversight is not only inhumane, but also presents increased risk of injury to slaughterhouse workers and increased risk to consumers of contracting food-borne illness.
Facts
• Although the HMSA explicitly requires that “cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, swine, and other livestock” be slaughtered in accordance with “humane” methods, the USDA interprets this law in a way that excludes turkeys, chickens, and other birds from the Act’s protections.
• As a result of USDA’s policy, slaughterers continue to kill birds by shackling the fully conscious animals upside-down, electrically stunning them into paralysis, and sometimes even drowning the conscious birds in tanks of scalding water.
• According to several recent studies, current slaughter methods increase the risk that carcasses will become contaminated with dangerous bacteria that can sicken consumers.
• Controlled Atmosphere Killing (CAK), a method of slaughter in which birds are deprived of oxygen, has been shown to cause significantly less suffering than conventional slaughter.
• The plaintiffs in the case — which include members of The HSUS, East Bay Animal Advocates, Mississippi Poultry Workers Equality and Respect, and Western North Carolina Workers Center, as well as several consumers — are represented in the case by attorneys with The HSUS’s Animal Protection Litigation Section and the public interest law firm of Evans & Page.
Timeline
• August 2007 — Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. implement purchasing preferences for chicken meat from plants that use CAK.
• July 2007 — Bon Appetit Management Company sends a letter to its chicken and turkey meat suppliers indicating the company’s interest in CAK.
• March 2007 — Burger King implements a purchasing preference for chicken meat from plants that use CAK.
• March 2007 — Wolfgang Puck sends a letter to his chicken and turkey meat suppliers indicating the company’s interest in CAK.
• September 2006 — U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel refuses to dismiss the case challenging the USDA’s policy of excluding chickens, turkeys, and other birds killed for human consumption from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958.
• November 2005 — The HSUS and other plaintiffs file suit challenging the USDA’s policy of excluding chickens, turkeys, and other birds killed for human consumption from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958.
• February 2005 — An investigation of an Alabama Tyson’s facility documents workers ripping the heads off birds and throwing birds around, among other abuses.
• October 2004 — An investigation of a Perdue poultry slaughter plant in Maryland reveals widespread daily abuses, including workers violently throwing birds around the slaughter plant’s hanging room and leaving dying birds unattended during lunch breaks.
• July 2004 — A "New York Times" article graphically reports “hundreds of acts of cruelty” at a West Virginia Pilgrim’s Pride chicken slaughter plant, including workers “jumping up and down on live chickens, drop-kicking them like footballs, and slamming them into walls” with the acquiescence of plant supervisors.
A broad coalition of humane organizations, slaughterhouse workers’ advocacy groups, and individual consumers led by The Humane Society of the United States filed the case in 2005. It argues that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s policy of excluding chickens, turkeys, and other birds killed for human consumption from the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA) is irrational and contrary to the agency’s duty to protect farm animals from egregious abuse in commercial slaughter facilities.
“Turkeys and chickens raised for food at least deserve as humane a death as possible,” said Jonathan R. Lovvorn, vice president for Animal Protection Litigation for The HSUS. “By narrowly construing the federal humane slaughter law to exclude poultry, the USDA has abandoned billions of animals each year to face some of the worst slaughter abuses imaginable.”
According to the suit, current commercial slaughter methods allow approximately ten billion birds to be slaughtered each year without any federal protection from cruelty. The plaintiffs allege that the absence of federal oversight is not only inhumane, but also presents increased risk of injury to slaughterhouse workers and increased risk to consumers of contracting food-borne illness.
Facts
• Although the HMSA explicitly requires that “cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, swine, and other livestock” be slaughtered in accordance with “humane” methods, the USDA interprets this law in a way that excludes turkeys, chickens, and other birds from the Act’s protections.
• According to several recent studies, current slaughter methods increase the risk that carcasses will become contaminated with dangerous bacteria that can sicken consumers.
• Controlled Atmosphere Killing (CAK), a method of slaughter in which birds are deprived of oxygen, has been shown to cause significantly less suffering than conventional slaughter.
Timeline
• August 2007 — Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. implement purchasing preferences for chicken meat from plants that use CAK.
• July 2007 — Bon Appetit Management Company sends a letter to its chicken and turkey meat suppliers indicating the company’s interest in CAK.
• March 2007 — Burger King implements a purchasing preference for chicken meat from plants that use CAK.
• March 2007 — Wolfgang Puck sends a letter to his chicken and turkey meat suppliers indicating the company’s interest in CAK.
• September 2006 — U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel refuses to dismiss the case challenging the USDA’s policy of excluding chickens, turkeys, and other birds killed for human consumption from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958.
• November 2005 — The HSUS and other plaintiffs file suit challenging the USDA’s policy of excluding chickens, turkeys, and other birds killed for human consumption from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958.
• February 2005 — An investigation of an Alabama Tyson’s facility documents workers ripping the heads off birds and throwing birds around, among other abuses.
• October 2004 — An investigation of a Perdue poultry slaughter plant in Maryland reveals widespread daily abuses, including workers violently throwing birds around the slaughter plant’s hanging room and leaving dying birds unattended during lunch breaks.
• July 2004 — A "New York Times" article graphically reports “hundreds of acts of cruelty” at a West Virginia Pilgrim’s Pride chicken slaughter plant, including workers “jumping up and down on live chickens, drop-kicking them like footballs, and slamming them into walls” with the acquiescence of plant supervisors.
Poultry slaughter suit OK'd
Published in The San Francisco Chronicle on September 7, 2006
Animal-rights advocates can sue the federal government to seek humane slaughtering methods for chickens and turkeys, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
Animals, however, will have to rely on humans to make their case. The judge tossed out an effort to include them as plaintiffs.
U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel rejected a dismissal motion by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which declared last September that a federal law requiring humane methods of slaughter does not apply to poultry. Patel did not decide whether the department's decision was legal but said it can be challenged in court.
Specifically, the judge said the plaintiffs, members of the Humane Society of the United States and East Bay Animal Advocates, had shown that they could be harmed by the USDA policy by citing studies declaring that poultry-killing methods increase the risk of food poisoning.
The ruling is "the first step in ensuring that turkeys, chickens and other birds are protected from inhumane slaughter, as Congress specifically ordered," said Humane Society lawyer Sarah Uhlemann.
She was referring to a 48-year-old law requiring humane methods of slaughter for "cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, swine and other livestock.'' The lawsuit contends that "other livestock'' includes poultry, contrary to the USDA's interpretation last year.
A humanely slaughtered animal is first rendered unconscious by electric shock. According to the lawsuit, poultry processors shackle birds upside down onto an assembly line, shock them into paralysis, cut them at the neck and then dip them into scalding water to remove their feathers.
The process is painful for the birds and dangerous for people, the plaintiffs contended, saying USDA studies show an increased likelihood of bacterial contamination when such methods are used. Two poultry workers from North Carolina joined the suit, saying the slaughtering procedures exposed them to greater risks of injury from scratches or illness from airborne contamination. Patel said the workers may have to sue in their home state.
The suit was also joined by lawyers representing reindeer, bison and other species that are not entitled to humane slaughtering under the USDA policy. Patel dismissed them from the case Wednesday, saying animals have no standing to sue.
Suit Demands That Birds Be Killed or Rendered Unconscious Before Butchering
Published in The Washington Post on November 21, 2005
By Elizabeth Williamson
Motivated by what it calls acts of cruelty in poultry slaughterhouses, the Humane Society of the United States says it will file suit today seeking to extend federal controls over livestock slaughter to protect birds.
The federal suit against the U.S. Agriculture Department will challenge the exclusion of poultry from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which requires that livestock be rendered unconscious or killed before being butchered.
The suit, to be filed today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the Humane Society and other animal rights advocates contends that the most widely used method of poultry slaughter injures still-conscious birds and results in an increased chance of food-borne infections in humans, in part because the birds ingest feces during processing.
"The USDA's arbitrary decision to exclude 95 percent of the animals being slaughtered every year is causing needless suffering by these animals and increasing the risk to consumers, as well," said Paul Shapiro, Washington-based manager of the Humane Society's factory farming campaign. "Because of the USDA's failure to recognize that poultry are livestock, more than 9 billion birds are being slaughtered inhumanely every single year."
Poultry farming is a key to the economy in communities just beyond the Washington area: Eastern Shore farms in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware generate about $1.7 billion annually, and those in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley bring in $615 million.
In most plants, live birds are hung upside down on an overhead conveyor, and their heads run through electrified water to stun them before a machine slits their throats, the suit states.
The Humane Society's suit, joined by an Oakland, Calif.-based advocacy group (East Bay Animal Advocates) and several individuals, contends that birds are injured by the conveyor's metal shackles and that they often are not knocked out by the stun bath. Further, the suit contends, live poultry that enter the stun bath or a scalding tank later in the process defecate and inhale feces suspended in the water, potentially contaminating the meat. The Humane Society advocates gassing birds, either killing or stunning them, before they go on the processing line.
The suit cites 2004 reports of a Pilgrim's Pride processing plant in Moorefield, W.Va., in which an animal rights advocate videotaped workers stomping on, kicking and throwing live chickens against a plant wall. Several workers were fired, but none were prosecuted, in part because the federal regulations do not apply to poultry, Shapiro said.
In a news release about its suit, the Humane Society also mentions a Perdue Farms Inc. chicken plant in Showell, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, in which animal rights workers documented last year what they said were instances of cruelty, including birds that should have been dead flapping their wings on processing lines.
The Salisbury, Md.-based company disputed the allegations. "We have a documented and audited poultry welfare program that ensures the birds in our care are treated humanely," as well as worker training to ensure proper handling, said Perdue spokeswoman Julie DeYoung. DeYoung said that after the videotape of the Showell plant -- now closed for reasons unrelated to the allegations -- was released, procedures there were "thoroughly investigated, and we did retrain employees."
In a news release, Perdue quoted a company veterinarian who said the wing-flapping in the video was "an involuntary muscle reaction that normally occurs after death."
USDA spokesman Steven Cohen said the agency would not comment on the suit until it is filed.
Although there is no specific humane handling and slaughter law for poultry, he said, inspectors and veterinarians stationed in every poultry processing plant "monitor production so if a plant has evidence of excessive bruising or other conditions that would indicate handling in a manner inconsistent with humane handling, we would necessarily look into that operation."
