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Butterball Turkey Abuse on Video … Again

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If you’re eating a turkey from Butterball, the world’s largest such factory farm, chances are you’re eating a severely abused bird – beaten, kicked, thrown at walls, and left bleeding with open, infected sores.

Mercy For Animals has infiltrated a Butterball factory yet again, and the undercover video is out for all to see.

It’s not a pretty picture, but if you buy a turkey for Thanksgiving, you owe it to yourself and to the birds to watch. According to the MFA website:

In October of 2012, an MFA investigator documented a pattern of shocking abuse and neglect at numerous Butterball turkey operations in North Carolina, including:

  • workers kicking and stomping on birds, dragging them by their fragile wings and necks, and maliciously throwing turkeys onto the ground or on top of other birds;
  • birds suffering from serious untreated illnesses and injuries, including open sores, infections, and broken bones; and
  • workers grabbing birds by their wings or necks and violently slamming them into tiny transport crates with no regard for their welfare.

Butterball issued a statement saying that it has a zero-tolerance policy for animal abuse and that “any employee found to have violated our animal care and well-being guidelines, as well as any employee who witnessed abuse and failed to report it, will be terminated.” Blah blah blah. They said that last year after another investigation by Mercy for Animals.

You’d think that if an investigator from a small animal charity can work his or her way past all the security checks that are designed to keep undercover investigators out, the company itself could manage to keep an eye out for abuse, too.

And you can assume that if one investigator from one small animal charity can capture this kind of video in one place over one small period of time, then this kind of abuse is surely going on all the time at Butterball facilities everywhere. And at other factory farms, too.

The fact is the company doesn’t care.

And, to be blunt: If you eat these turkeys, neither do you.