In 2017, a Compassion Over Killing investigator worked undercover inside a Virginia contract facility for Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest poultry producer. Inside this massive factory farm, COK’s investigator documented egregious abuse, including birds run over and crushed to death by forklifts, baby chicks impaled with a metal nail on the end of a pipe, and other horrors.

But the systemic suffering went beyond this cruelty: Trapped inside their own morbidly obese bodies resulting from Tyson’s genetic manipulation, these baby birds grow so unnaturally large, so quickly, that many can’t even walk as their fragile, underdeveloped legs collapse under their weight. Genetic manipulation can also lead to other ailments, including heart and lung deformities. All of these birds are just babies – Those who survive these nightmarish conditions will be shipped out to slaughter at just 6 weeks old.

This is the second time in little more than a year that COK has exposed Tyson’s torture. In 2016, a Compassion Over Killing investigation of several Tyson Foods broiler chicken breeder farms exposed the cruel practice of “boning” – in which a dull plastic rod is stabbed through the nostrils of young male breeder birds to restrict food intake. Although Tyson announced that it was immediately ending the practice, the company has yet to address the underlying reason it was implemented in the first place: unnaturally rapid growth.

Tyson publicly strives to “shape the future of food”–but it remains firmly entrenched in a tradition of torture to churn out cheap, cruelly produced meat. Sign COK’s Change.org petition to urge Tyson to stop the suffering once and for all!

A 2018 COK investigation inside an Amick Farms slaughterhouse operating under a dangerous USDA high-speed slaughter program uncovered sickening abuse: birds being punched, shoved, and thrown down the recklessly fast-paced kill line; birds slowly drowning in the electrified stunning baths during equipment breakdowns; and even footage of “red birds,” with blood visible under their skin–a sign that they were scalded alive.

Most chicken slaughter plants in the US kill up to 140 birds each minute, or more than two birds every single second–and at this already staggering rate, suffering is rampant. Workers are forced to keep birds moving down the rapidly running kill line as quickly as possible, risking their own safety and animal welfare. At even higher speeds of up to 175 birds killed per minute, like at Amick Farms, these extreme dangers are only exacerbated.

Up until recently, the USDA allowed only 20 plants including Amick to operate kill lines at recklessly high speeds of up to 175 birds every minute–but it’s begun granting waivers to even more plants to speed up their slaughter rates.

Slaughterhouses are already hell on earth for birds. Speeding them up will only make this torture worse. Please join us today in urging the USDA to put the brakes on cruel and reckless high-speed slaughter.