Chickens Starving, Resorting to Cannibalism at Government-Subsidized Poultry Company

For Immediate Release:
October 11, 2024

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

PETA has received reports from whistleblowers with ties to Minnesota-based Pure Prairie Poultry, which received over $45 million in taxpayer subsidies in 2022, reporting that chickens in some of the company’s Wisconsin contract sheds have gone unfed for more than a week and have resorted to cannibalism—and that there is neither food nor relief from their suffering in sight. Pure Prairie Poultry is no longer feeding the birds and apparently is refusing to respond to inquiries from its contracted farmers about the situation. The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has ignored PETA’s repeated requests to intervene in behalf of these animals, as similar agencies did in Iowa and Minnesota following the group’s outreach. The whistleblowers are available for interviews.

Complainants from the foundering company’s Iowa slaughterhouse began contacting PETA last month, reporting that thousands of birds were being left for days without food or water on trucks parked at the facility as the company struggled to slaughter them. PETA immediately alerted U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) leadership to each of these complaints, offering to connect them with the eyewitnesses so that they could investigate and end the birds’ illegal suffering—but the agency never responded.

In response, PETA sent a letter this week to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack calling on him to investigate the USDA’s failure to fulfill its duties and to stop throwing taxpayer money at bad actors like Pure Prairie Poultry.

“Bird flu is running rampant, yet the U.S. government has poured tens of millions of taxpayer dollars down the drain to prop up a company that has now failed and abandoned birds to starve to death,” says PETA Vice President of Legal Advocacy Daniel Paden. “PETA is calling for the federal government to stop throwing money at the unsustainable meat, egg, and dairy industries and urges compassionate people everywhere to please go vegan—because lives depend on it.”

In the meat industry, chickens are confined by the tens of thousands to severely crowded, filthy sheds and bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. These massive operations are a leading cause of environmental degradation and hotspots for potentially deadly zoonotic diseases. In fact, the majority of diseases that have caused pandemics or epidemics in recent years originated in animals before being transmitted to humans, including COVID-19, AIDS, avian flu, swine flu, SARS, MERS, Ebola, and Zika. Bird flu has already infected more than 230 herds of cows in the dairy industry, resulted in the killing of over 18 million chickens nationwide since the beginning of the year, and has apparently reached the stage of human-to-human transmission. PETA offers a free vegan starter kit on its website for everyone ready to make the switch.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.