Feds Cite Tyson Foods and George’s Inc. 12 Times in Four Months

For Immediate Release:
April 15, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

PETA has just obtained U.S. Department of Agriculture reports revealing that locally based chicken slaughterers Tyson Foods, Inc., and George’s Inc. violated federal law at seven of their slaughterhouses across the country at least 12 times in four months when over 2,000 birds died on cold trucks overnight, others drowned, and live birds were plunged into scalding-hot water.

In the reports, federal agents documented that dozens of chickens were burned to death and/or drowned in a vat of hot water at a George’s slaughterhouse and that a live bird was “buried up to the neck” in feces. Another George’s facility killed thousands of birds by leaving them on trucks in temperatures as low as 37 degrees.

At one Tyson slaughterhouse, federal staff found that birds drowned while their heads were submerged in electrified water, and at another, many chickens were found trapped by their heads and wings inside cages on trucks. Inspectors found birds at another Tyson facility who had been scalded to death or drowned along with numerous dead chickens and shivering, rain-soaked survivors “gasping for breath” on a truck.

“These reports expose horrific, systemic cruelty on a national scale: Birds were dropped into scalding-hot water, drowned, left to die of exposure, and more,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA urges anyone who still eats chickens to remember these birds’ agonizing deaths—and opt for vegan meals instead.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act request. The violations occurred at slaughterhouses in Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.