PETA statement re Oxfam report documenting workers in poultry plants being unable to take bathroom breaks

For Immediate Release:
May 12, 2016

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Oxfam’s report confirms that little has changed since 2005, when Human Rights Watch described slaughterhouse line work in the United States as a human rights crime. In addition to being forced to soil themselves, slaughterhouse workers are scratched and pecked by kicking, clawing animals and forced to breathe air filled with dust, debris, and feathers from terrified birds’ flapping wings. The chickens themselves spend their lives in windowless sheds that reek of ammonia before they’re hung upside down to have their throats slit.

PETA Senior Director Colleen O’Brien released the following statement about Oxfam’s report that poultry workers are denied bathroom breaks:

Abuse runs rampant in the meat industry, and PETA has documented it at poultry farms mentioned in Oxfam’s report: at Tyson, where PETA revealed that workers slammed birds into shackles and urinated on the slaughter line; at Perdue, where chickens were left to die of heatstroke in exposed crates; and at Pilgrim’s Pride, where workers were caught stomping on and kicking chickens. Like the workers, these animals are stripped of their dignity and their inherent worth as living beings, all so others can have a fleeting, low-cost meal. The only conscionable move anyone can make in the face of such cruelty to workers and to animals is to go vegan, and then workers would have the freedom to use the bathroom when they want.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.