An undercover investigator for Mercy for Animals, a non-profit animal protection charity, captured the footage at a contract farm for the supermarket chain.

This comes soon after the charity exposed the names of major retailers that are lagging behind in their efforts to address welfare issues associated with chickens raised for meat.

Aldi is among the companies that ranked the lowest for standard practices in the chicken industry.

Animal cruelty on chicken farms

The hidden-camera footage shows tens of thousands of chickens packed into overcrowded sheds, forced to live in waste-soaked litter for weeks. The investigator also documented countless birds, including day-old chicks, suffering from severe open wounds, twisted necks and beaks, and other serious injuries.

Many of these conditions arise from the way chickens are routinely bred to grow unnaturally large over a short space of time. This inflicts a huge amount of physical and mental stress on the birds.

In the hard-hitting video, workers are seen hurling sick and injured live birds into buckets to die. Some were crushed under the weight of corpses piled on top of them.

In light of the footage, Mercy for Animals is calling on Aldi to adopt meaningful animal welfare standards for all its chicken suppliers. The charity is urging Aldi to undertake the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), which requires extra space, litter, and lighting, as well as environmental enrichments. 

As a way for individuals to take action, Mercy for Animals encourages eliminating animal products altogether. It states on its Aldi Uncovered website: “We can end this cruel, unsustainable system. By choosing plant-based foods, we can build a food system that is good for animals, people, and our planet.”

The post New Investigation Uncovers Severe Animal Cruelty In Aldi Supply Chain appeared first on Plant Based News.

The footage shows immense suffering. Over the past 50 years, chickens have been bred to be bigger and bigger, exposing many to injury, heart attacks, disease, and death. 

Inside the factory, Leah Garcés, president of Mercy for Animals, describes the scene as similar to a “nuclear waste site.” There, she is hit by a “wall of ammonia” from the “sea of white” chickens.

There are tens of thousands of birds defecating on the ground and the ammonia, which causes the strong smell, also causes burns to the chicken’s chests and pads of their feet.

Widespread animal welfare issues

Although the unique footage was recorded on one US farm, Mercy for Animals reveals that issues with chicken welfare are widespread. 

“The cruelty that we documented isn’t a matter of one farm failing to meet industry standards,” said Garcés.

She continued to explain that, “current standards allow for the blatant animal suffering seen in the video. Yet consumers have made it clear that they care about animal welfare.” 

In the hard-hitting video, Garcés shares that 4,000 birds died on the farm in a six-week period from dehydration, heart attacks, and disease before they even reached the slaughterhouse. 

“There’s no excuse for these practices,” she added. 

This comes after Animal advocacy organization Open Cages investigated Cuttings Farm and Silver Drift Farm in the UK last year and found  “prolonged suffering.”

Welfare demands

Mercy For Animals is launching a new campaign called “The Life of Chickens” to expose the chicken industry’s widespread abuse to consumers and demand action from retailers. 

It’s demanding that retailers, the largest purchasers of chicken in the country, sign up to the Better Chicken Commitment and treat animals with basic decency.

So far 200 companies in North America have adopted standards aligned with the commitment, but only six of them are supermarkets.

The recommended welfare practices include giving birds more room to move, providing environmental enrichments, and using a multi-step controlled-atmosphere processing system.

A retailer report

Mercy for Animals also released its first retailer report in late 2021. 

This report is available for anyone to read and ranks companies according to their efforts to address the most pressing welfare issues for chickens raised for meat.

Among those listed as lagging behind are ALDI, Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and Target, due to their inaction in addressing the welfare issues.

Mercy For Animals is a leading international nonprofit working to end the exploitation of animals for food and construct a compassionate food system. MercyForAnimals.org.

The post Video Pulls Back The Curtain On Hidden Cost Of Cheap Chicken appeared first on Plant Based News.

Mercy For Animals, a non-profit striving to end animal exploitation in the food system, published the report yesterday. 

The charity collated information from leading retailers to better understand the conditions faced by the billions of birds being raised for food across the US. This includes the amount of light and enrichments provided for birds, how much space each animal receives, and the processes used for slaughter, among other factors.

Some companies, like Sprouts Farmers Market and Whole Foods Market, have adopted the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC). The welfare policy stipulates that for every 1,000 birds, at least two meters of usable perch space must be provided. 

Further, cages or multi-tier systems cannot be used, and suppliers must comply with all EU animal welfare laws and regulations, regardless of which country they produce in. 

But not all retailers have stepped up. Many of the country’s leading supermarkets have fallen flat by not publishing broiler welfare policies that “meaningfully address the most critical welfare concerns,” the report says.

“Of companies with published policies at all, standards fall short of those of the BCC. They have failed to ban practices that promote the greatest suffering in their broiler chicken supply chains,” it adds.

The following retailers were identified as lagging: 

• ALDI
• BJ’s Wholesale Club
• Golub Corporation (brands include Price Chopper and Market 32) 
• H-E-B 
• Hy-Vee 
• Publix 
• Raley’s 
• Southeastern Grocers (brands include Winn-Dixie, Fresco y Más, and Harveys) 
• Stater Bros. Markets 
• Target 
• Trader Joe’s 
• Wakefern (brands include ShopRite, Price Rite, and The Fresh Grocer) 
• Walmart (brands include Walmart and Sam’s Club) 
• Wegmans 
• Weis Markets

‘Shocking’ standard practices

Every year, more than nine billion chickens are killed for their meat in the country – more than any other land animal used for food, according to Mercy For Animals.

“Standard practices in the chicken industry would shock most consumers,” the report reads. 

The “overwhelming majority” of broilers in the US have been “aggressively bred for rapid growth,” it adds. This often leads to organ stress, heart disease, and immobility. 

“Birds live crowded together in sheds on waste-soaked litter, which leads to ammonia burns and respiratory problems. They are killed at five to seven weeks of age, typically through live-shackle slaughter, a method whereby chickens are shackled upside down while fully conscious and dragged through electrified water,” the report explains. 

Leah Garcés, president of Mercy For Animals, called on companies to do more to improve animal welfare. 

“Kroger and Albertsons, the country’s two largest supermarket companies, have begun making meaningful progress on key chicken welfare issues. But others—such as Target, ALDI, and Winn-Dixie—have failed to take action to prohibit the worst practices and reduce suffering for the chickens in their supply chains,” Garcés said in a statement.

“Retailers know people care about animals,” they added. “By adopting the standards of the Better Chicken Commitment, grocery stores and supermarkets can address growing consumer concern for how animals are raised and slaughtered.”

‘Humane slaughter’ 

However, some animal advocates argue that there is no humane way to slaughter animals. As such, concerns about animal welfare have moved a growing number of people to adopt a plant-based diet. 

Earlier this year, the Veganuary campaign attracted more participants than ever before. Nearly 600,000 people from 2019 countries signed up to the 31-day vegan eating challenge. Animal welfare was identified as the top reason for those taking the pledge, with 46 percent of participants citing it as such. 

The post Walmart, Target, ALDI: Report Exposes ‘Worst’ US Grocery Chains For Chicken Welfare appeared first on Plant Based News.

An undercover investigation has exposed ‘horrific’ animal cruelty on a cage-free chicken hatchery in North Carolina. 

Animal cruelty at Case Farms

Poultry farming and processing group Case Farms, and one of the top chicken producers in the US, operates the facility. 

The facility processes more than 200,000 chicks per day. 

An undercover activist filmed Case Farm’s operations on behalf of non-profit animal advocacy organization Animal Outlook.

The footage shows newly hatched chicks being mangled, trapped, or killed by equipment and machinery that was incompetently operated or set up.

Workers can be seen throwing the animals and dragging trays over their bodies, ‘crushing their throats’, Animal Outlook says. In the video, ‘horrifically injured’ chicks squirm and attempt to crawl across bloody trays alongside dead birds.

The hidden camera also captured chicks whose organs protruded from their feathers, exposed. 

And, in some cases, employees throw fully conscious chicks into a macerator to be ground alive. 

However, in other sectors of the food industry, this treatment is part of procedure. 

In the egg industry, only female chickens are considered necessary since they are raised to lay eggs. Male chicks, on the other hand, are considered byproducts of the industry and are routinely macerated at around one day old. 

Although even in the meat industry, the chicks who are raised for meat are typically slaughtered relatively young – at around 6 weeks old. 

The footage shows the investigator reporting animal welfare issues to a supervisor. For instance, the activist alerted the supervisor that a mechanical piston was being accidentally lowered rapidly onto the chicks’ heads. However, the supervisor dismissed these concerns.

In another clip, a worker laughed about the chickens who fall out of their trays and are subsequently ‘flattened’ by moving vehicles. 

Animal welfare

It’s a far cry from Case Farms’ animal welfare commitments. “Case Farms has built its business on a commitment to ensuring the health and welfare of its chickens, which are raised cage-free,” the company writes on its website.

“The welfare of the animals under our care is of utmost importance,” it also says, assuring that the animals are not given hormones or steroids.

Earlier this week, separate reports uncovered animal cruelty at an egg farm in New Zealand. 

A whistleblower who had worked for the company revealed that hens were left to rot in cages alongside live birds. The source said that workers would ‘spin the birds around by their necks until their heads come off’. 

Northern Farms, which operates the facility, brushed off the claims, attributing them to a ‘disgruntled employee’. 

The post Leading Chicken Producer Accused Of ‘Horrific’ Animal Cruelty Following Undercover Investigation appeared first on Plant Based News.