Animals we eat deserve better than this

Chicken is at the top of my list of favorite foods but it turns my stomach to find out how these and other innocent creatures are often treated in the process of putting them on my table. Sometimes I have to be reminded of the degradation and inhumanity involved in the business of breeding and harvesting animals for human consumption. It makes me realize that the vegans amongst us have a point which can hardly be ignored.

 Consider the ghastly and thoroughly disgusting recent revelation of animal cruelty documentation of the inhumane treatment of breeder chickens by certain human monster animal abuser employees at meat producer Tyson Foods.  It’s enough to make me think about never eating chicken again. These psychopaths didn’t learn, or just deliberately ignored their lessons on how to provide proper animal welfare to the innocent chickens in their charge.

Animal rights organization Compassion Over Killing successfully infiltrated a Tyson Foods chicken breeder facility in Virginia in order to document the gut wrenching evidence of systemic animal cruelty. Newly released videos show Tyson workers stomping, kicking and suffocating chickens at facilities in three Virginia counties.

“The people shown in the video by Compassion Over Killing were all trained in proper animal handling, yet chose to ignore it and failed to alert management about the despicable treatment on these farms,” admits senior Tyson company executive, Christine Daugherty, who described the mayhem as "disgusting." She claims that the ten workers who can be seen in the video have been fired.

 “Animals in our care deserve to be treated humanely. It’s our responsibility to ensure that everyone who works for our company behaves properly. Our management team is dedicated to continue fostering a culture of proper animal handling,” she continued.

The abusers knew exactly what they were doing and that it was wrong. One of them is caught on video warning the undercover investigator that "you can't let nobody see you do that" as he stepped on a chicken's head to suffocate it. "You don't know if he's working for the animal rights, says the monster. “ It is inhumane standing on his head and let them suffocate. They'll take you to court for that."  Workers are also shown punching, kicking and roughly tossing the birds by their delicate wings.

Faced with this inexcusable documentation, Tyson admitted in a statement, “we believe we haven’t gone far enough and must do more to stop this inexcusable behavior.” The company is now evaluating further steps it can take to ensure animal well-being procedures are being followed throughout its operations. They are finally discontinuing, for example, the gruesome practice of shoving plastic tubes into rooster's beaks, something known as beak modification that helps chicken growers prevent males from eating females' feed.

Formal complaints about the abuse have been submitted to prosecutors and animal control officers but to date no charges have been brought. "We believe that Tyson as a company needs to be held accountable," said an animal rights spokesperson. “This is too common of a problem being documented for Tyson's to be pushing this aside as a few rogue workers or bad apples. This is a systemic problem.”

Yes, the company needs to be held accountable, but in my opinion every one of those black-hearted workers should be doing a proper stretch in prison. Tyson executives have been in touch with local authorities about the situation but have declined to say whether the company wants to see the employees criminally charged.

That is irresponsible.

"We take animal well-being very seriously, and we are going to get to the bottom of this," Daugherty said.

I don’t believe it.

The animals we eat deserve better than this.