Baby Turkeys Tortured at Minnesota Poultry Hatchery

I really hate to do this to all the folks looking forward to lavish turkey dinners tomorrow, but this is one gruesome tale that can't be ignored. A Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) employee recently went undercover at a turkey hatchery. What the investigator uncovered makes the Saw series look like Sesame Street.

An HSUS investigator went undercover and gained employment at Minnesota's Willmar Poultry Company for 11 days in October. The Willmar plant is the largest turkey hatchery in the U.S., producing 30 million baby turkeys, or poults, every year — that's 600,000 birds a week! These poults are then sent live to factory farms throughout America, where turkeys are raised to full size, slaughtered, and shipped to grocery stores. According to the HSUS investigation (pdf), about 50 percent of whole turkeys from conventional U.S. supermarkets originate at the Willmar plant.

The sheer size and production output of the Willmar Poultry Company makes the hatchery's treatment of poults even more horrifying. Once hatched, machines laser off a portion of the birds' beaks and workers amputate pieces of their toes and snoods, an agonizingly painful process during which poults aren't even sedated or medicated. The poults — which are still infants and fairly fragile — get thrown around like old sneakers, thrown onto conveyors belts, and stuffed into boxes with up to 1,000 other birds. This rough handling causes injuries like broken necks, gouged-out eyes, and bloody wings. When boxes brimming with baby birds get piled on top of each other, some fall over, injuring and sometimes crushing the poults inside. Feeling queasy yet? It get worse.

The most disturbing scene is what happens to injured and "surplus" poults, or birds that don't get sold. Employees take the live, baby turkeys and drop them into a grinding machine — yes, a grinding machine — where birds get sliced and diced into bits just like an old Christmas tree in a mulcher.

The animal welfare issues here are, well, truly terrifying, but there also are consumer safety issues associated with hatching birds in these factory farm conditions. Cramming baby birds into tight quarters like cardboard boxes is a surefire way to spread disease. The HSUS investigator also noted that there was blood and dead and injured birds littered throughout the facility. These sights are not only disturbing, they can produce bacteria.

Poor turkey treatment hardly stops at Willmar, either. As HSUS reports, about 250 million turkeys are raised unnaturally in factory farm-like conditions. These birds are bred to grow at a rapid rate, rendering them unable to walk or breed naturally and causing them to suffer health problems like heart disease and skeletal disorders. The slaughter process for grown turkeys is just as horrifying as the deeds done at Willmar Poultry Company. Birds are roughly handled or shackled, electrically shocked and paralyzed, and most of the time they're completely conscious as their throats are cut or as they're placed in a scalding tank of water.

All this isn't to say that folks shouldn't celebrate Thanksgiving with a decadent meal. There are ways to ensure that your Turkey Day dinner was produced sustainably. For one, try eating an organic or heritage turkey. These birds are raised naturally outdoors in the sunshine and live a far better life than poults at places like Willmar Poultry Company. You can also check HSUS' cruelty-free guide to eating, or visit Change.org's Meatless Mondays column for vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes.

Finally, what's most important is to change the way turkeys are treated all year long. Poultry currently isn't included in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. There are more humane killing methods that ensure that birds are unconscious first and feel no pain. Turkey producers should be required to use the least cruel methods of slaughter available to them. Sign our petition asking the USDA to include poultry in its interpretation of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.

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Photo credit: Humane Society of the United States