McDonald's cuts ties with chicken supplier over animal abuse
(GRUB STREET) -- McDonald's has kicked a Tyson chicken supplier to the curb after seeing an undercover video purportedly showing farm workers treating birds cruelly. The video, shot at T&S Farm in Tennessee, is the work of an investigator for Mercy for Animals who the supplier allegedly hired. It depicts two workers impaling presumably sick birds to death with spiky poles, and breaking their necks by standing on their heads and yanking backward on the wings and legs.
It goes without saying that the footage is hard to watch:
The workers are alarmingly blasé about their actions. To make matters worse, Mercy for Animals also notes that the sick chickens here "were bred to grow so quickly that they became crippled by their own weight and often died from organ failure."
One of McDonald's (myriad) marketing strategies was a Tyson factory-to-McNugget video that the company hoped would legitimatize its chicken. Not surprisingly, McDonald's quickly blasted this Tyson supplier's bird treatment as "unacceptable," and announced it was severing ties in order to "reinforce our expectations around animal health and welfare at the farm level." A spokesman at Tyson, meanwhile, says, "We're ... don't believe this video accurately depicts the treatment of chickens by the thousands of farmers who supply us."
[USAT]
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