McDonald's Chicken Mcnugget Supplier Caught on Hidden Camera Beating Animals With Spiked Clubs

Mercy For Animals Calls on Fast-Food Giant to Implement Meaningful Animal Welfare Standards After Secret Video Exposes McNugget Supplier Torturing Chickens - Law Enforcement Launches Cruelty Investigation

News provided by

Mercy For Animals

Aug 27, 2015, 07:45 ET

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Disturbing undercover video footage of gruesome animal abuse at a McDonald's Chicken McNugget supplier was released this morning at McDonaldsCruelty.com by the national animal protection charity Mercy For Animals. The video shows the owners of a Tyson Foods contract farm clubbing and stabbing chickens using a wooden pole with a large spike attached to the end before standing on the birds' heads and pulling their bodies to break their necks. It also shows thousands of baby birds bred to grow so fast they became crippled under their own weight, sick and injured animals left to suffer without proper veterinary care, and workers carelessly grabbing fistfuls of chickens and violently slamming them into transport crates—often breaking the birds' bones in the process. Local law enforcement has now launched a criminal animal cruelty investigation.

MFA is hosting a tele-press conference at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time at 888-228-0587.

The video was shot at T&S Farm in Dukedom, Tennessee—a contract farm for Tyson Foods and a McDonald's McNugget supplier—and reveals widespread animal abuse and suffering, including the following:

Birds painfully beaten, stabbed, and impaled on makeshift clubs spiked with nails and then thrown into buckets to slowly die
Factory farm owners stepping on the heads of live chickens and then pulling their wings or bodies to break their necks
Chickens bred to grow so fast they became crippled under their own weight and frequently died from organ failure
Hundreds of thousands of birds crammed into filthy, windowless sheds forced to live for weeks in their own waste

McDonald's is one of the largest fast-food chains in the world and a top customer to Tyson Foods. MFA is calling on McDonald's to swiftly adopt meaningful animal welfare policies to end many of the worst forms of animal abuse and neglect in its supply chain. This includes ending selective breeding for rapid growth and shifting to slower-growing breeds of birds to prevent health problems related to accelerated growth; providing birds with more space, clean litter, access to natural light, and environmental enrichments; and replacing live-shackle slaughter methods with less cruel systems that eliminate the horrific suffering caused by dumping, shackling, shocking, and slitting the throats of conscious animals.

"The secret ingredient in McDonald's Chicken McNuggets is brutal animal abuse," said MFA's president, Nathan Runkle. "They are crammed into filthy, windowless sheds, thrown, kicked, and tortured by careless workers, and bred to grow so fast they suffer from painful leg deformities and heart attacks. This is sickening animal abuse no company with morals should support. McDonald's has not only the power, but also the ethical responsibility to end the worst forms of cruelty to animals in its supply chain."

To view the undercover video, visit www.McDonaldsCruelty.com.

SOURCE Mercy For Animals