Whistleblower Complaint: Statement of a Former USDA Inspector

I worked for a number of years as a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) slaughterhouse inspector. I inspected facilities that slaughtered cows, pigs, and goats, but most of the time, I worked at a Perdue poultry slaughter plant and an Allen's Family Foods poultry slaughter plant in the Delmarva region. During that time, I observed systematic and routine cruelty to animals. These abuses were not isolated incidents or restricted to a single facility—they were routine and accepted by the industry.

Chickens arrived at the slaughter plant already showing signs of mistreatment. As a result of inadequate conditions on the farms where the birds were raised, disease was rampant. Sometimes close to half of the birds coming in had to be condemned as unfit for human consumption because of air sacculitis or inflammatory process, which results from inhumane living conditions.¹ Inspectors condemned many birds—it could be 100 or more in a night—because they were covered with severe bruises. Many other birds were not condemned but had body parts so bruised that they had to be cut off their carcasses. These bruises were probably inflicted by chicken gatherers' violently grabbing them and throwing them onto trucks or by slaughterhouse workers' forcing them into shackles. Walking around the plant, I'd see the piles of dead birds, including those who were mutilated or ripped apart by the machinery—I'd guess that about another 100 or so birds a night were condemned for such reasons even before they reached the inspection floor. Sometimes these birds are still alive when they're thrown in the condemned barrels, their wings are still flapping, and they just get dead birds thrown on top of them.

Chickens were transported to slaughter stuffed inside little cages on the back of flatbed trucks, completely exposed to the elements and without any food or water. They were often trucked in from farms several hours away and then sat for hours more on the trucks waiting to be unloaded. In the summer, birds regularly died from the extreme heat. On a really hot day, massive numbers of birds would arrive dead. I'd see 10 to 15 industrial-size barrels 5 feet high, each filled with dead birds. In the winter, birds had no protection while exposed for hours to below-freezing temperatures and extreme wind chill while traveling at 65 miles per hour. In many cases, by the time a truck was unloaded, birds had already frozen to death.

The chickens were dumped from their cages into the hanging area, where the mostly immigrant workers grabbed the birds and forced their legs into shackles as fast as they could. Workers would tell me about abusive treatment of birds in the hanging area, but no one seemed to care. I could see from the way the birds were hanging by their legs that many of their legs were broken. The birds are then dragged hanging upside-down by their legs through an electric trawl, which is supposed to stun them before a mechanical knife slits their throats. However, they did not look stunned to me, and many were pulling their heads away from the knife, so the plant had to place a worker there to cut their throats by hand while they were still conscious. The worker's face would be covered in chicken blood. Sometimes the machine was broken, so workers slit the throats of all the birds by hand while the birds were still conscious. Other times the machine was not working properly, and it missed maybe every fifth bird. In spite of the back-up killers, many birds were still alive when they were submerged in tanks of scalding-hot water used to loosen their feathers. They were dragged through the scalding-hot water for 15 to 20 feet, until they drowned. You could tell they were alive when they entered the tanks because they come out beet-red and full of blood. On an average night, about 150 birds died this way. On a bad night, it could easily be more than 1,000 birds. The inspectors condemned these birds.

Sometimes chickens fell off the kill line. Workers would often just ignore these birds and sometimes kick them. On a typical night there were 10 to 15 birds running around somewhere in the plant, often hiding in a dark corner. At the end of the day, workers used hoses and washed these live birds away with all the feces, blood, and dead carcasses and dumped them in barrels where they probably suffocated to death. In addition, equipment breakdowns were frequent, and when they occurred, chickens hanging on the line were sometimes left there for several hours. A lot of them died there while waiting for repairs. They had to be pulled off the line before equipment was started up again.

USDA veterinarians at the plants showed no interest in the welfare of the animals. I have never seen any of these veterinarians enforce any form of humane treatment. They simply do not care. [Editor's Note: The few who do care can be punished for doing their jobs. Click here to read more.] It appears to me that they do not want to cause trouble when it could cause a loss of production or money at the plant. These veterinarians are mostly from third-world countries like Pakistan, India, and Egypt, and their training seems questionable, because they did not seem very knowledgeable. They were all completely useless. One USDA veterinarian would spend all day sleeping in his office. Everyone knew that he was never to be bothered. Once in a while he'd walk up and down the plant, and when people would come to him with problems, he would just tell them, "It's OK. Let it go."

I observed an enormous amount of abuse and suffering at these slaughter plants. On some days, after coming home from work, I'd grab my little dog and just cry. In the past couple of years, I've become a complete vegetarian.

Signed,

[Name withheld to protect the whistleblower]

¹Inflammatory process, or cellulitis, primarily results from lesions because of inhumane farm conditions, including severe crowding, feces-soaked litter, starvation, growth-promoting drugs, fear, and stress.