(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Butterball, the largest turkey company in the U.S., faced allegations of sexually abusing its turkeys before they were slaughtered between April and July of 2006.
The undercover investigation into the Butterball slaughterhouse in Ozark, Arkansas, conduced by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, surfaced ahead of Thanksgiving Day.
Workers at the slaughterhouse, which kills approximately 50,000 turkeys each day, allegedly told an investigator they punched, kicked, humped and slammed birds into walls, according to statements made public by PETA.
Peta claims Butterball TURKEY’s are getting S*XUALLY ABUSED by workers.. 😳‼️
“One guy humped a shackled turkey one day, and another time another worker was putting his fingers in a turkey’s cloaca, which is basically her v*gina” pic.twitter.com/PAdA33jx8I
— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) November 25, 2024
“Workers were cruelly slamming live birds in shackles, and one strangled a bird to death. One worker said he likes to kill birds for ‘fun,’ and pointed out one he had punched in the face,” the PETA investigator’s notes from April 6, 2006 said.
The investigator made note of other acts of cruelty against the ill-fated turkeys, including one employee who allegedly stomped on a bird’s head until its skull exploded and another who stuck his finger into a turkey’s vagina.
Butterball’s procedure for killing a turkey first requires workers to hang the bird by its legs, then to paralyze it in electrified water, according to PETA.
They then must slit the bird’s throat before defeathering them in extremely hot water.
One worker told the undercover investigator, “If you jump on their stomachs right, they’ll pop … or their insides will come out of their rectums,” according to log notes, which characterized workers as “frustrated.”
“One worker swung a turkey like a baseball bat into the metal bar of the trailer. He did this again later, slamming a bird into a handrail. I could see the bird’s spine and there was a lot of blood. He laughed about this,” the investigator wrote on May 3, 2006.
On May 16, 2006, one allegedly threw turkeys at concrete walls, which escalated into two other workers throwing dead birds at live birds.
On July 13, 2006, the investigator recorded that multiple Butterball workers violently tried to decapitate a turkey, according to the log.
“One worker smashed birds into the shackles. A pool of water had collected at our ankles,” the investigator wrote on July 26, 2006, the last day detailed in the log. “The guys would throw the turkeys into the water and kick them to make them splash, then kill them to make them stop splashing.”
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
