Animal rights activists are up in arms over reports that a chicken farm in Iowa killed more than five million birds, after detecting a case of avian influenza, in what activists say was a gruesome culling method. The factory farm later dismissed the more than 200 workers it had tasked with slaughtering the hens, according to a report from The Guardian.
Rembrandt Farms, where the mass slaughter took place in March, is owned by billionaire Glen Taylor, one of the wealthiest Iowans, and an owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Last month, protesters from Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights advocacy group, stormed the court at home games wearing T-shirts reading, “Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive.”
announced that it had confirmed a case of avian influenza in “a flock of commercial layer chickens” in Buena Vista County, where Rembrandt Farms is located.
Zoe Rosenberg, a protester, alleged that the farm created an environment that made it easy for disease to spread.
“I don’t think any farm should have that many birds to begin with,” she told CBS MoneyWatch.
The Storm Lake Times detailed the Ventilation Shutdown Plus method by which the birds were killed. The system shuts off barn ventilation, temperatures rise above 104 degrees and the birds die slowly, by suffocation.
Rosenberg described the method by which the hens were killed as “horrifying.”
“They were essentially roasted alive. They were cooked from the inside out,” she said. “Glen Taylor is a billionaire, yet he chose the cheapest option to kill these birds in a very cruel way.”
Workers dismissed
The enterprise then summarily dismissed more than 200 workers.
“The workers were let go immediately after they performed ventilation shutdown and finished disposing of the bodies of these chickens. Working on a factory farm is not easy,” Rosenberg added.
Oscar Garcia, a former plant supervisor, told the Guardian that workers were poorly treated.
“People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, feces everywhere, doing 12 to 14 hour days,” he said. “They couldn’t protest because then they’d be fired and lose their redundancy pay. Then they’re thrown out of work and no one speaks for them.”
Rembrandts Farms did not immediately reply to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment.
The culling at Rembrandt comes amid a spread of bird flu in the U.S. that has farms grappling with ways to quickly kill and dispose of millions of chickens and turkeys to limit the spread of disease.
More than 24 million birds have been killed in the past two months an effort to contain outbreaks. It is the biggest outbreak of bird flu since 2015, when producers killed more than 50 million chickens and turkeys.
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Original Article: Iowa egg-laying farm kills 5M chickens, fires 200-plus workers (msn.com)
First of all, no animals should be treated inhumanely in this day and age. Burning any animal alive should have huge consequences. Why were the 200 workers fired? Was it due to how they killed the birds or was it to try to hide what happened and this would keep them quiet? This billionaire should have to pay huge penalties for allowing this to happen on his farm & double if he says he didn’t know this was how they were going to kill them because he should know everything that is happening on his farm. Five million birds are a lot of birds and how big was his farm? I think that you should only be allowed so many birds per acre where it isn’t overcrowded in any way.
These animals on large farms ARE HUMANELY TREATED!!! I am FED-UP with people thinking just because a farm has alot of animals, they are not being treated humanely. The REAL reason these farms exist is that people want food that is CHEAP. Farmers CAN NOT make a living raising animals in pretty, scenic ‘old McDonald’ type farms. What people REALLY should be concerned about is that the price of this cheap food is setting the world up for mass food CONTROL and food shortages in the future-NOT the unwarranted animal concerns. The other MAJOR problem is that people are too stupid to know where there food is from and how to process it. Government regulations call for farms to be ‘depopulated’ when certain diseases get in their population-blaming the owner is just PLAIN WRONG. Likely other ‘articles’, this one is biased and one sided to brainwash weak-minded people who refuse to look at all sides…
So in your eyes, burning them alive is humane? The owner of this farm is a billionaire, seems to have a pretty decent living. Where is there cheap food? For you to state that blaming the owner is wrong – why shouldn’t they know what is happening on their farms and be held accountable for such wrongdoings? The only one who is brainwashed would be the one who is believing that these chickens were treated humanely in their demise.