McDonald’s and Tyson Foods are under fire after an undercover video shows factory farmers at one of their suppliers beating chickens with spikes and stepping on their heads to break their necks.

I once took a two week vacation to visit with family and while I was away the owner hired day laborers to take care of daily maintenance and of course dispose of the dead birds. These were not the hard working day laborers that people speak so highly of. These guys were lazy assholes or to disgusted to do what the job entailed. Instead of taking the dead out of the house for proper disposal they decided to leave the chickens in piles scattered among the houses. These were nearly full grown birds we are talking about here so the stacks were nearly up to my knees. The houses are kept at very warm temperatures, this bloated these birds up something fierce. And being the lowly employee i was at the time i had to pick them up. I would usually grab them by the feet so as not to touch the bird itself. But at this point i was fucked. There was nothing i could do. The legs peeled off up to there bellies and then i was stuck with innards everywhere. I ended up using a shovel but it was the same outcome either way but the shovel gave more distance between the bird snd my nostrils. It was the one of the most disgusting thing i have ever experienced. I quit that night but due to lack of experience in other fields was forced to go back.

This one is less of a commentary on the industry as a whole but it is the next most horrific thing that comes to mind. One time the incinerator we used to dispose of dead chickens was out of service for some reason that i cant entirely remember. My boss called me on my way out to the farm and instructed me to drop them into "the pit". I had been working for him for some time and had never heard of it. He gave me the typical farm boy directions: down the hill, past the pond, off the trail, between two large trees. Do i made my rounds, loaded my five gallon buckets with the days unlucky many, and set out to find "the pit". I followed the directions (and the stench) and I found it. There was it was, ply wood between two large trees with a smaller piece, maybe five x four, on top of the larger pieces. I slid it back and almost vomited. Apparently, before the mandatory use of incinerators as means of disposal pits were common place. Now, i have no idea how long it had been since the incinerator rule was put into place but by the looks of it it had been years, maybe even a decade. This is a family farm and the owner was the second generation so the lifetime of this pit is truly a mystery and this hole was deep, I'm not sure how deep it really was because there was literally thousands of dead chickens baking inside of it in the summer heat, all at different levels of decomposition. And maggots. So many maggots. It was terrible he got the incinerator fixed promptly and i only had to visit the pit a few more times. He has since installed back up incinerators and filled in the pit. I am still friends with the owner of the farm.

/r/news Thread Parent Link - foxbusiness.com