Hidden-camera video secretly shot at a North Carolina Butterball factory farm by an undercover investigator with the animal protection organization Mercy For Animals (MFA) has led to felony and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges of five Butterball employees by state authorities.

Additionally, Dr. Sarah Jean Mason, the director of Animal Health Programs (Poultry Division) with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, has pled guilty to obstruction of justice after admitting to leaking confidential information to Butterball about the criminal cruelty investigation by state law enforcement officials.

MFA’s Executive Director Nathan Runkle will reveal details of the investigation and the organization’s reaction to the animal cruelty charges against Butterball employees tomorrow morning at a news conference.

Date: Thursday, February 16, 2012
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Location: Hilton North Raleigh-Midtown, Sandalwood Room, 3415 Wake Forest Rd., Raleigh, NC

The names of the Butterball employees charged with criminal activity that have been released so far include Ruben Mendoza, Terry Bernard Johnson, and Jose Garcia. The charges stem from an MFA undercover investigation at a Butterball turkey semen collection facility in Shannon, North Carolina between November and December of 2011. The shocking undercover footage reveals:

• Workers violently kicking and stomping on birds, dragging them by their fragile wings and necks, and maliciously throwing turkeys onto the ground or into transport trucks in full view of company management;
• Employees bashing in the heads of live birds with metal bars, leaving many to slowly suffer and die from their injuries;
• Turkeys covered in flies, living in their own waste, unable to access food or water and suffering from severe feather loss and necrotic (dead) muscles and skin;
• Birds suffering from serious untreated illnesses and injuries, including open sores, infections, rotting eyes, and broken bones; and
• Severely injured turkeys, unable to stand up or walk, left to die without any veterinary care, because treating sick or injured birds was too costly and time consuming, as the farm manager explained to MFA’s investigator.

Mercy For Animals’ undercover video shows that the lives of turkeys in Butterball’s factory farms are brutal and filled with fear, violence and prolonged suffering. Butterball’s turkeys have been selectively bred to grow so large, so quickly, that many of them suffer from painful bone defects, hip joint lesions, crippling foot and leg deformities, and fatal heart attacks.

Due to the company’s lack of meaningful animal welfare policies, training or procedures, Butterball subjects countless turkeys to immeasurable cruelty and neglect each year. ”We commend law enforcement for taking swift and decisive action in bringing these animal abusers to justice,” said Runkle. “These arrests should send a clear message to the meat industry that cruelty to animals will not be tolerated.”

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Undercover video footage exposing animal abuse and suffering inside Hawkeye Sow Centers (HSC), a pig breeding factory farm in Leland, Iowa, is being released on February 15 by animal protection organization Compassion Over Killing (COK). The video was filmed by a COK investigator who worked at the facility in December 2011 and wore a hidden camera to document the day-to-day miseries forced upon thousands of female pigs and their piglets.

Iowa is the largest pork-producing state in the U.S., and agribusiness interests are currently trying to pass an “ag-gag” law (HR-589/SF-431) in the state to effectively make whistleblowing exposes on factory farms, like this investigation, illegal.  COK’s video exposes standard industry practices that the industry is desperately trying to hide, including:

• Pregnant and nursing pigs nearly immobilized in tiny crates, unable to even turn around
• Piglets screaming while workers slice off their tails and cut out the males’ genitals without any pain relief
• Poorly performed castrations that resulted in herniated intestines
• Workers pushing the herniated intestines back inside the piglets, then wrapping the area with tape
• Countless sick or injured piglets left to suffer without veterinary care, many of whom later died
• Forced cannibalism: intestines from dead piglets are turned into “gruel” to feed back to pigs
• Layers of feces caked on the floor of crates and  filthy, fly-infested conditions

As our investigator was told, many of the piglets born at this facility will end up on store shelves under the brand name, Hormel. While Hormel recently issued a statement that its company-owned facilities will be phasing out gestation crates, it did not commit to extending this welfare policy to the hundreds of independently-run facilities that ultimately supply Hormel, like HSC, which comprise the majority of Hormel’s pork.

With the news this week that McDonald’s—one of the biggest buyers of pork in the U.S.—is moving to end gestation crate confinement of pigs in its U.S. supply chain, the writing for this inhumane practice is on the wall. It’s time for Hormel for end the use of cruel gestation crates in its entire supply chain.

There’s also no disputing that without anesthesia, male piglets endure immense pain when their testicles are ripped from their bodies. Welfare concerns have prompted Switzerland and Norway to ban this barbaric process, and many other countries have implemented alternatives—alternatives which are also available in the U.S. and should immediately implemented by the pork industry here as well.

“When it comes to the meat industry, animal cruelty is standard practice,” says COK’s executive director Erica Meier. “And rather than try to prevent the worst abuses, Big Agribusiness is trying to prevent Americans from finding out about them with ag-gag bills designed to ban these exposes.

The most effective way consumers can stand up for animals and help stop the cruelty is to simply leave pigs, and all animals, off our plates.

For more information, including investigative footage and photos, visit http://www.cok.net/camp/inv/iowapigs.

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