CANDICE BERGEN ASKS TYSON FOODS TO STOP ABUSE

Candice Bergen



Murphy Brown star Candice Bergen is seeing red after sickening cruelty to animals was exposed at a Tyson Foods slaughterhouse. The Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning actress has teamed up with the national animal protection group Mercy For Animals in a powerful new video to expose horrific animal abuse uncovered at Tyson Foods—a major chicken supplier to McDonald’s, KFC, Chick-fil-A, and more. In the shocking video, Bergen makes an impassioned plea for Tyson to stop abusing animals.

Released at www.TysonTorturesAnimals.com, the video reveals a culture of sadistic animal cruelty and needless suffering, including the following:

• Workers punching, throwing, beating, pushing, and otherwise tormenting frightened animals for fun

• Birds painfully shocked with electricity but remaining fully conscious when their throats are cut open

• Improperly shackled birds getting their heads ripped off while they are still alive and conscious

• Chickens dumped on top of each other on a conveyor belt, causing many to suffocate under the weight of other birds

Tyson Foods Inc. and six of its slaughterhouse workers now face 33 counts of criminal animal cruelty after being caught on hidden camera abusing animals.

This video—shot at Tyson Foods’ slaughterhouse just outside of Carthage, Mississippi—is from the third undercover investigation by MFA since July 2015 exposing ongoing and systemic animal abuse in Tyson Foods’ poultry supply chain. Despite the fact that chickens account for more than 95 percent of the animals killed for food in the U.S., they are excluded from the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Absent legislation mandating humane treatment of chickens, MFA is calling on Tyson Foods to implement meaningful animal welfare requirements for all of its company-owned and contract farms and slaughterhouses.

Specifically, MFA is calling on Tyson to replace live-shackle slaughter methods with less cruel controlled atmosphere systems that eliminate the horrific suffering caused by shackling, shocking, and slitting the throats of conscious animals. With these systems, already approved for use by the USDA, workers never handle live birds. This removes any chance of malicious animal abuse by workers and ensures that no animals have their heads ripped off while fully conscious or are scalded alive in feather-removal tanks—something the USDA reports happens to as many as a million birds per year in the U.S.

“If you eat chicken from Tyson Foods, you may unknowingly be supporting some of the worst animal abuse imaginable,” said Candice Bergen. “Please join me in calling on Tyson Foods to adopt systems that would eliminate the needless suffering of animals.”




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