TSN Tyson Foods

Tyson Foods Inc. fired two employees at a Mississippi meatpacking plant after an animal-rights group released video footage showing workers improperly shackling and slaughtering chickens.

Mercy for Animals secretly recorded Tyson workers tossing and punching birds and ripping the heads off some chickens, which were improperly shackled and had missed the kill blade designed to slit their throats, the group said Wednesday.

The undercover investigation at Tyson's Carthage, Miss., facility marked the fourth such Mercy for Animals probe involving Tyson, the largest U.S. meatpacker by sales and the biggest chicken processor. The group called for Tyson to implement "meaningful animal welfare requirements" at its farms and plants.

A Tyson spokesman responded by saying, "We do not believe the behavior shown in this video by the two team members we have now terminated is representative of the actions of the thousands of workers we employ across the country."

Mercy for Animals' previous Tyson videos focused on independently owned farms supplying chickens or pigs to the Springdale, Ark., company. In August, Tyson and McDonald's Corp., one of the meatpacker's largest customers, severed ties with a Tennessee poultry farm after Mercy for Animals released video footage of chickens being stabbed, clubbed and crushed to death. The farm supplied chickens to a nearby Tyson plant that produced chicken McNuggets and other products for McDonald's.

Along with its release Wednesday of the 2½ -minute video, Mercy for Animals said it filed affidavits this week asking a Leake County, Miss., court to pursue misdemeanor criminal charges against Tyson and six employees. The group alleges the workers and Tyson violated a state animal cruelty statute on 33 counts, and that the behavior documented is "ongoing and systemic."

"This culture of cruelty and neglect cannot be allowed to continue," said Matt Rice, the animal welfare group's director of investigations.

Typically in U.S. poultry plants, birds are suspended upside down by their feet to guide them to a room where they are stunned with electricity to render them senseless, and then their throats are cut.

Mercy for Animals is among animal-welfare groups calling on companies like Tyson to change slaughter practices. They argue a method called controlled atmosphere stunning, which removes oxygen from the air instead of using electricity, could eliminate animal suffering.

The Tyson spokesman said the company has conducted research on other methods of slaughter, and has "not found them to be more humane than conventional electrical stunning." But he said the company believes the other methods are worthy of further study.

Write to Kelsey Gee at kelsey.gee@wsj.com and Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 28, 2015 17:05 ET (21:05 GMT)

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