In what’s thought to be the world’s first ever of its kind, the video taken with hidden cameras, shows hens – female chickens used for laying eggs – twisting in distress as they die, and some birds apparently trying to escape. The birds are seen twisting their necks as they are killed with carbon dioxide. They are also heard gasping for breath and emitting high-pitched shrieks. The recordings – which activists say was at an abattoir endorsed by RSPCA Assured – show hens being lowered into the gas chamber and dying over the course of several minutes.
JANE DALTON: Secretly recorded footage reveals hens apparently writhing in distress and desperately trying to escape as they are suffocated to death to provide meat for supermarkets including Tesco.
In what’s thought to be the world’s first ever video of its kind, the birds are seen twisting their necks as they are killed with carbon dioxide. They are also heard gasping for breath and emitting high-pitched shrieks.
The recordings – which activists say was at an abattoir endorsed by RSPCA Assured – show hens being lowered into the gas chamber and dying over the course of several minutes…
The footage, taken with hidden cameras, shows hens – female chickens used for laying eggs – twisting in distress as they die, and some birds apparently trying to escape.
The floor of the gas chamber was littered with dead birds that had jumped out of the crates, according to activist, filmmaker and vegan advocate Joey Carbstrong, who installed the cameras.
Mr Carbstrong and other activists say they shot the video at an abattoir in West Yorkshire run by HCF Poultry. The company denies it was at their premises.
HCF supplies Cranswick Foods, one of the UK’s largest meat producers, which processes the hens into chicken meat products widely sold in the UK.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by either Cranswick or the abattoir as using CO2 is an entirely lawful way to slaughter chickens. However, Mr Carbstrong said the video exposed “the callous treatment of free-range hens when they are no longer profitable”.
“This footage dismantles the industry’s carefully curated image of ‘happy hens’ and reveals the horrifying truth of how these sensitive birds are discarded,” he said… “The public are being misled by labelling and have a right to know the reality behind what they are buying”…
Jenny L Mace, an associate lecturer in animal welfare at the University of Winchester, wrote in a report on the footage that the most concerning findings were the high-pitched shrieks, gasping, collisions with equipment, and chickens falling against one another and out of the crates.
She said CO2 caused respiratory distress, and describing it as an anaesthetic “may be misleading” because of the distress inhaling it causes. “There is no suggestion of this case being a ‘bad apple’; this is standard practice and in accordance with legislation,” she wrote…
RSPCA Assured said the birds in the footage were already unconscious and were not in pain. A spokesperson said the footage was deeply upsetting but that carbon dioxide was permitted under RSPCA welfare standards, adding: “However, RSPCA standards set requirements that go above the law to ensure a more humane process…
Last year 99 per cent of “spent” hens were stunned and slaughtered with CO2; and 77 per cent of meat chickens were killed this way, according to government figures… Around 35 million “spent” hens a year are killed for their meat, figures show. HCF can process 10,500 birds per hour, according to a document from 2018, the latest available. SOURCE…
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