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Include Poultry in the Humane Slaughter Act
  1. Signatures
    464 out of 500
    Petitioning
    1. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture (+ 4 others)
      Petitioning
      close
      • Deputy Secretary of Agriculture
      • Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
      • Member of Agriculture Committee Saxby Chambliss
      • Administrator of APHIS
      • Associate Administrator of APHIS
  2. Created By
    Carin Zellerman
    Stockholm, Sweden
About this Petition Petition Letter Petition Updates

Shackled upside down, paralyzed by electrified water, dragged over mechanical throat-cutting blades - while conscious ! This is the faith that awaits chickens in slaughterhouses. Although more than 168 million chickens and around 9 billion broiler chickens are killed per year for food in the U.S., the Humane Slaughter Act does not include poultry, leaving them fully unprotected from the worst slaughter abuses. 

The Humane Slaughter Act is designed to protect livestock during slaughter. There are no federal laws governing the raising, transport, or slaughter of poultry in the United States. Billions of birds suffer prior to slaughter because the U.S. Department of Agriculture exempts birds from its enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which requires that farm animals be insensible to pain before they are killed.

The conventional procedure to kill poultry today is to use electric immobilization. The conscious birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail and dragged in electrified water in order to immobilize them and expedite assembly line killing. The electric current levels are generally too low to render birds insensible to pain, because of concerns that too much electricity would damage the carcasses and diminish their value, leaving the birds fully capable of feeling pain in the following steps. After the stunning tank, their throats are slashed by a mechanical blade. Inevitably the blade misses some birds, instead mutilating them. Still alive, they then hang upside down for 90 seconds in a bleed-out tunnel where they're supposed to die from blood loss, but millions of birds do not die, while an unspecified number of birds drown in pools of blood when the conveyor belt dips too close to the floor. Dead or alive, the birds are then dropped into tanks of semi-scalding water in order to defeather them, thereby boiling many of them alive.

Though there could never be a truly humane system of animal slaughter, a suggested alternative to minimize their suffering is controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK), which is allegedly fast, painless and efficient. CAK has been described as "the most stress-free, humane method of killing poultry ever developed."

For more information, read this report by United Poultry Concerns:

http://www.upc-online.org/slaughter/report.html

Please urge the USDA to expand the Humane Slaughter Act to include poultry and to enforce an alternative method, such as CAK, to electric immobilization as a standard slaughter practice !

Recent Signatures

Expand the Humane Slaughter Act to Include Poultry

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am contacting you regarding the major drawback in the Humane Slaughter Act. Although chickens and turkeys make up more than 95 percent of the animals slaughtered in the U.S., these animals are systematically tortured prior to slaughter – this abuse is permitted because the Humane Slaughter Act does not protect poultry. It is inexcusable that the majority of animals slaughtered for human consumption are denied “humane slaughter” coverage.

The conventional method to slaughter poultry, using electric immobilization, causes tremendous suffering to millions of birds per year. Stunning procedures are not monitored, and they are often inadequate. Electric-immobilization systems require that birds be handled and processed while they are still alive and conscious, which causes them great suffering. The birds are fully conscious of the pain experienced from the cutting blades. Although both carotid arteries must be quickly severed to ensure a rapid death, these arteries are often missed. Those birds who miss the blades—and millions do each year—are instead mutilated and/or scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

Electric immobilization also has negative economic implications for carcass quality, yield, and contamination. Dumping and shackling live birds causes broken bones, bruising, and hemorrhaging, lowering carcass quality and yield. Birds scratch and peck each other, vomit and defecate on one another, which causes carcass contamination. Contamination is also achieved by the inhalation of pathogens in the electric water bath. When they are scalded to death, birds defecate in the defeathering tanks, contaminating all the birds who are submerged afterward.

I ask for for the redefinition of "livestock" in the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, to include poultry, but also fish, rabbits or other animals routinely slaughtered for food that are currently not protected. All animals deserve equal protection. Electric immobilization needs to be banned for being an inhumane method of slaughter. Controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK) has already been suggested as an alternative slaughter method. CAK eliminates the numerous animal welfare, economic, and worker-safety issues associated with electric immobilization. Despite the benefits of CAK over electric immobilization, North American poultry companies have been slow to adopt it.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture must include poultry in the 1958 Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, in order to protect these animals from unnecessary suffering prior to slaughter, but also to enforce a more humane alternative to electric immobilization.

Thank you for your time on this important issue.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

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