Front page -- .com: Poultry Slaughter Story

[Guest guest]

Humane Society sues USDA over poultry slaughter November 21, 2005By Christopher Doering

Web Link:

http://news./s/nm/20051121/us_nm/food_poultry_dcWASHINGTON

(Reuters) - U.S. poultry slaughter methods are cruel and raise the risk

of consumers contracting a foodborne illness, the Humane Society of the

United States said in a lawsuit that seeks to ensure birds are

unconscious before being slaughtered. U.S. industry practices

include hanging live birds upside down in metal shackles, then moving

them through an electrified water bath that paralyzes them while still

conscious, the lawsuit claimed.The slaughter plant treatment

increases the chance that a bird will inhale feces in the water,

leading to a higher bacteria level in its meat, the lawsuit

said.The case against the U.S. Agriculture Department was filed

in federal district court in San Francisco. It seeks to broaden a 1958

law requiring the humane slaughter of cattle and pigs to include

poultry.The Humane Society and the East Bay Animal Advocates

said the failure of USDA to include chickens, turkeys and other birds

under the act has lead to inhumane treatment."These birds ...

are being slaughtered by methods that are not humane," said Paul

Shapiro, spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States. "It's

only because the USDA fails to define poultry as livestock even though

any dictionary definition demonstrates that farmed birds ought to

be."The National Chicken Council, a trade group for farmers and

slaughter plants, called the lawsuit "little more than a publicity

stunt" that is likely to be thrown out of court.Steven Cohen,

spokesman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said he

could not comment on the lawsuit, but added that the slaughter process

described by the Humane Society "is standard practice in the

industry."USDA veterinarians are assigned to poultry plants to

ensure practices there do not violate the law, he said.Shapiro

estimated that 9 billion birds, or about 95 percent of domestic animals

raised on farms, are unprotected during the slaughter

process.The Humane Society has advocated that chicken slaughter

plants adopt the use of gas before birds are processed.The

lawsuit said recent reports of abuse in slaughter plants in West

Virginia, Maryland and Alabama, where workers jumped on, kicked and

slammed chickens against a wall, increased the need to protect

poultry.In those cases, neither the workers nor the plants

could be prosecuted because poultry are not covered under the federal

law for human treatment of livestock.