Animal rights activists are at gunpoint over reports that a chicken farm in Iowa has killed more than five million birds after detecting a case of bird flu, in what activists say was a method of slaughter horrifying. The factory farm later laid off the more than 200 workers it had commissioned to slaughter chickens, according to a report by The Guardian.
Rembrandt Farms, where the massacre took place in March, is owned by billionaire Glen Taylor, one of the wealthiest Yowans and owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Last month, protesters from Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights group, stormed the track at home parties wearing T-shirts that read “Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive.”
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Custody announced in March that it had confirmed a case of bird flu in “a flock of commercial laying hens” in Buena Vista County, where Rembrandt Farms is located.
Zoe Rosenberg, a protester, alleged that the farm created an environment that facilitated the spread of the disease.
“I don’t think any farm needs to have so many birds to begin with,” he told CBS MoneyWatch.
The Storm Lake Times detailed the Ventilation Shutdown Plus method by which the birds were killed. The system closes the barn’s ventilation, temperatures rise above 104 degrees and birds die slowly, from suffocation.
Rosenberg described the method by which chickens were killed as “horrible.”
“They were essentially roasted alive. They were cooked from the inside out,” he said. “Glen Taylor is a billionaire, but he chose the cheapest option to kill these birds in a very cruel way.”
Dismissed workers
The company then fired more than 200 workers.
“Workers were fired immediately after stopping ventilation and finishing removing the bodies of these chickens. Working on a factory farm is not easy,” Rosenberg added.
Oscar Garcia, a former plant supervisor, told the Guardian that the workers were being mistreated.
“People were working in those barns removing dead birds in terrible conditions, feces everywhere, doing 12 to 14 hours a day,” he said. “They couldn’t protest because then they would be fired and lose their severance pay. Then they would be laid off and no one would speak for them.”
Rembrandts Farms did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch.
Rembrandt’s sacrifice arrives amid a spread of bird flu in the US who has farms struggling with ways to do it kills and quickly eliminates millions of chickens and turkeys to limit the spread of disease.
More than 24 million birds have died in the last two months to contain the outbreaks. It is the largest bird flu outbreak since 2015, when producers killed more than 50 million chickens and turkeys.
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