PETA India's Chicken Industry Investigation Reveals Filth, Disease and Abuse

During a five-year investigation of poultry farms in India, PETA India’s investigators found gruesome abuse, including the live scalding, starvation and mutilation of birds. They also witnessed conditions that could lead to potential health hazards, including E. coli, salmonella and bird flu.

PETA India's report on India's chicken-meat and egg industries describes living – and dying – conditions beyond anyone's worst nightmares. On egg farms, six to seven chickens are crammed together inside cages the size of a sheet of paper. In order to prevent them from pecking at each other under such stressful circumstances, chickens have their sensitive beaks seared off with a hot blade – some birds starve to death when eating becomes too painful. When their worn-out bodies stop producing eggs, hens are sometimes "force-moulted" – during which they are kept in darkness and deprived of food and water for up to 14 days to shock their bodies into another laying cycle.

Chickens who are raised for their flesh spend their entire short lives in massive sheds with tens of thousands of other birds. Ammonia fumes from their accumulated faeces burn their throats and eyes and cause most birds to lose their feathers and develop blistering, ulcerated feet as well as breast and hock burns. Chickens grow so large so fast that they frequently succumb to heart attacks, respiratory disease, liver disease and diseases resulting from weakened immune systems. Many suffer crippling leg deformities because they can't support their own weight.

The only "relief" from this misery is a terrifying, excruciating death. Many chickens are grabbed by their frail legs and wings – often causing broken bones – and stuffed inside cages for a long journey to the slaughterhouse, where they are hung upside-down in metal shackles and dragged through an electrified water bath. Many escape the electric shocks, only to have their throats slit and be dumped in scalding-hot defeathering tanks while they are still conscious. Other birds are transported to shops where workers violently grab them and transfer them to cages, in which they await manual slaughter and do not have any access to food and water.

PETA India's report also notes that the crowded, filthy conditions on chicken farms and in slaughterhouses pose a threat to human health as well. They provide an ideal breeding ground for outbreaks of diseases, including E. coli, salmonella, listeria and the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu – which minister of state for agriculture Shri Kanti Lal Bhuria warned may hit India at any time.

Click here to watch footage from the investigation.

While PETA India continues to push for more humane farming practices, the most important thing you can do to prevent chickens, turkeys and other animals from suffering, stop deadly disease outbreaks and improve your own health is to stop eating meat and eggs. PETA India's free vegetarian starter kit shows just how easy – and delicious – it is to make the switch.