The USDA has chosen to exclude poultry from the Humane Slaughter Act, saying that they are not "livestock". As a result, 98% of food animals slaughtered in the US (poultry) suffer extreme pain and terror in their final hours. They are stuffed in stacked, unprotected cages for transport. At the slaughter house, they are pulled from the cages by their legs, jammed into shackles on a moving conveyor belt, taken through a "stunner" of cold water with an electrical charge, to only immobilize them, and dragged through a vat of boiling water, often still alive (Wash. Post and Humane Society US) Many even survive the boiling.
This carnage can be stopped by the inclusion of poultry in the Humane Slaughter Act and/or amending the Poultry Products Inspection Act to include humane slaughter provisions
This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.
