051207 Chickens Shouldn't Be Scalded Alive: PETA

Chicago - Scalding chickens alive is the wrong way to prepare meat for a McNugget, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said.

PETA and socially responsible investment firm Trillium Asset Management issued a shareholder's resolution calling on the fast food giant McDonald's to require its suppliers to switch to a humane system of slaughtering chickens.

The animal rights group said the current method of slaughtering chickens in the United States involves hanging the birds upside-down by their legs and running their heads through an electrified bath that often doesn't shock them sufficiently to be knocked unconscious as their throats are slit and their bodies are dunked in tanks of scalding-hot water for feather removal.

"The way they are slaughtered would be federal (crime) cruelty to animals if they were dogs or cats and illegal if they were hogs or cows," Bruce Friedrich, the director of PETA's farm animal campaign, told AFP.

"Chickens are the most abused animals on the face of the planet," he said, explaining that birds have no protection under humane slaughter regulations. "Every moment of their lives from birth to death is categorized by misery."

McDonald's has already commissioned a feasibility study examining a more humane method which uses harmless gasses to put the chickens to sleep before they are processed, Friedrich said.

The study found that this method - currently used in Europe - produces a higher quality of meat and reduces contamination and worker injuries.

Friedrich said Wednesday's shareholder resolution was intended to push the fast food giant to implement the changes on a speedier time frame.

McDonald's already has a reputation for being committed to animal welfare, Friedrich said, noting the company's decision in 2000 to require all egg suppliers to stop starving chickens in order to speed up the laying cycle.

"It was the first time any corporation had said something that happens to a farm animal was not okay," he said, adding that the decision had a massive impact.

McDonald's only buys 2 billion eggs a year, which is fewer than five percent of the total production, yet their guidelines are now being implemented at about half of US chicken farms.

If McDonald's, the second largest purchaser of chicken in the United States, were to require its suppliers to use controlled atmosphere stunning, "everyone's going to have to make the change," Friedrich said.

Representatives from McDonald's did not return several telephone requests for comment.

PETA has also targeted fast food giants Wendy's and KFC along with grocery chains Wal-Mart, Kroger, Albertson's, Safeway and chicken producers Pilgrim's Pride, Tyson in its campaign to bring humane slaughter methods to the 9 billion chickens killed every year in the United States.

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