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Photo by Carol McCormick for UPC
"I just visited your site and support your
work. I appreciate you putting my statement on your website and
wish there were more sites like it to reach more people. The only
way to stop this kind of thing is to bring it out into the open
for people to see it for what it is." - Virgil Butler,
former Tyson employee to United Poultry Concerns, 3/14/03
In an affidavit signed on January 30, 2003 to People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals, former Tyson employee Virgil Butler
said that the Tyson chicken slaughter plant where he worked the
nightshift for five years in Grannis, Arkansas, from 1997 to 2002,
was a "nightmare."
"My name is Virgil Butler. I worked at the Tyson plant in
Grannis, Arkansas from July, 1997 until November 12, 2002. I worked
on the night shift in the Receiving department as a live-hanger
[of birds] as well as on the kill-floor. I personally witnessed
many acts of cruelty toward the chickens by employees of the plant
on a nightly basis.
"One of the most recent problems that I observed was the
night shift superintendent, Richard Frasier, turning down the
stunner and ordering the employees to leave it down. This machine
is the device that is supposed to stun [paralyze] chickens before
they are killed. Turning it down results in the chickens missing
the killing machine [because they avert their heads] and evading
the killer [the human backup] behind the machine, so that they
end up being scalded to death by water in the scalding tank. The
scalding tank loosens up the feathers so that they can be picked
out. The chickens are supposed to be dead before they reach this
point. I as well as Ed Taylor (my immediate supervisor), Troy
Shepmann, and Aron Harris (fellow employees) argued this action
with Richard, who refused to stop doing this. . . .
"I was responsible for trying to slit the throats of the
chickens the machine missed on the nights I worked the killing
room. Our line runs 182 shackles per minute. It is physically
impossible to check them all. Therefore, they are scalded alive.
When this happens, the chickens flop, scream, kick, and their
eyeballs pop out of their heads. They often come out of the other
end with broken bones and disfigured and missing body parts because
they've struggled so much in the tank. Sometimes, when we had
a line broken down, they would be left hanging upside down in
the stunner in the water to drown. In the stunner, the water is
cold and salted to better conduct the electricity. I have personally
seen them hang in this position for hours.
"One night in early spring last year we lost hydraulic pressure.
Perhaps 300-400 chickens missed the stunner because the line slowed
down so much that the birds could avoid it while those who were
stunned were able to recover by the time they reached the killing
machine - which was only working sporadically. The live birds
were left hanging upside down in the scalders while the machinery
was being fixed. We could have quit hanging more chickens at this
point and let the line run empty while the killing machine was
off-line. Instead, we were ordered by Richard Frasier and Ed Taylor
to continue to hang the chickens, while Aron Harris was required
to kill all of them by hand. This could not be done by one person,
even at half the speed and it was clear to everyone there that
birds were going by untouched. Several hundred chickens were scalded
to death by this decision.
"Most of my fellow employees were extremely abusive to the
chickens. Our job was to pick up the chickens off of the belt
and hang them upside down in the shackles. This could rarely be
accomplished without problems, due to several reasons. We were
extremely shorthanded, due to the horrendous working conditions.
This led to a high turnover rate with inexperienced, frustrated
workers under pressure to keep the production numbers up. If production
fell, it would mean overtime work, so that the belt speed was
turned up. This resulted in the belt becoming overloaded in the
area where the chickens awaited shackling, which ended up smothering
hundreds of chickens a night. I heard Richard Frasier say, "I
would rather smother a few hundred goddamned birds, than to lose
time because of empty shackles." (This was said in late July,
2002 when temperatures in the hanging cage were exceeding 100
degrees in the middle of the night.) . . .
"The heater in the 'cage,' which is the area where birds
are hung, worked less than half of the time I worked there. Many
times the temperatures would be well below freezing. This resulted
in the chickens freezing to the belt last winter and the winter
before. They froze to death this way inside the building, where
the temperature was below freezing. I and my co-workers complained
about this to Richard Frasier, but to no avail. He would just
turn and walk away. The reverse of this problem happened in the
summertime, where there is no adequate air conditioning. Most
of the time, it doesn't work at all, and blows hot air. This results
in the chickens dying of heat stroke, heart attack, and suffocation.
"When the plant breaks down or when there are too many chickens
on the kill schedule for the shift, they are left over for the
next shift. . . . In the summer on day shift, when they leave
the birds, they sit from 3:30 p.m. until 9 p.m. under a tin shed
roof with no water and no food. I have seen hundreds die of dehydration
from this practice. This could be remedied by simply stopping
the catchers from catching any more [birds] until the problem
in the plant is resolved or by not scheduling as big a kill to
begin with. These uncomfortable conditions, coupled with the unrelenting
pressure to keep the shackles filled at all costs, lead to much
frustration and outright range among the employees.
"I have witnessed Troy Shepmann build dry ice bombs (made
by putting dry ice and a small amount of water in a plastic Pepsi
bottle and screwing the lid down tight) and putting it on the
belt with live chickens during break time. This results in a high
pressure explosion that rips the chickens' bodies apart and scatters
them all over the room. This occurred numerous times, but the
one I remember the most was one night last June when he made a
small dry ice bomb by shoving a piece of dry ice up a live chicken's
rectum, then plugging it with a wooden cork. It built up enough
pressure inside the chicken to blow it apart.
I have also seen Aron Harris rip the heads, legs, and wings off
of live chickens, or just stomp them to death on the floor because
he was aggravated. This occurred on a regular basis for about
the last year and a half that I worked there. I have also seen
George Watson, a forklift driver, run over the chickens on purpose,
then laugh about it. These kinds of incidents were ongoing and
repetitive-just a part of a regular night's work.
"Other problems that came up when I worked there were a
result of mismanagement. One, in particular, happened several
times when we would get orders for bigger birds. The worst was
in the week ending on September 14 of last year. In this instance
we were given thousands of chickens to hang that were above the
size limit we were used to. The shackles were not designed to
fit the oversize legs of the chickens. They were too small for
their legs to fit into. In the process of hanging the live birds,
we were forced to break their legs to get them to fit into the
shackles. This was unnecessary. The shackles could have been spread
out to fit the larger-sized birds. It would only have taken about
an hour for two maintenance personnel to accomplish this. However,
Richard Frasier decided that it wasn't necessary and didn't want
to lose the production time to do it. . . .
"We processed deboned thigh and leg meat and boneless, skinless
split breasts. Most of the deboned meat is shipped to a further
processing plant where it is made into chicken nuggets for KFC.
I am writing this letter because I want to see something done
about this cruelty. I don't wish to be a part of the nightmare
any longer and am willing to speak out about this to anyone at
any time.
Thank you,
Virgil Butler"
- The Polk County sheriff is investigating the matter and will
be reporting his findings to the prosecuting attorney. Please
contact the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney and politely
urge them to file cruelty-to-animals charges against all those
responsible, as described in Mr. Butler's testimony, at the
Tyson facility in Grannis, Arkansas.
Sheriff Michael Oglesby
Polk County Sheriff's Office
507 Church Street
Mena, AR 71953
Phone: 479-394-8163
Fax: 479-394-1975
The Honorable Tim Williamson
Prosecuting Attorney
Polk County Prosecutor's Office
PO Drawer 109
600 Port Arthur Street
Mena, AR 71953
Phone: 479-394-6114
Fax: 479-394-6173
- Urge the National Chicken Council (NCC, the industry trade
group), Tyson Foods, and KFC to provide natural light and fresh
air in the chicken houses, space for each bird to walk freely
in fresh litter instead of in ammoniated feces, and to stop
the forced rapid growth of chickens. Chickens can no longer
walk normally due to lameness, pain, and metabolic disorders.
In an email to UPC (2/20/03), a resident of Siloam Springs,
Arkansas said chickens being raised for Simmons Foods in totally
enclosed dark houses, called "tunnel ventilation"
houses, "at 5 weeks can hardly stand because their legs
are so weak and with no natural light or exercise their joints
are too soft to carry the weight."
- Urge the NCC, Tyson Foods, and KFC to replace the use of
paralytic electric shock equipment (misnamed "stunners")
in the slaughterhouses with gas-based technology that will kill
the birds in the transport crates prior to shackling, thus sparing
them the pain and stress of live shackling, neck cutting, and
for millions of chickens each year, being scalded alive.
- Urge the NCC, Tyson Foods, and KFC to develop standards of
employee conduct to the birds, to post these standards in the
slaughter plants in the appropriate languages, and to make these
standards a major part of all employee training programs. Urge
that the working environment be improved to eliminate the "frustration
and outright rage" that contributes to birds being targeted
for abuse.
National Chicken Council
1015 15th Street, NW, Suite 930
Washington DC 20005-2605
Ph: 202-296-2622
Fax: 202-293-4005
Email: Gwatts@ChickenUSA.org
Rlobb@ChickenUSA.org (Richard Lobb,
Communications Director)
John Tyson, CEO/Chairman
Tyson Foods, Inc.
PO Box 2020
Springdale, AR 72765-2020
Ph: 479-290-4000
Customer Hotline: 800-643-3410
Fax: 479-290-3923
Email: John.Tyson@Tyson.com
David Novak, Chair and CEO
KFC - Yum! Brands
1441 Gardiner Lane
Louisville, KY 40213
Ph: 502-874-8300
Customer Hotline: 800-225-5532
Fax: 502-874-8567
For information on "broiler" chickens: http://www.UPC-online.org/broiler/
For information on the poultry industry: http://www.UPC-online.org/industry/
For information on poultry slaughter: http://www.UPC-online.org/slaughter/
Photo by Karen Davis
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