A recent Guardian and ITV News investigation found U.K.-based 2 Sisters Food Group repacking returned chicken to be sold by different supermarket chains.
Shocking undercover footage reveals workers at a 2 Sisters facility dumping chicken returned from Lidl supermarkets back onto the production line and repacking it for sale in Tesco supermarkets. 2 Sisters, which produces a third of all chicken products eaten in the U.K., also sells chicken products to Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Iceland, and Marks and Spencer.
If this isn’t concerning enough, the investigation exposed 2 Sisters workers mixing old meat with new meat and altering kill dates and reference numbers that show which slaughter facility meat came from. This stands to create serious health issues. Consumers are clearly at risk for buying meat past its use-by date. Even worse, if a foodborne disease outbreak is linked to contaminated chicken meat, health alerts and recalls could be directed at the wrong facilities, allowing the outbreak to spread.
Hidden cameras also captured 2 Sisters workers dropping chicken on the plant floor and returning it to the production line.
Watch the footage below.
This investigation sends shocks through the U.K., but animal agriculture industries around the globe have manipulated the public for years.
Just this past year, Brazil’s Operation Weak Flesh found JBS S.A., the world’s largest poultry exporter, and BRF S.A., the world’s number one meatpacker, adding water to its meat to increase market weight. The investigation allegedly uncovered pigs’ heads mixed into sausages, cardboard mixed with chicken meat, and chemicals injected into meat to hide the smell of rot.
In the United States, consumer groups sued Sanderson Farms—the country’s third-largest chicken producer—after the discovery of a hallucinogen in the company’s “all-natural meat.
But animals pay the ultimate price. Before reaching supermarkets, chickens live in crowded, filthy factory farms and are gruesomely slaughtered. A recent U.K. study found that after a lifetime of suffering, thousands of farmed animals were scalded alive.
The best way to protect animals and your health is to end your support of an industry that treats animals as commodities and lies to consumers.
Click here for information on a plant-based diet.
