Wielding signs declaring, “Gordon Food Service Tortures Animals, and featuring graphic images of bloody and abused chickens at a slaughterhouse, more than 40 Mercy For Animals advocates converged today in front of Gordon Food Service Store in Grand Rapids, Michigan—home of Gordon Food Service—to demand that the company adopt a meaningful animal welfare policy. The protest comes on the heels of newly released hidden-camera footage taken at a Gordon Food Service poultry supplier showing birds having their wings
and legs broken, being painfully shocked with electricity, having their throats
sliced open while still conscious, and even being scalded alive.
Chickens killed for Gordon Food Service are treated
as mere meat-producing machines. From the day they are born until they are
violently killed, their short lives are filled with misery and deprivation.
MFA is
calling on Gordon Food Service to immediately adopt meaningful animal welfare
guidelines for its poultry suppliers, including on-farm improvements to reduce
the number of birds who arrive sick and injured at the slaughterhouse and
switching to less cruel killing systems that eliminate the horrific
suffering caused by shackling, shocking, and slaughtering conscious animals.
Shockingly,
the USDA estimates that as many as 1 million birds are scalded alive every year
in this country. And despite the fact that chickens make up more than 95
percent of the animals killed for food each year in the U.S., they are excluded
from the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. This means that every year
billions of birds are slaughtered in ways that would be illegal if the victims
were cows or pigs.
As the
largest private foodservice distributor in North America, Gordon Food Service
has the power and responsibility to end the needless suffering of millions of
animals in its supply chain. Please
sign and share our petition demanding that Gordon Food Service stop torturing
chickens: GoryFoodService.com.
And though
cruelty and violence are standard practice for Gordon Food Service suppliers,
caring consumers can help protect chickens by simply leaving them off their
plates.