A North Carolina Butterball facility was raided recently by officials, who were investigating claims by an animal advocacy group that the company has been abusing fowl on the premises. Mercy for Animals sent law enforcement video they’d collected from hidden cameras at the plant.

In the film shot at Butterball’s semen collection factory in Shannon, N.C., the activists claim birds were kicked, stomped on, dragged and beaten. It’s said to show turkeys suffering from “bloody open wounds and infections as well as severe feather loss and broken bones,” reports the L.A. Times.

It’s bad enough they have to live at a semen collection factory, but to be treated cruelly while providing food for human consumption? That’s just nasty.

Mercy For Animals has been in the headlines lately, as they previously employed a successfully campaign against one of McDonald’s egg suppliers, Sparboe, that they said were treating chickens poorly. Celebrities got involved and sent off an angry letter to McDonald’s urging them to implement broad changes in their chicken-culling ways.

Butterball turkey plant raided on animal cruelty [L.A. Times]

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