Of all the places one would expect to see a flock of birds settled down for a group snack, the meat display at your local grocery store is probably pretty far down on the list. To that end, Walmart shoppers in Massachusetts were understandably surprised over the weekend, when at least two customers snapped video footage of a group of live fowl pecking away at packages of red meat.

A Consumerist reader alerted us to a Facebook post by a Walmart shopper who posted video of the hungry birds while she was shopping at a Chicopee store this weekend, calling the sight “disgusting.”

In the video, you can hear someone saying, “All that is bad… the whole top shelf,” as a Walmart worker begins removing products from the shelf and the startled birds fly off.

“After the employee who came to collect the meat they were eating walked away, the birds came right back,” the shopper wrote on Facebook, adding, “The employees did nothing.”

Western Mass News also shared a photo taken by another shopper, who said he saw the birds clustered around the hamburger, “literally eating out of the packages.”

He also said he told an employee, and claimed they weren’t concerned.

“As sad as it sounds, they made it seem like it was a normal thing…’Yeah, they’re here’,” he told the news station.

Western Mass News reported that the Chicopee Health Department investigated the building on Monday, with an inspector confirming that 17 birds were removed from the store.

A Walmart spokesman told Consumerist that the store hired a professional to remove the birds, and that the company has additional safeguards in place to try to prevent a similar situation in the future, but did not elaborate on what those measures are.

“As soon as we learned of this issue the impacted product was immediately removed from shelves and disposed of,” the spokesman said in an emailed statement. “In addition licensed professionals were brought in to successfully remove the birds from the store. We require the highest of food safety standards and have procedures in place to ensure our customers have access to safe and affordable foods.”

The spokesman did not have a comment regarding how often Walmart has had to deal with such bird incursions, or if this is an entirely unique incident.

Bird infestation at Chicopee Walmart raises health concerns [Western Mass News]

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