There are no federal laws whatsoever protecting chickens who are raised for food — from the moment they hatch to the moment they are killed. At just a fews old, baby birds are dumped by the thousands into massive sheds where they’ll spend their short lives standing, eating, and sleeping in their own waste. After about six weeks, they’re grabbed by their legs or wings and stuffed into cages, loaded onto transport trucks and shipped out to slaughter, enduring long drives without food, water, or protection from extreme weather.

Once at the slaughterhouse, the young birds are dumped onto conveyor belts and shackled upside down by their legs. Shockingly, birds are exempted from protections under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act — and research finds many chickens may still be conscious when their throats are cut. With as many as 140 birds killed each minute in a single plant, mistakes are common and can often go unnoticed. This means that many birds are likely conscious when they’re dragged through tanks of scalding hot water. These horrors are happening at the already dangerous current average line speed of killing 140 birds per minute. But some in the chicken industry, like this Amick Farms facility, are making matters worse by killing as many as 175 birds per minute. Alarmingly, the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) of the USDA is actively granting waivers to allow even more slaughter plants to run at this reckless speed. As AO’s new investigation reveals, faster lines could mean more suffering.

To the industry, speed equals money, and the animals pay the price: As the chicken industry aims to increase its already dangerously fast slaughter lines, this same industry genetically manipulates birds to grow as fast (and as large) as possible. To maximize profits, birds raised for meat are bred to grow unnaturally large, extremely fast. If a human baby grew at the same rate, she’d weigh 660 pounds at just two months of age. Many young chicks suffer from leg deformities, their underdeveloped legs crumpling under the weight of their own morbidly obese bodies.

After watching Animal Outlook’s new investigation of Amick Farms, learn more about the lives of all farmed chickens at our ChickenIndustry.com site, which offers a deep and evolving look inside the industry, progress in the right direction, and ways you can help birds today.

Pledge to leave chickens off your plate. Act Now to pledge and find more ways to help birds today.

These workers, too, endure the negative impacts of increased line speeds. While working there even for a short time, AO’s investigator suffered crippling pain and other hand injuries. Our investigator suffered swollen knuckles so severe the investigator’s hand could not close and the fingers would not touch when extended.

In the filthy and fast-paced assembly-line environment, many workers also removed their shirts in the extreme heat, putting themselves at further risk as they operated dangerous machinery without even basic protection.

This is the second time in just a few years that an Animal Outlook investigation has exposed the horrors of high-speed slaughter, yet the USDA continues to move forward with its dangerous program.

In late 2015, an Animal Outlook investigator worked inside Quality Pork Processors, a high-speed pig slaughter plant supplying Hormel Foods revealing pigs shocked, dragged, and pulled to the kill floor; pigs covered in feces and pus-filled abscesses processed for human consumption with a USDA seal of approval; and more.

We have since delivered more than a quarter million signatures against high-speed pig slaughter to the USDA. Join us as we now apply pressure to put the brakes on high-speed chicken slaughter, too. Sign and share our new petition today.