by Sangamithra Iyer -
Mar 28th, 2008 
Pilgrim’s Pride, the world’s biggest poultry producer, faced disgrace several years ago when undercover investigators from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals documented slaughterhouse workers abusing chickens. Here's what investigators witnessed in 2004 at a Pilgrim’s Pride slaughterhouse in West Virginia that was supplying Kentucky Fried Chicken:
[W]orkers were caught on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls. Workers also ripped the animals’ beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed their bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces—all while the chickens were still alive.
Essentially the chickens were treated like what they would eventually become: cheap meat.
Roughly nine billion chickens are slaughtered annually in the U.S.—23 million killed each day—in a brutal but efficient system of industrialized animal agriculture. The cheapness of their meat is a function of the huge scale of the operation in which they are raised, reliant on two main ingredients: cheap oil and cheap grain.
The times they are a changing, though. In an age of peak oil, are we also reaching peak meat?
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