For the first time ever, two people were recently convicted of cruelty to animals for turkey abuse.
And it wasn’t even on Thanksgiving.
Two ex-employees of an Aviagen Turkeys, Inc. factory farm in Lewisburg, West Virginia, Edward Eric Gwinn and Scott Alvin White, were found stomping on turkeys’ heads, force-feeding the birds feces and breaking their necks in an undercover investigation.
Turkey heads were found to be beaten against metal scaffolding, and the birds were also punched and hit with spray paint cans and pliers. Some actually experienced water boarding, and another had a broomstick shoved down its throat. Hundreds may have been killed by two-by-fours, and one may have even had sulfuric acid injected into its head.
"Every once in a while, everybody gets agitated and has to kill a bird,” the supervisor supposedly said. Oh, well, that’s totally understandable. Sort of like every once and a while, a solider gets agitated and has to torture a guy buy electrocuting his nuts, right?
I don’t care who you are, that’s messed up. What the hell could these turkeys have done to have deserved such treatment—rape these guys’ sisters?
If you have nothing better to do than beat the hell out of turkeys and shove turds down their necks, I don’t think mankind’s got much of a use for you to begin with. These are the kind of guys who grow up to blow up preschools, get creative with cyanide and kool-aid, and make lampshades out of skin. Yeah, we don’t need that.
Gwinn, who confessed to turkey head-stomping and throwing a turkey into the ground, was sentenced to six months of home confinement per bird (totaling a year), given a $1,000 fine, and forbidden to have any further contact with domestic animals for the next five years.
White, who admitted to stuffing a turkey with filth and breaking another’s neck, was given the same sentence. Both men received felony charges, but pled guilty on misdemeanor offenses. A total of 19 indictments were filed.
There is also a third man involved whose case is currently in progress.
Farm factory workers have never been convicted of abusing factory-farmed turkeys, until now. So watch out, avian abusers and would-be wattle wranglers—turkeys aren’t gonna take it anymore.
Thankfully, the men have been fired, but if you want to check in with Aviagen Turkeys, “the world’s leading poultry breeding company,” and voice your concerns—or to ask that this never happen again—you can do so here.
