Frank Perdue, Responsible for Appalling Cruelty to Chickens, Dies

Over the years, PETA marched with Perdue’s striking workers and protested his unconscionable abuse of billions of chickens. At Perdue’s slaughterhouse in Salisbury, Maryland, PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk once called a Perdue supervisor to the scene to euthanize suffering chickens who had been left to die from heatstroke in exposed crates. Newkirk discovered that other chickens were thrown alive into "4D" (Dead, Dying, Diseased, and Disabled) bins, used for meat that is unfit for human consumption. In 1992, someone in a chicken costume threw a pie at Perdue in protest of his treatment of chickens.

The Perdue Cheap Chicken Legacy

Perdue was responsible for developing many of the notoriously cruel techniques used in modern chicken factory farming. Crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds that reek of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste, each bird lives in an amount of space equivalent to a standard sheet of paper, without room to take a step or stretch a wing. The birds routinely suffer broken bones because they are bred to be top heavy and because workers roughly grab their legs and slam them into crates and shackle them upside-down at slaughterhouses. Chickens are often still fully conscious when their throats are slit or when they are dumped into tanks of scalding water to remove their feathers. When they’re killed, chickens are still babies—not yet 2 months old. Their natural lifespan is 10 to 15 years.

Frank Perdue leaves a legacy of unimaginable suffering for billions of tortured birds.

Workers Wronged, Mob Connection

Although he was known for his commercials, crowing the slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," Perdue’s business tactics did not fit the wholesome image he projected into households nationwide.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found in 1984 that on-the-job injuries at Perdue’s largest plant were not being reported, and Bob Hall of the Institute for Southern Studies stated, "Poultry workers quit their jobs at five times the rate of other workers, and with good reason. Their injury rate is one of the 10 highest in manufacturing."

In 1986, Perdue confessed before the President’s Committee on Organized Crime that he had called upon New York mobsters to break up strike efforts by unionized employees. Perdue workers—mostly rural Southerners who couldn’t find other jobs and lived in shantytowns—were not allowed rest periods or sick leave and were fired if they complained. In 2000, a federal judge ruled that the company had violated federal wage laws by not paying workers for overtime.

What You Can Do

The average American is responsible for the abuse and deaths of approximately 2,500 chickens. The best way to save chickens from suffering at the hands of cruel corporate moguls is to go vegetarian. Please request a free vegetarian starter kit, full of delicious recipes. Let’s hope that the passing of this nasty chicken "king" means the passing of a cruel era and hastens the day when more soy nuggets will be sold than real bird flesh.