Literally thousands of chickens have died at a chicken farm in Lincolnshire it was revealed yesterday. Newspaper The Lincolnite found that the thousands of dead chickens had died because of the huge soar in temperature over the last few days. The intensive poultry farm that supplies stores such as Co-op, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and Tesco claims that the “recent high temperatures have been very challenging for many in the farming and poultry industries”.
When the newspaper sent a reporter to investigate and take photos a staff member quickly ran out and told him to stop taking the photos however they did manage to get some taken before hand which we have below.
The poultry farm is called Moy Park and is based in Newton, it was reported that staff members could be seen removing and dumping the dead chickens in piles outside of each warehouse where they were forced to live.
Thursday’s heatwave hit record highs of 38.1C in the UK way too hot for the chickens to be stored in the warehouses without air cooling, which asks the question how did the farm let these chickens die without taking preventative measures? Also did they even have air cooling in the warehouses?
Reports further state that there was not one buy four piles of dead chickens at the front of the farm with a further two significantly larger piles around the back of the farm in an attempt to hide them from view.
Staff members when questioned blamed the chicken deaths on hot weather although this has not been confirmed.
They also stated “We tried to do everything but there was nothing more we could do. The freak weather has done this to them, please don’t turn this into anything bad.” with another staff member saying “Animal activists don’t think that we care about them, but we really do.” I’ll leave our readers to decide if they really care about them.
We researched the Moy Park farm and it turns out that they are also part of the Red Tractor assurance which we recently covered which showed a Morrison’s pig farm who was breaking a number of policies leaving poor pigs with disgusting living conditions, if this farm was the same then the chickens had just as horrible living conditions inside although this cannot be confirmed.
Red tractor state that all their farms which carry this label of assurance are “safe and farmed with care.” however this is not the case from the photos and eye witness reports for this farm nor the Morrison’s Piggery.
A spokesperson for Moy farm said that they “have implemented procedures to help protect our birds against the extreme heat.” which we really hope they have to stop this awful event from happening again.
This is not the first time that the Lincolnite has reported on the farm as previously Red Tractor told the Lincolnite that it had found “breaches of standards” at more than one of the Moy Park’s farms during recent standards inspections, but did insist that they were working with the farm to correct this.
Animal Equality UK released a video as well about Saltbox, Ladywath in Spilsby and Mount farms which horrifically showcased baby chickens that had been lying dead on the floors around other chickens for days on end without being cleared away. There was also chickens with painful leg injuries that had gone untreated leaving some of the birds unable to stand, the farms this was recorded at also breed chickens on behalf of Moy Park.
