Tony Wardle

Young birds at Cottage Farm, Cudham, Kent, many of whom were so severely debeaked that almost the whole upper part had been removed

Viva!’s undercover turkey investigation exposes the hypocrisy of Christmas. We ask…

What’s bootiful about this?

As Christmas approached, we went undercover to expose the reality of the nation’s ‘favourite’ celebratory meal – turkey. With plastic-wrapped, dead carcasses stamped all over with meaningless ‘assurances’ and guarantees of ‘good animal welfare’, we took the cameras into Norfolk turkey sheds owned by two of the UK’s biggest producers, Bernard Matthews and Kerry Foods, to check on them. We also filmed at six smaller producers.

You know when you’ve arrived in Bernard Matthews country by the stench of excrement. The flat and barren land is littered with huge, windowless sheds, each about 100 metres in length. It’s only when you step inside do you realise the full horror of modern turkey production. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of huge birds in a fetid, choking, stinking atmosphere. So crowded together are they that it is impossible to make a path through them and you have to use your hands to ease them out of the way. The air swirls with dust particles, like cigarette smoke caught in the beam of a projector.

There are crippled birds unable to stand, some with abscesses, others with gaping wounds, dirty and dishevelled feathers, dying birds, dead birds and rotting corpses. Underfoot is compacted faeces, overhead are struts and roof supports festooned with dust.

There is all encompassing darkness and the endless whirr of mechanical extractor fans. Not a single window allows even a solitary moonbeam or a shaft of sunlight to penetrate this stinking ‘controlled’ environment. As birds try to move, they scramble over the backs of other birds, their huge, flapping wings sending clouds of dust billowing. This is the only world they will ever know apart from the slaughterhouse.


Injured birds were everywhere and this bird’s wing bones are exposed at Kerry Foods

A sign on one wall sums up the surreal nature of the place: ‘Anyone found abusing the birds will be disciplined’.

We disappeared back into the darkness and journeyed a few miles to a Kerry Foods free range unit. Our path through the trees takes us past one of the company’s duckling breeding sheds and rows of black plastic bin bags filled with minced baby ducklings. The macerating machine responsible stands alongside, its metal teeth clogged with fat, flesh and feathers. Our guide maintains the ducklings are minced alive but we have no way of knowing.

The brightly illuminated sheds stand out in the darkness. They have open sides, straw on the floor and during daylight the birds have access to a paddock. This much is better and the air is breathable. But the density of these premium-priced, bronze birds is high. And there are problems – big, big problems.


Crippled and unable to move but still alive at Bernard Matthew’s

It seems that almost every bird we inspect bears gaping wounds – some so deep you can see the bone. We hold one bird up and spread his wing to reveal an abscess so vicious that it drips pus constantly. Everywhere we look are dead birds. We are not inside the shed for long but in our short stay, without examining more than a small number of birds, we see at least forty who should be put out of their misery.

Visiting either of the two sheds feels a little like inadvertently walking into the setting of Dante’s Inferno or Hogarth’s Road to Hell. These are scenes which you would hope – are led to believe – are figments of fevered imaginations. They aren’t – they are real. You find yourself asking rhetorical questions – who ever allowed such a cruel and inhuman systems to develop? Why is this legalised animal abuse excused with endless arrogance and denials. And what the hell does this mass cruelty say about our increasingly self-obsessed society? I can’t give you the answers but you instinctively know that it is the product of a species which has lost its way. 


Although supposedly free range, this is where Kerry foods birds spend much of their time
We took our evidence to the press and footage was shown on regional television stations. Radio stations, including one in Ireland, picked up on the story and we gained big features in national daily newspapers, The Independent and the Daily Mail (see page 24). This media coverage meant that our message was brought to the homes of millions of people and some will have done the one thing that genuinely protects factory framed animals – they will have stopped eating them. For others, our exposé will contribute to their growing sense of unease about modern farming.

But we did more for the turkeys – they were the subject of our second national doordrop. Our leaflet, Live and let Live this Christmas described these appalling conditions and encouraged people to go veggie. It was a success – 500,000 leaflets distributed through letterboxes and thousands of responses which received a free go veggie pack. Our thanks to all those who made this possible.