As consumers tuck into their crispy duck pancakes or roast duck dinners, the violence behind their food choices is being hidden away in huge concrete sheds, only ever coming to light when investigations expose the nightmarish reality. Sold in the ‘Big 6’ supermarkets – Asda, Co-op, Waitrose, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco – where you will never see the truth on their packaged bodies. At this Gressingham Foods farm in West Yorkshire, we witnessed numerous sick and injured ducks and the dead left to rot amongst the living. Our cameras caught the sadistic process of catching the ducks for slaughter; birds were grabbed by their necks and strangled, thrown around to scare others, kicked, crushed below a worker’s boots and much worse. As featured in the Independent.
This is The Foul Truth about commercial duck ‘meat’ farms.
Inside the mass sheds of 10,000 birds, there was not a single source of open water. Desperate to bathe themselves, ducks turned to the shallow drinkers, but this resulted in a sodden, filthy environment where ducks were left dirty and soaked through. Open water is vital for ducks, for their health, development and natural behaviours. However, those imprisoned in the UK duck industry are not afforded access to any. This clearly violates the Animal Welfare Act 2006, Section 9, as ducks cannot display their natural behaviours. Learn more in our Down with Duck Farming campaign.
The scale of this Gressingham Foods farm, a so-called “local boys and a family business”, is industrial. Every duck is a mere statistic and not an individual who has needs. Due to the lack of water, we filmed ducks with eye and nasal infections and even blindness. Other health issues soon became apparent, including severe lameness, bent necks and twisted legs.
In just 42 days, 920 ducks died or were killed inside a single shed. That’s almost 10% of the flock.
Ducks became stranded on their backs for as long as 20 hours as their huge bodies grew so fast that they couldn’t keep themselves upright. Bred to gain weight as quickly as possible and the duck equivalent of a ‘broiler’ chicken, Gressingham’s ducks are unnaturally wide, so when their legs cannot cope with the sheer weight, they often fall onto their backs. Being only a few weeks old, their tiny wings cannot push them back over. This is a death sentence for many. We witnessed one duck stuck on their back for 20 hours before a worker booted them to flip them over. The poor duck tragically stumbled off, losing their balance again, clearly in shock.
As temperatures reached as high as 30C degrees inside the shed, ducks were visibly distressed, panting open-mouthed in a desperate attempt to cool themselves down.
After six weeks of misery, the survivors were rounded up and caught for slaughter by the specialist catching team, Keyo, a company that prides itself on being the ‘largest poultry handling firm in the UK’. Keyo is both Red Tractor and RSPCA Assured. What we witnessed was nothing short of a complete nightmare. Terror and panic ran through the flock as birds were herded together. Workers grabbed ducks by their necks, swinging them around to scare others forward. Ducks were strangled for almost a minute before being hurled back into the crowd of terrified birds.
Catchers aggressively caught several ducks by their necks in each hand before slamming them into plastic crates as they loaded them for slaughter. Wings, heads and legs became trapped as crates were filled with terror-stricken birds who urgently tried to escape. Others fell to the ground from workers’ hands or the drawers, becoming stranded on their backs or painfully limping away. The sick and injured were thrown to one side like trash.
As the workers stepped through crowds of ducks, they were caught on camera standing on the birds. One duck became trapped under other birds and, subsequently, a worker’s boot. They tried their best to escape but became weaker and weaker in the commotion. After the painful ordeal, the duck was tossed to one side as they collapsed on the ground. They were left to slowly die in agony.
The entire catching process reflected no regard for the ducks' well-being and only focused on efficiency and getting the job done.
Any ducks who were sick or injured during the catching process were flung to one side before being rounded up after many hours of torment. A worker was filmed grabbing the maimed birds, hanging them up by their necks before callously spinning them around. The heavy weight of the birds’ bodies was used against them one last time as they were spun around to break their necks. As the vicious attack ended, the ducks were thrown to the ground, flapping and writhing in pain for as long as three minutes.
“Numerous distressing instances included the forceful closure of crate doors on ducks' heads, wings, and limbs, as well as ducks being swung by their necks and suspended for extended periods. Some exhibited severe lameness indicative of fractures, struggling to right themselves. Injured ducks were callously thrown aside during handling, and on-site killing methods were unreliable, leading to prolonged suffering.” Andrew Knight, Veterinary Professor of Animal Welfare
A shed of once 10,000 birds was reduced to leftover filthy and sodden substrate and the littered bodies of those who were mercilessly killed. The 9,000 birds who were shoved into crates then endured an arduous 180-mile journey to Gressingham’s slaughterhouse in Suffolk, where they would enter an electrified water bath – their first ever contact with an open water source – before having their throats slit as a method of ‘humane’ slaughter.
This is the cold-hearted reality of the commercial duck ‘meat’ industry. Profits and efficiency prevailed over the care or well-being of the vulnerable, young birds. When Animal Justice Project began exposing the atrocities on commercial duck ‘meat’ farms, 15 million ducks were slaughtered annually. Since then, the industry has shrunk by one-third in just four years. Today, 9 million ducks are killed in the UK. As consumers, we must stop buying these ‘products’ of abuse off supermarket shelves and instead opt for plant-based foods, which offer everyone a just and respectful future.
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