At a Butterball turkey farm in Shannon, North Carolina, a farm worker in 2011 was filmed kicking, stomping, dragging, and slamming turkeys into the ground. The footage was obtained as part of a Mercy for Animals undercover investigation that led to a historic court case. The worker was fired, sentenced to 30 days in jail, and fined $550, resulting in the first felony conviction for animal cruelty at a U.S. farm. The farm worker clearly faced consequences but do such punishments help farmed animals?
Many animal cruelty lawsuits seek to criminally punish individual farm and slaughterhouse workers using evidence from undercover investigations. In Florida, a judge who previously worked at a dairy farm sentenced two farm workers to jail for beating and stabbing cows an instance of the “good” former farm worker becoming an enforcer of the law. The trend of criminalizing workers’ inhumane treatment of animals is growing last year, England and Wales increased the maximum jail se