PETA wants criminal charges filed against Agri Star

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) believes criminal charges should be filed against Agri Star Meat & Poultry, alleging that hundreds of chickens were smothered to death at the company’s plant in Postville, Iowa.

Roy Graber Headshot
(perhapzz | Bigstock)
(perhapzz | Bigstock)

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) believes criminal charges should be filed against Agri Star Meat & Poultry, alleging that hundreds of chickens were smothered to death at the company’s plant in Postville, Iowa.

Citing documents from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) the company alleges that a worker at the plant continued to have birds dumped onto a malfunctioning belt, and piled the chickens up to four birds deep, smothering 317 birds on the bottom.

“After speaking to the kill belt and dumper belt operators it became evident the incident occurred because the kill belt operator continued to try running the kill belt when it was clearly not functioning. Because the dumper belt is operated by the same lever, this caused the dumper belt to continue dumping birds on the same section of kill belt. Meanwhile, the dumper belt operator did not stop the dumper belt until the kill belt was stacked nearly to the level of the dumper belt,” the FSIS document shared by PETA read.

An FSIS inspector, according to the document, informed the company that both belt operators should be trained how to handle instances when one or both belts malfunction, and should also have means of and be responsible for communicating with one another to prevent such instances.

That initial inspection was conducted on July 8, 2021. A little more than a month later, a similar incident occurred, but an exact number of birds killed was not provided.

Daniel Paden, PETA vice president of evidence analysis, wrote to Allamakee County Attorney Anthony Gericke, and asked him to review the matter and file cruelty to animals charges against those responsible in the incidents.

Agri Star Meat & Poultry ranks as the 30th largest poultry company in the United States. The kosher meat processing and packing company produced an estimated 270,000 pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis in 2020, according to the WATTPoultry.com Top Companies Database.

The company was recently fined by Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Agri Star for four serious violations that led to an explosion, which occurred in the dock area of the plant on a February 4, 2021.

Page 1 of 33
Next Page