NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mercy For Animals exposes horrific animal cruelty and neglect at Tyson Foods in a new video, available today at www.TysonTorturesAnimals.com. The video shows thousands of baby birds bred to grow so fast they became crippled under their own weight, workers carelessly kicking, clubbing, and throwing chickens, and thousands of severely sick and injured animals left to suffer without proper veterinary care or access to food and water.

Mercy For Animals is calling on Tyson to swiftly adopt meaningful animal welfare policies to end many of the worst forms of animal abuse in its supply chain. Tyson Foods is the largest poultry producer in the world.

Mercy For Animals will host a tele-press conference at 10 a.m. Eastern at 888-221-1773.

Most of the video was shot within the past few weeks at a Tyson contract farm in Lewisburg, Tennessee, but it also includes footage from multiple Mercy For Animals investigations within the past year at Tyson factory farms and slaughterhouses across the country. The disturbing video—part of a major campaign to convince Tyson executives to end the company's cruelest practices—reveals widespread animal abuse and suffering, including the following:

Workers violently clubbing animals to death, breaking their necks, and leaving severely sick and injured animals to die without food or water

Baby birds carelessly thrown to the ground from transport crates suffering broken bones and other severe injuries

Chickens bred to grow so fast they became crippled under their own weight and frequently died from heart attacks and organ failure

Hundreds of thousands of birds crammed into filthy, windowless sheds forced to live in their own waste and toxic ammonia fumes

Mercy For Animals is calling on Tyson Foods to implement meaningful animal welfare requirements for all of its company-owned and contract farms and slaughterhouses, including providing birds with more space, clean litter, access to natural light, and environmental enrichments, and replacing live-shackle slaughter methods with less cruel systems that eliminate the horrific suffering caused by dumping, shackling, shocking, and slitting the throats of conscious animals.

"Tyson Foods is literally torturing chickens to death," said Nathan Runkle, president of Mercy For Animals. "They are crammed into filthy, windowless sheds; thrown, kicked, and brutalized by careless workers; and bred to grow so fast they suffer from painful leg deformities and heart attacks. This is sickening animal abuse no company with morals should support. Tyson Foods has not only the power, but also the ethical responsibility to end the worst forms of animal cruelty in its supply chain."

To view the undercover video, visit www.TysonTorturesAnimals.com.

SOURCE Mercy For Animals