Criminal complaint filed against major turkey producer for animal cruelty

CURRENT STATUS: (Active) Scheduled for trial

February 1, 2023

Animal Partisan, alongside Animal Equality, has filed a criminal complaint with the District Attorney of Adams County, Pennsylvania, requesting that animal cruelty charges be filed against Plainville Farms, a major turkey producer. The complaint stems from PETA’s 2021 undercover investigation at Plainville Farms that captured workers violently abusing turkeys while loading them into trucks for slaughter. PETA’s investigation depicted workers throwing birds by their wings, neck, and heads. In some instances, workers tied the snoods of turkeys together, beat them with an iron bar, or stood on their heads. Other workers choked turkeys, wrung their necks, and used their bodies to mimic sexual acts.

While PETA’s investigation resulted in over a hundred animal cruelty charges against eleven individual workers, Plainville Farms as a corporation has thus far eluded any criminal punishment. Animal Partisan and Animal Equality’s complaint asks the District Attorney to charge Plainville Farms—the corporation itself—with animal cruelty. The complaint asserts that the corporation commanded and recklessly tolerated animal cruelty by its workers and is subject to criminal punishment under a Pennsylvania statute that allows corporations to be held criminally liable.

Although criminal charges against individuals are more common, most states—including Pennsylvania—allow for corporations to be held liable for criminal acts. In fact, the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General recently charged 21 separate businesses in a massive fraud scheme involving vehicle titles in December 2022.

“The animal cruelty observed at Plainville Farms was part of its de facto standard operating procedures,” said Sarah Hanneken, Legal Counsel for Animal Equality. “This is not a case of a few bad apples – the whole tree is rotten. The law of corporate criminal liability was designed precisely to address and uproot this type of systemic misconduct.”

The complaint, filed under a Pennsylvania procedure that allows private parties to request criminal charges, asks the Adams County District Attorney to charge Plainville Farms with multiple counts of animal cruelty. If convicted, Plainville Farms could be subject to thousands of dollars in fines.

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