"There were 100 turkeys and chickens dead upon arrival today, many missing feathers with open wounds and with large sores on their feet" writes Sam in his investigator's diary on January 12, 2007. "I saw a chicken with an abscess on her left leg about the size of a tennis ball and another chicken whose right leg was mashed to the point of bloody pulp and [she was still] hanged by both legs to go down the line."

Modern turkeys are drugged and bred to grow so quickly that their legs can't support their own weight and many arrived with legs and knees broken or dislocated says Sam. When you tried to remove them from their crates, their legs would twist completely around, offering no resistance, limp.

The turkeys must have been in a lot of pain reflects Sam, though they don't cry out. In fact the only sound you hear as you hang them is the "trucks being washed out to go back and get a new load."

The same day Mercy For Animals released its undercover video, Denny's, the US' largest full service restaurant chain and a HORF turkey customer, announced it was suspending its supplier. House of Raeford also condemned the videotaped acts and promised an investigation.

But there is no record that Hoke County prosecutor Kristy Newton launched an investigation or brought cruelty-to-animal charges.

Nor did HORF customer Arby's ever acknowledge the videotaped atrocities.

As exposes at Pilgrim's Pride, KFC's supplier, Tyson Foods, Perdue and Butterball have revealed, the system of live hanging and conveying birds through a stunner, blade and scalder is inherently cruel, exposing animals to great pain and regularly boiling them alive. 

Controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK)--a system in which birds are

left in their transport crates while oxygen is replaced with nitrogen or argon--is considered more humane and in use in Europe.

But another humane alternative is for people to look at the struggling and terrified turkeys hanging upside down and ask themselves: am I really that hungry?