Artificial insemination spreads fowl cholera, a major bacterial disease of domestic turkey. When they're between 12 and 26 weeks, turkeys are grabbed by catchers and carried by their legs upside down to the transport truck. Jammed in crates they travel for hours without food, water or protection from the weather to the slaughterhouse. There are no United States laws regulating turkey or other poultry transport. They may or may not be stunned, whether by a hand-held stunner or an electrified water bath through which their heads are dragged.
Many turkeys receive pre-stun electric shocks.
Turkeys can regain consciousness during this period of recovered respiration and heart beat. Each year thousands of turkeys suffer the added agony of badly cut necks, bleedout, and scald tank immersion alive, conscious, and breathing. Unlike the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, and most other modern nations, the United States does not extend federal humane slaughter protective legislation to turkeys or other fowl, even though birds constitute the enormous bulk of animals killed for food each year in this country, totalling well over six out of seven billion animals. Now, however, the omission of birds from humane slaughter legislation is being challenged. In 1991, the state of California set the U.S. precedent for legislation requiring the humane slaughter of poultry.