Pilgrim’s Europe

In 2021, investigators filmed at an Aberdeenshire farm connected to Pilgrim’s. It revealed pigs being hammered to death, piglets having their tails cut off and teeth pulled out with pliers without anaesthetic, and mother pigs suffering from torn vulvas and severe prolapses following months or years of forced impregnation.²

That same year, undercover footage from a Pilgrim’s slaughterhouse near Manchester revealed pigs gasping for breath as they were slaughtered in a CO₂ gas chamber. A vet who reviewed the footage called it “an unacceptable way to treat any animal”.³

Pilgrim’s Pride has been abusing animals for decades. As far back as 2004, an investigation at one of their US slaughterhouses revealed workers stamping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls. Workers ripped the animals' beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed their bodies so hard that the birds defecated… all while the chickens were still alive.⁴

In 2014, another US investigation into a Pilgrim’s Pride slaughterhouse revealed birds suffering from painful leg deformities and unable to walk. Sick or injured birds were thrown around by workers. Unwanted birds were stuffed into buckets with decaying corpses or were dumped into outdoor pits and left to die from starvation, dehydration, or suffocation.⁵

In 2017, workers on a US farm contracted to Pilgrim’s were filmed bludgeoning birds to death with metal rods and twisting the necks of sick and injured birds. Many birds had leg deformities and all were forced to live in cramped conditions in an environment thick with ammonia.⁶

In 2018, it was revealed that birds were being put into scalding tanks in Pilgrim’s Pride slaughterhouses before they were dead, meaning the birds drowned in scalding-hot water.⁷

In 2021, the Department of Agriculture in the US had to warn nine Pilgrim’s Pride slaughterhouses about mistreatment of birds on 17 separate occasions in a five-month period.⁸

And then in 2024, another US investigation into multiple Pilgrim’s contract farms revealed workers viciously kicking and throwing six-week-old chickens.⁹

Wherever there is a Pilgrim’s Pride processing plant, there seems to be a community with watering eyes and barfing from the stench.^{10 11 12 13}

In 2026, more than 2,000 residents voiced their objections to Pilgrim’s plans to expand their Bristol slaughterhouse. Concerns raised include the worsening of already terrible odours, the impact of an increase in HGV traffic, and the smell stopping residents using their gardens or even opening windows in summer.¹⁴

A 2022 investigation found that by shuffling cash through an off-shore holding company, Pilgrim's Pride was able to reduce its UK tax liability. This manoeuvre was described as “aggressive tax avoidance”.¹⁵

The company is, however, happy to benefit from other people’s taxes. It’s hard to know how much of our money has been handed to Pilgrim’s Europe because, according to a government minister, “No central database of beneficiaries is held”¹⁶ which in itself beggars belief. But, the minister did confirm that Pilgrim’s had received some.

Over in the US, in 2019, Food and Water Watch and the Organic Consumers Association filed a legal complaint against Pilgrim’s Pride alleging deceptive marketing of its products. They compared the company’s claims that the birds were fed only natural ingredients and treated humanely with the reality: the array of drugs and chemicals the birds were given and the overcrowding, fast-growing breeds, and worker violence.¹⁷

In 2021, Pilgrim’s Pride pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay a $107.9 million fine to settle federal charges that it conspired to fix chicken prices and passed on the costs to consumers.¹⁸

In 2024, brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista rejoined the Board of Pilgrim’s Pride after stepping down in 2017 amid a vast corruption scandal in which they were jailed for bribing more than 1,800 politicians.¹⁹

By 2026, Joesley Batista was reported to be brokering meetings between Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and US president Donald Trump.²⁰

In 2025, campaigners filed another complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission against Pilgrim’s Pride, alleging that the company misled investors about how it treats animals and its environmental impacts.²¹

Finally (for now), in 2025, Pilgrim’s Pride was forced to pay $41.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit which alleged the company artificially boosted its stock price by making false and misleading statements about chicken industry competition.²²

Pilgrim’s has 750,000 pigs in the UK, producing 4,413 tonnes of waste every single day.²³ And yet, there is no mention of a strategy for where, when, and how all that slurry is managed or spread.²⁴ This is a serious matter because slurry from farms is responsible for more river pollution in the UK than the water companies we all love to hate.²⁵

In related news, in 2017, Pilgrim’s Pride was fined $1.4 million after polluting the Suwannee River in Florida.²⁶

Pilgrim’s slaughterhouse in Bristol racked up nine breaches of food safety and hygiene regulations during its most recent scheduled audit (March 2023) and somehow was still rated as ‘Good’. Its other slaughterhouse in Wales, in which sheep are killed, managed to break 14 food safety and hygiene regulations.²⁷ Just imagine how bad they must be when no auditor is watching.

Good hygiene is apparently a problem for Pilgrim’s Pride. In 2018, a British investigative journalist who was concerned about dirty meat entering the UK, obtained official US hygiene documents. They revealed 36,612 individual regulatory violations took place over just 25 months at the company’s 24 plants.²⁸ They included:

• diseased meat being placed in a container meant for edible products.
• an inspector instructing workers to pick up chicken drumsticks from the floor and for them to be “reconditioned” with chlorinated water.
• 36 shrink-wrapped whole birds that were scattered across the floor simply being rinsed off.
• meat being soiled with faeces. The inspector noted “... I observed a poultry intestine in the liver bin. The intestine was approximately 6.5 inches long and had visible faeces oozing out both ends.”

In the US in 2020, Pilgrim’s was forced to recall chicken meat after it became contaminated with pieces of rubber.²⁹ Which is still less worrying than the time Pilgrim’s had to recall 27 million pounds of deli meat amid concerns of listeria contamination.³⁰ And with that, we’re straight back to the uncomfortable subject of uncontrollable oozing faeces.³¹

In 2024, Pilgrim’s was named and shamed by the UK government for failing to pay workers the minimum wage.³² This is very much in keeping with how it has long treated workers and farmers in the US.

As far back as 2010, the company was forced to pay a $10-million settlement in a class action lawsuit which accused Pilgrim’s Pride of failing to pay overtime to over 8,000 employees in 11 states.³³

Pilgrim’s Pride has been accused of trapping farmers in “an endless cycle of debt” by demanding regular upgrades which it expects farmers to pay themselves under threat of losing their contract.³⁴

According to a US farmer who reared chickens for Pilgrim’s, while the company paid out $1.2 billion in dividends to stakeholders, it had not increased farmers’ pay for almost two decades.³⁵

In 2013, Pilgrim’s Pride was forced to pay $60,000 when a worker died after being caught in unguarded machinery.³⁶

In 2016, Pilgrim’s Pride was cited for 14 serious violations of worker safety including exposing workers to amputation hazards and fall hazards.³⁷

In 2019, in a new low even for Pilgrim’s, the company was fined $50,000 after firing a disabled worker who needed leave for medical treatment.³⁸

In 2020, employees at a Pilgrim’s Pride factory in Minnesota walked out in protest at the company’s failure to protect their health, alleging that it forced employees who were ill with Covid to keep working, supplied inadequate PPE, and made workers take group breaks with hundreds of other employees, all using the same canteen, without active cleaning or sanitisation.³⁹

A 2024 report about migrant workers at Pilgrim’s Pride cited serious workplace injuries, including workers left with arms “hanging by the skin” after being pulled into machinery. Workers said their supervisors had often not taught them how to safely navigate the plant.⁴⁰

In that same report, migrant workers described being denied bathroom breaks, experiencing racially discriminatory treatment, and intimidatory behaviour.⁴¹

In a separate report, workers alleged that Pilgrim’s Pride rented them their accommodation but charged hundreds of dollars more than the going rate, leaving them struggling to pay bills or buy food.⁴²

In 2021, Pilgrim’s Pride was forced to pay a $29-million settlement after its workers alleged it had conspired with other poultry companies to keep their wages low.⁴³

In news that won’t surprise anyone, in 2024, Pilgrim’s Pride was forced to pay $100 million to settle claims it conspired with rivals to underpay its chicken farmers.⁴⁴