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Apr 20, 2022 · "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive." Santurio and Rosenberg's shirts donned this statement during their respective protests, but what does it mean? First, we have to meet Glen Taylor. Taylor is a businessman with a reported net worth of $2.6 billion who has owned the Minnesota Timberwolves since 1994. However, his time as the Wolves owner is ...
- Overview
- Workers dismissed
Animal rights activists are up in arms over reports that a chicken farm in Iowa killed more than five million birds, after detecting a case of avian influenza, in what activists say was a gruesome culling method. The factory farm later dismissed the more than 200 workers it had tasked with slaughtering the hens, according to a report from The Guardian.
Rembrandt Farms, where the mass slaughter took place in March, is owned by billionaire Glen Taylor, one of the wealthiest Iowans, and an owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Last month, protesters from Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights advocacy group, stormed the court at home games wearing T-shirts reading, "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive."
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship in March announced that it had confirmed a case of avian influenza in "a flock of commercial layer chickens" in Buena Vista County, where Rembrandt Farms is located.
Zoe Rosenberg, a protester, alleged that the farm created an environment that made it easy for disease to spread.
"I don't think any farm should have that many birds to begin with," she told CBS MoneyWatch.
The Storm Lake Times detailed the Ventilation Shutdown Plus method by which the birds were killed. The system shuts off barn ventilation, temperatures rise above 104 degrees and the birds die slowly, by suffocation.
The enterprise then summarily dismissed more than 200 workers.
"The workers were let go immediately after they performed ventilation shutdown and finished disposing of the bodies of these chickens. Working on a factory farm is not easy," Rosenberg added.
Oscar Garcia, a former plant supervisor, told the Guardian that workers were poorly treated.
"People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, feces everywhere, doing 12 to 14 hour days," he said. "They couldn't protest because then they'd be fired and lose their redundancy pay. Then they're thrown out of work and no one speaks for them."
Rembrandts Farms did not immediately reply to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment.
The culling at Rembrandt comes amid a spread of bird flu in the U.S. that has farms grappling with ways to quickly kill and dispose of millions of chickens and turkeys to limit the spread of disease.
- Cerullo
- CBS News
- Reporter
Direct Action Everywhere exposes the cruelty of factory farming and demands that billionaire Glen Taylor, who owns the Minnesota Timberwolves and Rembrandt Enterprises, donate his avian flu subsidies to charity. See the investigation, the protest and the petition.
Apr 26, 2022 · Direct Action Everywhere, an animal-rights activist group that has disrupted three Minnesota Timberwolves games in April in protest of team governor Glen Taylor's ownership of Rembrandt...
- Paul Kasabian
- Featured Columnist II
Apr 13, 2022 · During the act of protest, Santurio wore a shirt that said "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive." The group also released a video which it says shows the grisly aftermath of a mass chicken...
Apr 13, 2022 · The activist, later identified as Alicia Santurio, wore a t-shirt that read "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive" while she sat affixed to the court beneath a basket at the Target Center in...
May 5, 2022 · The following week, a third woman, dressed as a referee, stormed the court before removing her jacket, exposing a shirt underneath that read “Glen Taylor roasts animals alive.”
