Each year in the US, more than eight billion chickens are raised and killed for their meat, and countless more suffer and die before even reaching the slaughterhouse. Few people have seen the daily miseries these baby birds are forced to endure – until now, reports Compassion over Killing (COK).

In early 2014, a COK investigator wore a hidden camera while working behind the closed doors of a North Carolina chicken factory that supplies Pilgrim’s Corp. (formerly known as Pilgrim’s Pride) — the second-largest chicken producer in the world.

Typically kept hidden from public view, the video footage uncovers the following day-to-day horrors:

• birds suffering from painful leg deformities, unable to walk
• sick or injured birds thrown around
• unwanted birds stuffed into buckets with dead or decaying corpses
• live birds dumped like trash into outdoor pits, left to die from starvation, dehydration, or possibly even suffocation.

Much of the suffering these birds endure results from standard industry practices, says COK. However, the organisation believes that several acts of abuse they have documented, including dumping birds alive, not only fall outside of accepted industry practices, they also violate state animal protections laws.

COK's evidence has been turned over to local authorities for further investigation.