Investigations
Compassion Over Killing has also conducted multiple undercover investigations on the conditions of animals raised for food in the U.S.
The group conducted an investigation into the living conditions at Maryland henhouses, documenting corpses found in group cages and rescuing some of the hens found in the worst conditions. One of the farms documented, owned by ISE America, housed more than 800,000 hens. Following a tipoff about substandard conditions at the farm, COK requested permission to visit the farm before proceeding with an undercover investigation.
The egg industry said that conditions found in photos and videos produced by COK did not give an accurate view and it was illegal for Compassion Over Killing to remove the hens. The spokesperson for the owner of the farm in question said that the conditions found at the farm were "normal industry practices." While one of the farms asserted that the video footage was not taken at its farm, Compassion Over Killing had filmed its GPS location as well as mail addressed to the farm in question.
On November 21, 2006, COK released the results of its investigation inside a turkey hatchery in North Carolina that supplies Butterball. Details on the investigation can be found in the Charlotte Observer.
In early 2006, a Compassion Over Killing investigation inside a Pennsylvania egg farm led to criminal charges of 35 counts of animal cruelty against the owner and manager of the farm, the first case of its kind. Charges were pressed by a local animal control officer after viewing a video provided by COK which allegedly showed hens impaled by cage wires, among other decomposing hens. The owner and manager of the farm were acquitted in 2007, in a case which COK maintained rewrote animal cruelty laws to say that farm animals were not covered.
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